“I knew it!”
Cursing his bad luck and considering whether his thoughts had jinxed him, Julien swats gently at the melon-sized bees that buzz around his body.
“Go on. There are enough flowers to visit. Leave me alone!” Julien suddenly retracts his hand. “Yow! Sonuva…!”
A stinger the size of a pencil sticks out the back of it.
“That’s it! No more Mr Nice Guy.”
A few precision strikes later, Julien looks down on seven now-silent bees. Bastards. With stingers like that, I’m lucky only three of them got me. As he yanks the stingers out of his body, a familiar voice alerts him.
“Stung by three medium-sized adult Lancer Bees, you have incurred minor neurotoxicity. You are slowed. Be happy you didn’t get more stings. Around six stings are lethal for a Champion Rotta.”
What?! Julien reflexively drops the stingers as he recoils from the bees lying in front of him. Just six stings to kill one of those terminator rats. What if I can take even less? What if the bees were even bigger? It’s as if everything moving in this world exists solely to make my life a living hell!
He suppresses the urge to chop the bees into pieces. Instead, he takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. And again. Before the air has left his body for the third time, an idea starts forming in his head. It instantly turns Julien’s frown upside down. “So, six stings are lethal to a Champion Rotta, eh?”
Just as Julien chops off the last stinger, he becomes aware of a pervasive droning getting louder, and louder, and louder. Turning left and right, he sees two growing clouds approaching from both directions.
Oh shit! Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!
Somewhere between the fourth and fifth, oh shit, Julien finds himself sprinting over the flowery meadow. He pumps his legs furiously. Faster, damn it. Faster! Why can’t I go any faster?! As the buzzing reaches the level of a helicopter taking off, Julien starts to panic. The growing outline of the castle is still more or less in front of him. But can he outrun the bees and find the entrance in time? He doubts it. A bit closer is – what looks like – a particularly thick collection of flowery bushes hemmed in by an unkempt hedge. There!
Abruptly veering to the left, Julien trips as his left foot dips into a hole. His sword goes flying, and he only just prevents himself from kissing the earth by using his left hand. Scrambling, screaming, and cursing his luck, he keeps moving forward. Snatching his sword on the go, he takes off again as fast as he can.
But they are upon him.
“Ouch!” That’s four.
Whipping his sword left and right, Julien holds his left arm in front of his face. Getting stung there seems like a particularly bad idea.
There are just about fifteen meters left to potential safety.
“Shit!” That’s five stings.
Please no! Don’t let me die from stupid bee stings!
Then the hedge and bushes are right in front of him. Without slowing down, Julien dives headfirst into the green mass. Gaining multiple scratches, he struggles to dig deeper and deeper into the green barrier. Once satisfied, he curls up.
Outside of his chosen refuge, death’s song buzzes on.
Out of sheer terror, Julien stays frozen for a couple of minutes that feel endless. But when the sixth and final sting does not arrive, and he tries to lift his head to see if the threat is gone, he discovers that most of his big muscle groups have locked in place. From the waist down, he is completely immobilized. Everything along his spine is extremely stiff, and the sensation is spreading to his arms.
“You have incurred severe neurotoxicity. Was my first message not clear enough? Avoid these bees! Stage one: paralysis of minor muscle groups. Stage two: paralysis of major muscles. Stage three: organ failure and death.”
So, his limit wasn’t six. Crap! With his mind assessing and discounting at high speed, Julien can think of only one possible solution. Through a clenched jaw, he only just manages to mumble, “Synthisa Sarcina Activa.”
Thanking every god he can possibly think of, he sees the Fool’s knapsack appear in front of his face. It takes every ounce of control and willpower he has left to stretch his hand far enough to reach inside for a Balmea gourd he had pierced and plugged with its rather corklike stem.
He is able to remove the cork. But then his hand starts to cramp up. The gourd falls, and the precious liquid slowly drips into the dirt.
Julien is a helpless witness to every drop adding itself to the puddle forming just beneath his face. Feeling utterly powerless, he can only stick out his tongue and hope that the puddle grows fast enough for him to maybe lick up some of the juice.
It takes a long time. Too long. But when his tongue finally reaches the puddle, he starts lapping away like a cat who discovered a saucer of milk after a week’s fast. Please work! Please work!
If complete paralysis had not been an issue, Julien would have been trembling all over. His heart would have raced at a rate to outpace a horse. As things are, his mind is the only thing working properly in his body. And as time passes and the droning seems to lessen, it swings between hope and despair like an addict between his chosen poison and the clinic.
When sensation finally returns to his fingers, tears of relief flow from his eyes. About six hundred seconds pass before he can manipulate the gourd to his face and gulp down a few mouthfuls of the miracle juice. The detox process speeds up, and within another ten minutes, his legs and arms unlock.
Moving into a slight crouch, Julien carefully spies around the leaves and branches. The bees are indeed gone. Why though?
After checking and double-checking, Julien stands up and looks around. He sees some bees awkwardly twitching on the path that leads to a big tree. What happened to them?
He turns towards the now-calm meadow. In the sparse light of the sunset, he sees more of the deadly insects motionless on the floor. With hardly another thought, he crouches and starts collecting in a grim mood. It’s only fair, right? They set out to take my life. Now I take their stingers.
A few minutes and about two dozen stingers later, Julien is upright again. He looks at the dark silhouette of the castle. Should I push on? What if there is no way to enter? What if he gets caught outside? No. Better to approach in the light of day, when he can at least see threats coming. But where to spend the night?
He turns around. The tree. Tall, broad branches, less than fifty meters off. His mind is made up.
Crossing over the hedge, through the bushes, and onto a path he hadn’t noticed before, a calming, sweet scent tickles his nostrils. He walks on, his sword at the ready. Anything might pop up out of those bushes.
But the teeth, claws, and stingers that he fears do not show up. Instead, as daylight completely fades, he sees multiple colorful, small lights emerge from the cover of the leaves. Green, yellow, red, and orange. Enchanting. He smiles as the peaceful atmosphere puts him more and more at ease.
Surely there is nothing to fear here? The tension in his shoulders ebbs away. I can sheathe my sword, right? He blinks once or twice, his blade already in the scabbard, when another voice speaks up.
“But why take the risk? When you’re up in the tree, maybe then?”
Julien shakes his head a few times. That’s right. In the tree. I’ll be safe there.
Raising his head to take in the behemoth and find a route up, he is surprised to find his field of vision blocked by two large, black, finely-haired wings. At the centre are two red eyes inside a white, skeletal face. The wings are covered by a fine powder. They flap, and Julien suddenly stands in a silvery mist, and the world seems woven from starlight.
Julien grins at the giant moth in front of him. “Twinkle, twinkle… butterfly. Could you please bake me a pie?” Julien giggles uncontrollably.
The moth nods with sparkling eyes.
Losing all connection with time – its passing, its existence, even the concept itself – he eventually finds himself on one of the thicker branches of the tree. In his hands lies a strangely flat yet circular fruit. “Is this the pie?”
The moth nods solemnly. Julien takes a bite, chews, and, upon swallowing, promptly blacks out.