Should you ever find yourself on a certain special train, it'll likely drop you off in the tunnels between worlds. There is a deep darkness, and the big mouths who hunger constantly devouring any who stray into the tunnels, but so long as you move fast, you should be fine, the train will drop you off near a signpost. Anyone should be able to read it, even the illiterate. It points to four directions, four lands between the tunnels, carved from the Wastelands.
To the west Korund, blazing hot with deserts and desserts, cowboy lizards, mean beans and guerilla bananas.
To the south Faror, vibrant in life, with friendly jellies and funguys who know a good time.
To the east Bluville, ludicrously damp Bluville, with swamps, mushroommen, deadly but mostly peaceful hedgehogs and mythical dinosaurs
Then there is the north... to Elcon.
Snowy sweet Elcon, the land carved out by the least and youngest of the four banished Travellers.
If you can help it, do not go, even Korund would be better. Elcon is too wild, too melded with the Wastelands, even wasteland monsters like buraskags wander there! There's beings that explode their own heads for fun, admittedly they regrow the heads...
All four are places were magic is raw and free, a lands not dominated by Law nor ensnared by Delusion. So all kinds of silly nonsense happens there, and most denizens take it in their stride, but there's one gingerbread man who takes it all a bit too seriously, but then, he likes to sit on his favourite rock and ponder.
Today too, he ponders the odd scenes he comes across.
He pondered a bit too hard and got captured by bandits. It wasn't that surprising. Sitting around on a stone absorbed in pondering this and that was safe enough in a village, but in a random part of the elconic wilderness? Ginger and his rock had ended up in the stomach of some grand subterranean creature not just once. In comparison, being bound hand and licorice booted foot in an igloo was a lot more comfortable. Ginger was even on a soft carpet, how pleasant. He took stock of his surroundings.
-Meats, vegetables and fruits, and barrels, some of them must be filled with liquids. Obviously a storeroom, did they not have anywhere else to put me, or do they consider me food? I am made of gingerbread and sweets.-
He pondered what part of him they would eat first. Would it be his gingerbread flesh? Lemon icing hair? Blue marzipan trousers? Licorice belt? Licorice boots? Would the blue pastille eyes be last or first. Generally, he preferred to be eaten head first, quicker that way. Still, being an Eternal was no excuse for not struggling to live. Ginger actually put aside meandering pondering and tried to loose his bonds.
...tried
-Huh, whatever these ropes are, aren't these unreasonably tough? I may be more a man of technique than brute force, but I'm still confident in my brutalism. They're bright red, but aren't glowing or ethereal, there's too many red roots from underground that it could be made from. Hmm, no handy sharp objects either. Not an exposed edge in sight, if I can just sit on one of those barrels, even bound I should be able to use my thronefighting skills-
There's a common race in Elcon called the landfish, they walk about on fins well enough to cause problems for everyone, given as they often are to pillaging. Apart from them, there's other piscine creatures that move acceptably well on land.
Ginger flopped about like a quite regular kind of dying fish.
-what a clever way I've been bound, are these bandits particularly good at their trade or does one of them just really like tying things in complex ways?-
He didn't get a good look at them, as by the time he had stopped pondering about the trees growing under snow and the trees growing above snow, he found himself bound and in the igloo.
-Attempts at escape have proved futile, I should try to find out more about my captors and wait for an opportunity-
Inching along like a caterpillar, Ginger made his way towards the doorway of the storage room, and indistinct voices then became clear.
"Cor, this rock isn't half 'ard is it?"
The speaker had a deep male voice.
"Quite, fully hard I should say"
The speaker had a refined male voice.
"Heyheyhey we might have gotten something good for once! Hurray!"
The speaker was a far too excited female.
"Reckon we'd get a gem or two"
"What shall we do with the gingerbread gentleman?"
"Should we eat him? Huhuh? Should we?"
"Well, he's gingabread ain't he? Though, bit gone in the head though, didn't even see us"
"Yeah, yeah, we greeted him and everything 'We're the three great Leathersilk Bandits!' not a peep, not even when we asked for his money or his life"
"We were especially polite this time too, none of us are gingerbread so eating him would usually be fine, but what if we catch whatever madness or affliction he clearly has? His head is likely filled with deadly mold!"
"Bit much to rob AND eat a fellar too"
"Haha, fine, fine, I only thought of it because I'd like some gingerbread"
"We could always buy some at the market this time"
"Market eh? Whatta bout we sell 'im as a slave?"
"Might not get much if he's mouldy"
"Ahaha, he'll stay alive and we get some pocket money"
"Doin 'im a favour really, won't last long wandering bout with his head like that"
"Speaking of our guest and his head, perhaps you should check up on him, Komb?"
"Prolly best do dat"
"Hihihi, just watch out if he's become a risen"
"Don't say stuff like dat!"
The stomping of feet, and Ginger got his first look at one of the three leathersilk bandits. Round.
Big.
Big and round.
A perfectly spherical head made of speckled red candy, a gobstopper with a gob. In other worlds a goblin is quite different, but in Elcon a goblin is one of these oversized teeth murderers. They do have pointed ears and nose still, though much smaller than many goblinkind. They're also bald, which isn't uncommon for goblinoids. The head doubled as a body, which was common for candikin, fruitfolk and vegetapeople. Covering his baldness, this gob had a bandana of a strange creamy material, like cured leather in texture, but like silk in how it rested. Extended from his body were the typical stubby limbs that head-body creatures tend to have. His were covered in white fur boots and gloves.
"Ey? What's this? Why youse crawling like that? Trying to escape?"
"Not right now, I was just eavesdropping"
The goblin, roughly twice the size of two normal heads stomped over to Ginger and picked him up.
"Listening's right good, Pose always says imma good listener. Wishes Reow would listen more, now where'll I put ya?"
Ginger pondered on it, wasn't this goblin a bit dense and wasn't this a good chance?
-There's no way he'd be familiar with an obscure martial art like thronefighting, through elimination, truth reveals its face, I need ponder no more!-
He hadn't pondered much really, but sometimes a chance just falls into your lap.
"Say, it's been really uncomfortable on the ground, would you sit me up on that barrel there?"
"No problem buddy, gonna take good care of youse before we sell ya!"
With little difficulty, Komb the goblin put Ginger up on the barrel. As soon as he did, Ginger's gentle harmless aura vanished. He sat fully upright, posture perfect in spite of being bound. He breathed in and then shouted out with a HA!
Komb was shocked by this, but not as shocked when the ropes tying Ginger burst apart. He was further shocked as Ginger took a pose as if balancing on a particularly rowdy animal, further still was his shock when the barrel and ginger slammed into him, sending him out of the storeroom.
"Not again! Komb!" Pose, a green goblin the size of a head screamed out. He had a pointy hat of the strange leathersilk that was knocked clean off.
Reow was half the size of a head, and with a ridiculous cat ear headband on her shiny pink bald head, she rushed into the storeroom, brandishing Ginger's rock at him!
Ginger flipped up from the barrel and landed in sitting position on his rock, and the final bandit found herself flattened into the ground.
As the trio moaned and groaned, Ginger pondered.
If he sold them into slavery, wouldn't they stop being bandits? He really didn't want to spend precious pondering time reforming them.
-I couldn't carry all their ill gotten gains myself either, they didn't kill and eat me, so I'll be merciful-
Later, they were sold as a three-pack so they weren't separated.
Ginger had pondered it well.
Tomorrow’s story is the Chef's Surprise: Psychic Assault!
Title Preview: It's a surprise, who knows what this say of madness will bring?
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