tMFUtM - b1c10 - It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time (Patreon)

A full assault group of bulbous monsters were charging at Rugrim—and some other weirdos that were presumably doing something—but he wasn’t worried. After all, if he could breathe on the surface, he could do anything.

Rugrim met their charge, with a nonsensical battle cry on his lips and with nothing but confidence in his gut. As the gap between them narrowed, one of the beasts lashed out with… well, there was no polite way to refer to a vaguely phallic tongue that was covered in sharp teeth. The projectile-like appendage came for Rugrim’s beard, but it only found his sledgehammer. Pale pink flesh ruptured as Rugrim’s swing connected, and the tongue collapsed limply on the ground.

Which did nothing to even slow down its charging owner. Monsters that were unbothered by pain were the worst, truly.

Rugrim just needed to show them what pain truly was!

The eyestalks on the tops of the monsters looked like fantastic targets, but Rugrim was a dwarf and the monsters weren’t exactly tiny—he couldn’t really hope to reach them. Instead, when the lead monster caught up, he jinked to the side and brought both his pickaxe and sledgehammer around to slam them side-by-side into the creature’s scaly hide.

His sledgehammer bounced off, marginally deforming the creature’s hide in the process, but the pickaxe bit through the scales and drew thick green blood from the monster. It wasn’t a deep wound though, and Rugrim was forced to back away as the monster turned and tried to chomp a piece off of him.

Not that he was going to let that stop him. So long as he didn’t get bit, he was winning!

Ah, right, the other monsters.

He turned, just in time to see the next beast barreling toward him. It was too late to dodge clearly, so Rugrim acted on instinct—he threw himself backwards. It wasn’t like he had far to go, after all! On his back, he released his sledgehammer and gripped his pickaxe with both hands, just in time for the monster to run directly over him.

Avoiding its feet was a stroke of luck, but his armor was sturdy dwarven steel—he was confident he could survive a stomp or two if it came down to it. He was more focused on driving his pickaxe into the beast’s tiny, soft scales that covered its belly. There was no possible space to get a good swing in, but the momentum of the monster provided all the force he needed. He just had to keep a solid grip on his pickaxe.

While the monster ripped itself wide open.

Once it was past him, Rugrim rolled over and hurriedly stumbled back to his feet. He was covered in slick green blood and chunks of intestine—or quite possibly other anatomy—but that was fine. He’d been soaked in fouler stuff than that. Instead of fretting about it, he charged the next monster, shouting insults about its ancestry.

Alas, it lacked the intelligence to be properly shamed. Instead, it launched its tongue at him.

That was fine, Rugrim swung his sledge…hammer…

Mud. How had he managed to forget to pick up his sledgehammer?!

The toothy tongue slammed into the steel breastplate of his armor with enough force that he teetered, before he recovered and thwacked it with his pickaxe.

“Ha! Serves you right for underestimating the legendary constitution of a dwarf!” He taunted the beast, unconcerned about its continuing charge.

After all, he had an idea. He was already slippery, and the beasties were quite fragile from below!

Magic was a muddy menace, but dwarves made use of every asset they had. In his fear, he forgot that. But his great ancestors hadn’t hollowed out the realm to create their great kingdom by doing merely what they preferred. Hard work required both gumption and a willingness to endure anything it took to get the job done!

Rugrim touched the pads of his middle fingers to the nails of his pointer fingers and did the same with his rude fingers and pinkies—thankfully, his thumbs weren’t involved in the nonsense, which meant he could keep ahold of his pickaxe. And, as he had only done once before, Rugrim began to chant.

The wind picked up. A warmth suffused Rugrim like a hot, mightily strong drink enjoyed after a long day’s labor. And the power—the magic—formed a neat construct around him, intangible, yet somehow present.

And, even better, there was no surge of power. His solitary spell, Slippery Form, embraced him, even as Rugrim began to run once again. He brought himself even with another monster, then dove, just before they collided. As [Magic Proficiency, Basic] had promised, Rugrim slid across the ground as though he was covered in a sheen of the finest grade of machine oil ever distilled.

He actually sped up, moving considerably faster than his best run could ever manage. He was quite nearly too late to raise his pickaxe into the monster’s belly, but a partial disemboweling—or whatever he was spilling from them—was still pretty fatal. He was pretty sure he’d seen the first one that he’d done it to collapse, at least.

There was kind of a lot going on, and he was trying to control his slide across the grasses and dirt with exceedingly limited success. But necessity was the lodestone of innovation, and he soon sank his pickaxe into the soft ground to turn himself and—as his pickaxe tore through the ground—bleed a bit of his excessive speed.

Soon enough, he was acceptably centered on the next beastie and pulled his trustworthy partner free. That monster managed to step on him, but even as the air was pushed from his lungs, he still drove his pickaxe into its squishy underside.

His armor held, so he probably wasn’t too hurt. Not that he was too concerned about the ache. Magic was muddy great! He’d been so afraid of it, so hesitant to use it, that he gave up after a single mishap? What had he even been thinking?! With its gift he was as deadly as a perpetual crossbow bolt, sailing across the battlefield and delivering unending destruction to—

Ah, the spell ran out.

Rugrim skidded to a stop, as the loose rocks scraped noisily across his armor. Some innate sense told him that he had enough magic for a recast though, so Rugrim stumbled gracefully back to his feet, shaking his head until the world stopped swaying.

Once again Rugrim touched the appropriate fingers and repeated the exact same chant. Everything was just the same—aside from the fact that he was more than a few meters away from the site of his first successful casting ever. The warmth truly was intoxicating too; a dwarf could get used to that. And once again, the power formed and assembled around him.

Until the structure went to muck and the power started to surge wildly around him. The winds picked up even more as thunder—a surface sound no dwarf should ever be forced to get used to—echoed in the distance. The magic boiled outward and the twisted mockery of the sensible structure he expected bloated until it shattered outward.

A flash of light, too green to be red, seared Rugrim’s poor retinas.

And the slipperiness returned, but something was wrong. Before, Rugrim kept his footing until the moment he willingly let himself fall. Yet after his latest magic, his feet slipped right out from under him. Worse, his pickaxe was ejected from his grasp, as if it was a polished smooth metal rod covered in excessive lubricant.

And he wasn’t the only one. The monster in front of him crashed into the ground, flailing helplessly. They even bounced off of one another as their unguided momentum forced a collision. All around him, the same scene played out.

Monsters crashed and slid. Insects slipped right off of the leaves they had been perched upon. Even the rocks that hadn’t sunken into the soil began to slide across the ground, driven by the still-howling winds.

“Grating sands! What is going on!” Tin’s aggravated curse carried across the chaos of the slickened battlefield.

Rugrim couldn’t see the golem, but his allies had been affected as well, it seemed.

“An overcast? No, that wouldn’t have changed the effect. Strange.” Origin slid past Rugrim, muttering to himself as he continuously tried to put his hand on his chin. It refused to stay, of course. That too was slippery.

As was all.

Even noble Souna had failed to keep her balance. As Rugrim rolled, he beheld her, face down and derriere up, as she slid between two monsters.

Steel’s angry chittering could be heard in the distance, fading as he(?) moved further and further away from the main battlefield.

But no, there was one exception. There was a single entity that faced absolute lubrication and refused to relent.

“My friend has found camaraderie and become a true party member at last. And that. Is. Beautiful! And I am solemnly sworn to defend all that is beautiful! I refuse to relent, just because physics has gone wacky!” Dawn wasn’t just glowing—the fey woman was shining brightly.

Her hands blurred as she worked desperately to keep hold of her rapier and whip. Yet even with the monsters gone helter-skelter, she alone continued the battle.

And for the first time, Rugrim witnessed the woman wielding her true power. He had assumed himself to be excessively deadly during his first casting. But in just as much time as it took him to slay two of the enemies, Dawn brought annihilation to six.

Her whip glowed like the stone-forsaken sun. Each time she cracked it, smoke and charred ruination spread through the wound as it seared its way through their flesh, scales, and bone alike.

Her rapier glowed like the stars in the night sky. Each time she lashed out with it, ice crystals erupted from the wound and shredded the monster into gruesome fragments, before the ice shattered into a refreshingly cool mist that slowly expanded over the area.

Dawn wasn’t just a goof without a single sense of boundary. The woman was oathsworn—and while she was upholding that oath, she wielded true power. Magic and martial prowess combined, in her case. But being an oathsworn couldn’t explain the full extent of the talent she displayed. In a world where nothing could keep its footing, she danced and twirled with graceful intent.

Her level had to be higher than that of any dwarf that Rugrim had ever known.