Dawn of the Bimbarian

I wanted to write about a Wizard getting his D&D stats flipped so that he became a bimbarian (bimbo-barbarian) cutie with a giant dick (girl) who sucks her own hog...so that's what I did. Someone gets their brains scrambled and their INT and WIS turned into STR and CHA, so if you don't like brains getting messed with, heads up.

Also this story features a lady with a giant dick. If you don't like it, lmao I don't know get better taste

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The Tower Where No Shadows Fall lived up to its reputation. Despite the baking sun pouring down on the parched wasteland around it, the light did not halt when obstructed. Instead, the stone absorbed the darkness. Like a sponge, the very absence of light drained into the enormous columns and cracking stone. If one isn't there, Braid decided, they couldn't possibly understand what it is to see a construct so alien to how the natural world is supposed to work that it makes you want to like running away on all fours like a skittering beetle.

And yet here he was. He ushered his horse forward, though at a canter rather than a gallop. It was a downhill jaunt for Kettle, and the last thing he wanted was for her to break a leg this far away from civilization. Living civilization, that is. There had once been a great empire here, with the tower as its wellspring. Now, only the half-sunken faces of enormous statuary and finger-like columns thrust out amidst the wastes. The shallow grave of a race of stone titans.

Braid wondered, not for the first time, if this was truly a smart idea. He'd always considered himself a clever lad. Where the warriors and the mages battled it out for dominance in the dungeons and arenas that littered his home continent, he'd been the one to stick to the shadows. Even at that moment, in the scalding light of the afternoon, he wore dark clothing. Not exactly aiding his case for brains, that. At the very least, his hood provided some shade, but without his perpetually refilling waterskin, he'd have sweated to death a day into his journey. All he wanted was an ounce of shade, which was one thing that the damned tower in front of him didn't offer.

But on top of marching him and his horse through the Wastes of Wyndr wearing darkened wool to find a building that positively radiated malice, it was all in service of the worst idea of all.

He had come to kill a Wizard. Or at the very least, steal his stuff.

As he approached the enormous stone staircase leading up to the tower's cavernous maw of an entrance, the heat of the desert faded away. At first, it was almost comfortable. Like stepping into a bath after a long day in the fields. But as he grew closer, the sweat of his clothes chilled. The warmth not only fled the air, but also his hands. And at the very first step, where the sand met the stone, he could have sworn he saw his breath fog the air.

Again, he questioned if he wanted what lay within the tower this badly. After all, he'd paid his debts to the Union of Thieves for training in the roguish arts. He'd settled the tab to the woodland bandits of Smuggler's Scape for the nightwood bow and arrows that clung to his back. And despite the seeming impossibility of the task given to him, he'd earned the twin blades Aperi and Occlude from the last of the Fadehunters. He had no outstanding claims to settle...there was no pressure for him to move any further.

But Braid knew, in his heart of hearts, that he wasn't being forced into this. He was making a conscious choice to pursue this, the greatest of all possible feats for a thief of his calibre. There were only Three of the Great Five Wizards remaining. The Antipode of Truth had fallen in a great war that had torn several nations asunder. The Antipode of Silence had exploded herself, taking her entire flying island fortress with her. These were figures of myth, of nightmares, even. And here he was, about to press his luck and burglarize a god on earth.

"Well...it wouldn't be the first time I'd bitten off more than I can chew," he mused to himself, "And where would I have gotten if I had learned my lesson?"

He took his time at the edge of the tower to care for his steed. He fed her his last apple and gave her plenty to drink. Kettle was a good horse, and she didn't deserve to die if he failed. For all his many faults, he was not heartless. On his belt hung his daggers, but they were so much more than the crude weapons of assassination they'd been heralded to be. They were his ace, his trump, his only chance at taking on such a threatening foe as a Great Wizard. And one of their many powers was their ability to cut anything.

He pulled Aperi from its shadedrake leather sheath. The blade remained as sharp as the day he'd gotten it, and by extension as sharp as the day it had been made. The sunlight prismed when it hit the crystalline starmetal blade. Their glimmering beauty was their only downside, as far as he was concerned. But if he did his job right, they would be the last thing an opponent would see. Reaching out with the knife, he slid the blade through the air, searching for something. Smoothly, it moved, his finely honed skill with a knife making his motions serpentine and full of a deadly kind of grace. Then, as he brought the blade to near eye level, it caught.

"Gotcha," he mused, and pushed. The blade sliced into...something. Nothing. Or everything. Braid had no idea what to call it. But Aperi pushed against the resisting force and parted it like it did flesh or scales or even steel. Purple and gold energies poured forth like aetheric blood, and as he pulled the blade down, he cut a rend in the fabric of reality.

It took over a minute to make the hole big enough for Kettle to get through, but he managed it. By this point his horse had become accustomed, if not entirely comfortable, with the strange visuals of a portal being formed. At the edges of the wound, the multicoloured energies still flowed. But in the centre, there was only black. Dark, and foreboding, putting even the evil walls of the tower before them to shame. From his saddle, he pulled a long length of hempen rope, one end tied into a heavy knot. He swirled the rope, testing its weight, then launched the weighted end through the void like he was lassoing a wayward calf. He tied the other to Kettle's bridle and waited. A minute. Two.

"Damn stableboy. I told him to-" he managed to say before he felt three tugs on the rope. A gold coin well spent then. Plus all the lad had to do was sit around and wait for a rope to appear through a gaping wound in space and end up making more than he might in a year. He removed anything he might need from Kettle's saddlebags, including an empty sack for loot and all but a second coin for payment of services rendered, then gave her a slap on the flank. It skittishly stepped through the hole in space, body vanishing like she'd dived into a lake at night. After a brief trip, depending on the relative distance between the stables where he'd opened the first hole and the second hole he'd cut, his beloved beast would emerge in safety, none the worse for wear.

When she disappeared, he switched blades. Where Aperi opened doors, Occlude closed them. And with a surgeon's confident swipes, he passed the thin point of the glimmering blade like a sewing needle, stitching the rended fabric of reality until only a hint of the strangely coloured energy seeped through the top. That would be his getaway, easily sliced open again to escape through...if he survived.

***

Stepping through the threshold of the tower, the impossible drop in temperature moderated to a dry chilliness. The shadowed walls lost their eerie darkness, leaving them as long slabs of grey slate that encompassed a long, cavernous entrance hall. Huge braziers burned green fire, giving the interior a strangely sickly illumination but giving off minimal heat in return. Despite its enormous proportions and dreary colour palette, however, the elongated room was positively inviting compared to the building's exterior.

There were no signs of sentries that he could see. Of course, wizards were tricky buggers. Great Wizards doubly so. But drinking a Potion of the Third Eye to see the unseen was out of the question. All reports from those who had survived expeditions to the Tower, all exclusively from those who had never made it inside, were that anyone with magesight almost instantly went mad upon gazing at the monolithic structure. For once, Braid thanked his entirely mundane nature. In a world of arcane mysteries and sorcerous power, sometimes it paid to be the son of a ditchdigger.

It was all moot, of course. If his mark was anywhere near the paranoiac the stories had described, he would have been spotted the moment he'd stepped into the wastes. But this heist couldn't be one of stealth. You can't traipse into a Wizard's Tower like you're escaping a merchant's villa after a very agreeable night with his daughter...and an even more enjoyable morning with his son. He needed cunning, guile, and raw survival instinct.

"How rude of you," a voice echoed from everywhere at once, "To simply step foot in my hall without so much as an announcement of your presence. Do the youth of today simply not knock anymore?"

Well, Braid was in for it now. With a hand on either blade, he pulled them into his hands like grateful lovers, gripped lightly yet with insistence, for it might become time to squeeze hard and move fast at a moment's notice.

"I didn't see a door," he said to the walls, keen eyes searching for any hint of motion that was not his own. But the flickering of the braziers made that impossible. It seemed like the entire room was in motion, and the light ruined any night vision he might have had to peer into the long, ghastly shadows that waited for him further into the hall.

"And so you thought to just...let yourself in? How bold," the voice said with a hint of genuine mirth, strangled in the cradle by the deathly tone of his next words. "How foolish."

He saw them now. Beings of purest, starless night. There were at least four, but he couldn't be sure. They slithered from the walls in shambling disorder, forms as amorphous as the shadows they resembled. On the whole they clung to the ground, propelled by long tendrils that pushed out of their bodies, performed a task, then shrivelled back into his great, formless whole. He would never be sure. The only thing that had definitive form was their mouths: elongated jaws filled with bright white teeth.

"Allow me to introduce my Hounds," the voice said, though his attention had clearly wandered to something else. Although it was not a young man's voice, it wasn't that of an elderly man either. A professor, yes, but not one with tenure. And considering the Wizard's true age, that spoke remarkably for whatever magics aided his longevity. "They'll dispatch you, as they have all the others who have trespassed on my demesne. In your next life, perhaps you'll be more cautious."

Now that he had a word for them, they gained more form, as if giving them a title let them hold purchase in his mind and thus his eyes. They snarled, shadows of drool falling from their expressions of sinister hunger. Hounds they were, Braid had to admit. He readied himself as best as one could to fight nightmares: one blade forward, one blade back. Just like his tutor had taught him all those years ago. One for the throat, one for the heart.

The first leapt soundlessly through the air. It passed through an enormous stone column like it wasn't even there. Mere matter and the laws of reality holding no sway over its non-corporeal form.

Wizard bullshit, basically.

He twisted out of the way, letting it lash into the space he'd occupied moments before, all while curling his body around to bring the blades back in a heinous pair of slashes. They may have been shadows, they may have been magic, they may have not even been there. But the Blades of the Fadehunters bite deep into anything. Even shadows.

His momentum carried the blades into its 'body', and the entity hissed like a doused fire. Its form bled into the green light of the room until it joined the flickering, returning to the dark from whence it had come.

The rest of the Hounds didn't hesitate. If they had minds, they were bound entirely to their Master's will. One after the other they came. One slid along the ground, another bounded on four tentacled legs. Each received a killing blow, his knives driving their signature into their ethereal flesh. A shadowed claw bit deep into his cloak, tearing it. He hadn't seen the fourth approach. Had he not been wearing his mithril shirt, he had no trouble believing they would have torn into his heart. As it stood, he tossed off the hooded garment and launched it at the foe. As it slid through its incorporeality, he thrust Aperi into its core. Then, when he had felt the dagger meet resistance, he yanked his hand upward, feeling the beast cleave into two halves. As it dissolved, he searched the room for the next threat.

There, in the reflection of the black stone, he saw himself for the first time in months. His long hair had grown wild and void of the feature that had given him his nom de couteau. Normally he'd have kept his hair tightly contained, but there just hadn't been the time to care for it. With his cloak discarded, he could see most of his wiry frame. His face, normally a warm beige in hue, had been baked by days in the sun, leaving it both tanned and reddened. Bags under his chocolate brown eyes betrayed a little of the fatigue he felt from his long ride. It had been a long, lonely month. Or had it been two? None of that mattered now. He could sleep on his bounteous lucre. Or when he was dead, whichever happened first.

"So, you're more than the mere cutpurse you seemed to be upon initial reflection. Interesting..." The voice had returned to taunting him, and Braid took the time to catch his breath. He wasn't a young man anymore, either. Next time he fought monsters from the shadows, he'd have to stretch beforehand.

"Why don't we meet face to face? You've seen my blades. Perhaps we can make a deal." There's no way the Wizard would trade any of his hoarded secrets or items, and if someone wanted Aperi or Occlude, they'd have to be pried from Braid's dead hands. But Wizards loved to run their mouths. Whether it be to taunt, make speeches, or exposit, the bastards loved to hear the sound of their own voice. That would be his in.

"I think not. I believe your goal is not a mercantile venture at all, though I've no doubt money has changed hands at some point. Who sent you? Attorax the Voracious? The King in Yellow?"

"You think I'm an assassin?" Braid asked, slightly flattered. Perhaps he could work this angle. Make it seem like he could be bought off.

"You're skilled with a blade, and driven by purpose," the disembodied voice continued. "I'd hate to think my end would come at the end of a petty thief's blackjack."

There was no way up. At least, not that Braid could tell. Probably some magical contrivance, but without the skill in the arcane, finding it would be hopeless. His blades would make quick work of the distance; they were perfectly fine for short hops through space, so long as he could see where he was going. Anything longer than that and cutting into reality from the other side was a roll of the knucklebones. It wasn't a mathematical thing, the distances represented in real space and the other. Sometimes a pace in the void was the length of a hunting cabin, other times it was a mile's distance travelled. Once you had a hole torn, you could travel between the two places fairly consistently. But even after the years of practice, he still wouldn't use the blades for anything more than jaunts to places he could see. A wayward step in the netherworld and he could end up opening a portal in mid air next to the tower...or materialising inside its walls.

"Well?" he asked the walls, making a show of his impatience. "You saw me turn your Hounds to dog food. If you want rid of me, you'll have to face me yourself."

Silence. He was half-reconsidering trying out a portal trip when a gust of wind caught his attention. The blowing air was strange, especially considering he was indoors. He looked around for a source but found none. All there was to see were the braziers of green fire being whipped into a frenzy by the strange gusts. The flames leapt out of their metal containers and whirled in long spirals, like burning tornados. Several leapt towards him, merging and growing larger until they coalesced into a single mass of air so wide it made dodging it impossible. Immersed in fire, he slammed his eyelids shut and braced himself for the scalding heat of flame. But he felt no heat. Only pressure, applied to his lower extremities as if urging him upward. He held out his arms, and the firewind grabbed those too. His feet left the ground. He floated like a feather on the breeze toward the ceiling.

With the fire both propelling him and illuminating the way, the ceiling of the hall opened into two half circle holes. The cyclone carried him through one of these curves, up and over a slender wooden railing, and finally deposited him on his feet onto what was evidently the second floor, despite it being over a hundred feet up. Now unburdened, the fire swept up to the ceiling of this part of the tower, where it flowed into a great, artificial sun at the centre. The orb drank up the fire, briefly turning a lime green colour before settling back to yellow.

After a brief check to make sure all his weapons were still on his person, he searched for the source of the voice. There, sitting on a divan amidst a forest of bookshelves, was a Wizard.

"Come here, boy," the voice said, but from a singular direction now. "Let me get a look at you." There were few stereotypes of his office to be seen. No great white beard, no pointed hat. He was old, or at least on the tailing edge of middle age, with receding salt-and-pepper hair and several wrinkles to speak of. He wore spectacles, something Braid had only seen on rich merchant princes used to flaunt their wealth and sagacity.

Judging by the environs, this man would have no reason to foster such pretensions. The books themselves were priceless only in a metaphorical sense. Only seeing a few titles, Braid's internal catalogue of items worth stealing triggered so many alerts he nearly laughed. Historical treatise from the figures involved, magical grimoires, even first editions of holy books once thought lost. The sheer number of tomes would make this man the richest person on the continent. He wouldn't miss one. Hell, he wouldn't miss ten.

He slipped a ribbon into the part of a book he'd clearly been in the middle of, removed the eyeglasses, and stood...to an imperious height.

"I suppose introductions are in order. My name is Vhule Penumbrod, and I am the Antipode of Dawn. One of the three remaining Great Wizards, though perhaps that title carries a little too much presumption. I am merely a man who enjoys reading, at the end of the day. And you are?" His voice was sonorous even without the magical echoing effect.

"Call me Braid. I'm not quite dumb enough to give you a real name."

He chuckled without mirth. "Oh, that old superstition. Don't tell me you believe that a name can hold power over someone."

Braid quirked an eyebrow. "Tell me then, Vhule: were you born with that name?"

A light chuckle from the walls. "Was worth a try, at least. What brings you trespassing in my Tower this afternoon, Braid? Have one of my many forgotten misdeeds come back to haunt me at long last?"

He played it cool, rubbing the amber pommel of Aperi with his thumb. "Perhaps. I'm no thief, you understand. But I am more than a throatslitter. I can appreciate someone else who knows the true value of knowledge." Braid played up the 'classy professional' angle for all it was worth, all the while casing the joint like a smash-and-grab man might in a noble's trophy room. One thing he had in common with the assassin trade was that the most valuable thing of all people often gave away for free: information. All you needed to do was find ways to take it from them.