Chapter Text
Adaine stepped forward, raising her stupidly large orb aloft. Lightning zapped out from the orb as she cast Witch Bolt, and the corn ooze screeched in pain.
Gorgug stared at Adaine's beautiful carnage with a slack jaw before looking wildly around. He saw a corn cutie flying straight at Kristen, who was frozen in place. Gorgug opened his mouth in a snarl. His tusks glinted in the fluorescent light of the cafeteria. The gangly, too-tall half-orc boy roared as he raised his great axe and brought it down to shear the flying terror clear in half.
“Freaking heck yeah!” Kristen said. “Shoot yes!”
As she and Gorgug high-fived, Gorgug noticed something about the corn ooze. “I think it’s going for the pantry!” he shouted.
“Oh, thanks,” Fabian said sarcastically. “Everyone noticed that, but thanks for pointing it out.”
“We hadn’t talked about it,” Gorgug called back. “I just wanted to make sure.”
“Yeah, we got it,” Adaine said.
Riz eyed the distance between himself and the corn ooze. He considered jumping on the next table over, but these tables seemed as antagonistic as anything else currently trying to kill them, so he hunched down behind a table instead. It wasn’t a great shot, but he lined up his arquebus as best he could and pulled the trigger. If it hit, it did no noticeable damage to the monster.
The others did notice, though.
Gorgug screamed and Kristen cried out “Oh, gods, briefcase kid!”
“It's a magic gun!” Riz said. “It’s a magic gun, everyone.”
Adaine was busy staring at the weirdo who had brought an entire arquebus to his first day of school, fully loaded, and so wasn’t prepared for the corn cuties who leaped on her, butting her nastily in the head. She collapsed, laying suddenly still, by Fig’s own unconscious body.
Kristen turned pale as she stared at the two girls lying on the floor. She hurriedly cast Bless on those heroes still standing. Gorgug, Riz and Fabian each felt some strength return to them, even as they fought off the terrible (and cute) creatures around them.
“Thank you!” Fabian shouted.
“Of course,” Kristen said. She pointed up to the heavens. “But don’t thank me. Thank Helio.”
Through her lord god’s help, Kristen was able to leap onto a table as she advanced on the next corn cutie.
The corn ooze smashed a thick tendril against the door of the pantry. The metal door was dented, but did not break.
Fabian leaped forward and stabbed at the corn ooze. Slipping in the monster’s slime, he was able to barely make a light scratch on it.
“We gotta kill this big boy!” Riz shouted in frustration.
Doreen looked up at Kristen standing on the table. The lunch lady grinned.
“Hey there, little girl, you think you're chosen of the corn God? Well, I was blind but now you can't see!”
A beam of sickly yellow light shot out of Doreen’s ladle. The light lanced toward Kristen, its glow sharp and blinding.
Another force lit up the cafeteria, filling it with the smell of freshly made popcorn. Doreen was knocked back, hurled into the kitchen. Plates smashed and fell to the ground as she hit the wall.
Kristen bowed her head, feeling the power of Helio’s golden corn light as he protected her with his divine intervention. She heard his voice in her mind saying, “Kristen, I love you.”
Kristen nodded with her eyes closed. “I know.”
Gorgug took a swing at the nearest corn cutie. He cleaved it in half, his axe tearing an incision deep into the tile floor.
“Not so cute now, are you?” Gorgug said under his breath.
“What did you say, man?” Riz asked.
“Yeah, what was that?” Kristen said.
“You said something really quiet,” Riz said.
“What did you say, Gorgug?” Fabian shouted.
“To the corn,” Riz said. “What did you say to the corn?”
“It’s going to the pantry!” Gorgug said.
“For the last time, Gorgug, we already know!” Fabian said.
Riz tried to get closer to the corn ooze, so that he could shoot it properly, right in the corn hole. He squeezed the trigger again.
The bullet hit the ooze, and it didn’t seem to like it, but in the end the monster was a large mass of gelatinous creamed corn. Shooting seemed to injure it, but not as much as Riz would have liked. He rolled under a table to hide, in case it turned on him.
Two of the corn cuties slashed at Kristen. A halo crowning her glowed with holy light, and the gremlins could find no purchase on her sacred body. The light of her aura was so bright that the kernels on one of them began to pop, and it screamed in pain.
“We might all be converts by the end of this,” Fabian muttered as he dodged a corn cutie. Somehow Kristen heard him.
“It's not hard to live this life,” she said. “You just have to believe.”
Kristen moved through the corn cuties, and the gremlins were overpowered by her light. She laid her hands upon Adaine, casting Cure Wounds. Adaine stirred and opened her eyes to see Kristen smiling beatifically down at her.
“You’re welcome,” Kristen said, without Adaine saying anything. “It was nice to touch you.”
In Fig’s unconscious mind, she could hear a rumbling voice. “Fig?” it said. “Can you hear me?”
“Dad?” Fig thought back.
“Ya feeling all right, kid?” her father spoke in her mind. “What should I call ya?”
“You can call me Fig. Is that you, Dad?”
“What’s wrong with you?” the voice rumbled.
“Oh, I’m gonna die,” Fig thought. “We’re fighting corn monsters and I think the lunch lady has hurt me pretty bad.”
“That’ll happen sometimes, kiddo,” her father said. “Listen, I’m sorry. I gotta go.”
“Wait, no,” Fig thought. “I haven’t even met you.”
In her mind’s ear, Fig realized she could hear a motorcycle revving.
“Is that your motorcycle?” Fig thought. “My dad drives a motorcycle?”
In the cafeteria, the battle raged on while Fig lay very still on the floor, her mouth curved in a small smile as blood streamed down her face.