Hexblade's Charm

Thanksgiving, Part 1

This was going to be fun.

Around Hexi, the dark stone walls were once again stretching out in every direction, towering impossibly high over his head, overgrown by crippled black vines and illuminated by flickering, orange torchlight. The air in the chaotic evil maze was ominous. Distant screeching and slithering. The monsters were still in here, ready to bring it on. But this time, Hexi had come alone. And he had come for one, very specific reason.

Sadly, this reason was not the final duel he had promised the Mad King Oswald Thorn back when they had first met.

"You are late, hihihi."

The cold, amused voice of the insane king seemed to echo from all around him. Hexi's longsword appeared in his hand with a quiet swisshhhh of golden and green magic.

"And I'm not sorry", he replied. "I am guessing I will get my prize if I make it through the labyrinth on my own this time?"

"Ts ts ts", Oswald's whisper sounded from his left, "you appear so eager, and yet you are late. You know what type of candy you would be if you were candy?"

"No idea –" "Choco-late. Hahahahaha!"

Hexi sighed and suppressed the urge to giggle. He would never admit that he actually found these puns kind of funny in their simplicity.

"Well, I wasn't too keen to come back to this place. Even a restaurant on the moon would have a better atmosphere", he countered and slowly started making his way past the stone walls around a corner. He could hear Oswald laugh maniacally, but ignored the Mad King for now. The serious monsters were a more pressing concern. And he was alone this time...

Sure enough, around the third corner he heard a slithering from up on the wall, and two gigantic melted candy monsters suddenly dropped in his path.

Hexi grinned and gripped his blade tighter. This was just the warm-up.

He jumped at one of the slimes, the green one, with all the speed he could, pushing his sword deep into the goo and slashing around – but the candy substance made it hard to pull it back out, and when he wanted to do a cool move of effortlessly turning around to hit the other creature – his sword was stuck.

"Ugh!", he managed to get out before the whiteish slime creature slammed into him. Now dripping with sticky candy substance, Hexi cursed and continued to slash at both creatures. It was hard to move with the floor and his boots now covered in sugary goo.

Once again, Oswald's voice seemed to be right ahead down the maze. "I kind of like seeing you covered in slime like this, Heximander. The look is quite... fetching on you."

"Fuck you", Hexi panted and finally finished off the second monster with a last slash. His wrists almost hurt from dragging the sword through the goo like this. He shook them out and cursed again as he saw the candy dripping from his clothes, his boots, his blade.

"Come on", he murmured, moving his hand in a snapping motion across different parts of his outfit, "Prestidigitation."

But as the golden and green magic began to slip from his fingers, he felt it warped by some fiery, orange and black energy. It smelled like chaos and evil and sugar, and suddenly he had a weird idea of numbers and equations in his head that made absolutely no sense.

"What the fuck?!"

Oswald cackled happily.

On the fourth try, the magic finally went through, and Hexi got at least his sword, face, arms, legs and boots clean enough to be able to continue through the maze without getting stuck to the ground on every step. He didn't have enough patience to also clean his upper body, but he didn't really care. After all, there was nobody here to call him out on his slimy appearance other than the Mad King... who started annoying him again just as he finished this thought and continued down the maze.