In the mythical world of Everdale, a lithe, archer lizardman named Sladesh decides to team up with a bulky, flatulent black minotaur named Morltar and the two partners go on adventures together, using both of their talents to fight evil, get in or out of trouble, or to just stink up the joint.


Part 6: Sladesh and Morltar discuss each other's pasts, and for the first time ever, Sladesh becomes flatulent.

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Morltar and Sladesh were resting after they sprinted their way out of town. It was one thing to best everyone at an All-You-Can-Eat contest, but drenching the entire mess hall with your fecal matter was a whole different story. Those who hadn't run out the building or weren't busy trying to recover from the smell chased after the lithe lizard and flatulent minotaur until their lungs gave out. But they had gotten away safely.
It's been a day since their flight from the town, in fact, and Sladesh figures that they won't be back anytime soon. Well, that marks their first town they've been kicked out of. The lizard sits on a log beside his humongous adventuring friend, and they are trying to pick over what they've foraged or taken for food. "Well, that's the last time I enter YOU in an eating contest," The lizard says, while the minotaur picks thorns out of his rump from earlier attempts to find a nice place to sit.
Morltar inhales sharply as he closes his eyes and slowly pulls out a large thorn. "OW! Hey, at least I won without being disqua...that big word where you lose because you broke a rule. ...God these thorns hurt."
"You'd think with all the fat there you wouldn't feel 'em!" Sladesh says, while he munches on an old fish. "Well, we need to find work soon. We'll keep selling your manure until I run out of bags. So get used to crapping in them for a bit. Then we'll get some new armor, and we'll really be on top!"
Minotaur winced and pulled out another thorn. "Sounds like a plan. Maybe I can find something that protects my ass cheeks."
Sladesh shakes his head. "Forget it. Anything we put there will just get blown off by your flatulence. Better to keep it hanging in the air while we keep your legs, torso and arms armored. If we get enough cash maybe we could splurge on a snout cover or something." He hands Morltar a large piece of chicken. All the food's old, but it's all they have.
Morltar grabs the chicken and noisily begins to gobble it all down, although grimaces upon absorbing the odd flavor. He also noticed that the food smelled a bit funny. "Hey, Sladesh? How old is this food? It kind of smells like feet."
"I dunno, a few days?" he says as he chomps down on some bread. "Personally, I'm starving for once, so whatever you don't eat, pass it along! You always take the food stuff anyway."
"Hmm..." Morltar continues to eat all the chicken, despite the fact he didn't enjoy the flavor, but he stayed away from the bread and fish that Sladesh was eating. It looked like something moldy was growing on the bread, and the fish stank a little more than usual.
Sladesh washes his food down with beer, and eventually he feels stuffed. He burps. It felt sour, but nothing unusual. "Ugh. Well, that should do me until we find another town or some Podunk settlement. So Morltar. I never asked you before, but I'm curious: where'd you come from? Like, where'd you grow up? Do minotaurs like, have herds?"
Morltar pats his distended gut. "Uh, something like that. I came from a noble group of gruff minotaurs who prove their domi...dom-i-nan-ce in bloody, gruesome battles. There were actually times where a member of our herd died because the battle went too far and they became too wounded to patch up. But we just shrugged and buried the dead warrior. To us, it was nothing more than another soldier who was bested...that don't sound right. Is bested a word? Whatever; we wrote 'em off as 'taurs who were bested by a stronger warrior."
Sladesh listens with some interest. "Wow. That's pretty deep. Didn't expect that from YOU," he says. "You know, maybe we should visit your tribe or whatever sometime. Me, I came from the swamps. My tribe, we were all into that shaman stuff. I never bought into it, though. I was always the black sheep, I guess." His stomach makes a gurgling sound and he winces. "Ugh. On second thought, I probably shouldn't have eaten that fish."
Morltar giggles. "S'matter? You having some bowel issues?"
Sladesh springs up. "Wh-what, me? No!" he says, inwardly worried as he starts to feel more pain. "That's all you have, I'm too cunning and calculating to be like that!"
"C'mon scale-butt, even smart lizards have to poop. It's not like you guys hold it all in forever."
"I don't have to crap!" Sladesh says. Suddenly he moans and doubles over. "Oh dragon gods!" he practically yells. His tail lifts and, cloacae opening, he unleashes a loud blast of flatulence that is surprising coming from a frame such as his. It manages to shoot a fireball from their campfire for several feet.
Morltar rolls onto his back and starts laughing hysterically, unable to cope with the fact that the wise and poised Sladesh resorted down to passing gas like a common camel.
Sladesh stands and looks horribly embarrassed. "Q-Quit laughing! What if...what if someone SEES me??!"
"Sladesh, you passed gas, not murdered the king of England. No one's gonna give a shit."
Sladesh can hear some forest sprites laughing. He whirls around to glare at them, but they vanish. "Yeah? What about them? You know how those fairy things are! Ugh...." he sits down on the log again in defeat. "I'm supposed to leave the farting to you."
Morltar sighs heavily and stands up, then bends over and lets out a tremendous fart in the direction of the forest sprites. He turned around after letting out the smelly gas bubble and saw a majority of them fall to the ground, unconscious. "There, they're gone. And yes, leave the passing of gas to me, but that doesn't mean you can fart every now and then either. Passing gas is perfectly normal and healthy--God I feel like a doctor telling you all this."
Sladesh sighs in relief, then has to plug his nasal passages. "I know, I know. Hey...thanks for trying to make me feel better, though. I appreciate it."
"No problem. ...On the positive side, that fart you let out STANK! Whew!! My friend told me that you reptiles have stinky farts, but WOW!! Hehe, smells almost as bad as diarrhea!"
"Heh, well, I fart like an alpha male," Sladesh says with a grin, folding his arms. "I'm not as delicate as I look, ya know?"
Morltar chortles. "That's good! Embrace your alpha-maleian farts! ...Damnit that's not a word, is it?"
Sladesh rubs his eyes and sighs. "No Morltar. We're going to have to work on your vocabulary." Suddenly Morltar's stomach gurgles again, a much more...solid sound. "Huh, better get the bag, my large friend," Sladesh says. "I need to make like a harness to attach them too sometime."
Morltar grunts and hunches over, letting out tiny farts as he tried to keep his feces in his colon. He holds his grumbling tummy and raised his tail.
Sladesh affixes the bag crudely, but it should hold. "Anyway, I lived in a swamp, got fed up with being backwards, and set off on my own. I became a rogue and got pretty good at stealing stuff. But I found adventuring was a lot more lucrative and I wouldn't serve jail time."
Morltar sighs and begins to defecate into the bag, passing gas several times over and dropping chunks of manure nearly the size of his fist. "No shit?"
Sladesh nods, this time sitting upwind of the minotaur. "Yep. Then of course, I hooked up with you. Always better on the lonely road with a traveling companion, right?"
Morltar releases a few more turds and sighs with relief. "Right."
Sladesh looks out to the horizon. "That is, if we both survive this dungeon I've decided to raid! Full of traps and all that!"
Morltar yelped and farted extremely loudly while simultaneously laying more and more ounces of scat into the bag, creating an overwhelming odor. He literally had the shit scared out of him. "What dungeon?!"
Sladesh laughs. "The old wizard's tower, of course!"
"But they do weird things with animals like us! I'd rather face an entire horde of werewolves twenty feet tall with one arm and a cork shoved up my ass than go up against someone who could turn me into a pile of my own filth with a flick of his wrist! Do you have any idea how degrading--that's a word right? Do you have any idea how degrading that'd be, to be turned into a bag of shit?"
Sladesh waves dismissively. "Relax, it's been abandoned for years. All the wizards are either gone elsewhere or dead. All that's left is...whatever they left behind, right? Ripe for the picking!" He laps up, breaking wind again but it doesn't diminish his triumphant pose with his finger pointed to the distance. "We are going to be RICH!"
Morltar plugs his nose and waves a hand in front of his face. "I'm serious, you lizards sure know how to stink up the place with your farts."