The huge troll lurched balletically through the door of the inn, looking excited.
"What is it, Lunch?" asked the almost too-beautiful woman sitting near the
fire.
Lunch, for that was indeed the troll's name, replied "It's a bat, boss, definitely a bat. A big bat. Definitely big."
Damn, thought Lucyfer Deadleg. I was hoping they wouldn't be here for another ten minutes, so I could finish my sandwich and this chapter. Oh well.
She got up, and the (few) other patrons of the bar gasped in awe at her beauty and poise. She whistled, and two more joined her and the troll, a mostali and an aldryami. No-one knew why these three followed this woman, or what power she had that they set aside their grudges and thousands of years of hatred, but they did. So there.
They left the inn, and walked the short distance to the gates of the town, where a crowd of fearful peasants cowered as they looked out onto the plain.
Lunch killed a way through to the gate, and lived up to her name by retrieving the bodies for a snack later.
"What is the problem, Captain?", asked Lucyfer, henceforward known by her
nickname, Hard-On for what she gave to men when they saw her.
"You know damn well what the problem is, Witch," growled the Captain of the
Guard, who was probably a Sword of Humakt.
"Urrgghh," he added, as the mostali cut him in half with his huge iron axe.
"What seems to be the problem, Sergeant?", asked Hard-On sweetly.
"B-B-B-B-B-Bat, your Ladyship," stuttered a very scared looking man who had
been standing next to the Captain prior to his division, and was now very
wet with a mixture of blood and his own urine, "the Crimson Bat, your
mighty high worshipfulness."
Hard-On ignored him and walked out the gates, followed by Lunch, Frank the mostali and Galalaydianomaliontheta the aldryami. Two thousand hand-picked iron-clad warriors moved to follow their glorious leader, too, but Hard-On waved them back.
"It's OK, guys. Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast." Hard-On's
breathy yet powerful voice reached even those furthest from her, and they
all laughed.
Turning once more to the plain before her, Hard-On saw the thing that had turned even the greatest Hero's sphincters to doughnuts: The Crimson Bat. At the moment, the Servants of the Bat were shovelling peasants and members of the Town Guard into its gaping maw, but as soon as they saw Hard-On they ran away, behind it, and hid.
Hard-On and her three companions walked towards the Bat, ready for any sudden move. Halfway to it, they stopped.
"You three will have to wait here," Hard-On said firmly. "It's too
dangerous for anyone but me in close. You kill any of the Servants you
see, but leave the Bat Man for me."
"Yes, m'lady," they chorused, and began preparing their missile weapons,
bow, repeating tripod-mounted crossbow, and big rocks.
Hard-On walked on.
Sitting on the Bat's head was a human in a strange tight-fitting outfit. He called down to Hard-On.
"This is the last day you will ever see, foolish traitor!"
"We will see about that, Bat Man!" Hard-On called back.
They began to cast their spells. The Bat rose from the ground in a cloud of dust and flew towards Hard-On.
Suddenly, Hard-On grew, and kept growing, as she intoned the magic chant
"Superhero-Dragon-Godzilla-Giant-Power Now!"
The Bat never stood a chance. It could not dodge the city-sized foot that crushed it to the ground, nor the large-town-sized hand that scooped it to the really-quite-substantial-village-sized mouth. It squealed as the huge, perfect teeth closed on it.
I'm going to have indigestion for the rest of the day now, thought Hard-On.
Looking around as she shrunk back to her normal size, she saw that the Servants of the bat were all dead now. In fact, most of them looked like porcupines because of all the arrows and crossbow bolts in them. Occasional ones had rock-shaped holes through their torsos, but Lunch was much better at hand-to-hand fighting.
The Bat Man, of course, was being digested.
"Well," said Hard-On, "I really put the bite on him."
And they all laughed as they walked back into the town, and were hailed as Heroes by the grateful populace.
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