Adelmo and the Ring

Magic found its way to Adelmo since he was a cub. He could attract it regardless of origin. The divinities of the church, the distillations of higher knowledge, sometimes he even drew the less agreeable forms; he was under the protection of his parents then, thankfully, nothing unfortunate befell him because of his natural magnetism. His mother and father served the faith as Paladins, warriors trained to call upon the providence of the divine realm.

And that providence reached Adelmo, no matter where he was, even in the deepest level of Kharstoke’s sewers.

Adelmo raised his shield and squared his stance against his opponent’s mace. Its surface erupted with sparks, and hissed golden flame from the lion’s maw at the midpoint of its design. The skeleton felt no pain, it didn’t have the flesh or nerves to register the physical sensation of burning. It kept pressing down even as its alabaster limbs, stripped of muscle and skin, began to crumble into dust in the blaze.

The skeleton’s weapon bearing arm fully disintegrated at the joints. The bones making up its forearm clattered to the ground, and dissolved in the chemically rich waters of the sewer. Adelmo advanced to strike a decisive blow, left hand vised around the gilded handle of his sword. A beautiful weapon whose blade was rendered in white gold. The metal was hardened by rites older than Adelmo’s family line, affording the normally soft alloy a supernatural toughness. One that was particularly lethal to those who perverted the natural order of life and death. It flashed white-hot on contact with the welter of dark spells puppeting the undead, severing them from the mortal plane. With a cry like smokestacks whistling in the distance, the skeleton stilled. It collapsed seconds later, its bones scattering apart and disappearing into the filthy water. It was an indignant funeral, but Adelmo whispered a prayer regardless.

His partner was having a similar bout with a ghoul further down the tunnel. With Adelmo’s opponent dispatched he was free to assist his friend. He sprinted quickly as the murky water and his heavy plate boots allowed. A white figure in brown leather armor became clearer, moving deftly to avoid the plague bearing claws of an undead ratfolk.

The figure moved with an almost serpent-like grace. His long body contorting and twisting in ways that would snap Adelmo’s spine if he attempted to mimic them.

“Oh, Adelmo! Good to see you finished your little duel,” the figure replied. He had a soft, even tempered voice. Silver tongued. His fur was white as snow when it wasn’t covered in grime and dirty water. He was a white stoat, hailing from the permafrost lands in the north. His good looks and devilish eloquence belied the rapacity within. His name was Baron, and the long black steel needle he twirled in his right hand was called Dahlia.

“Stop toying with it,” Adelmo sighed.

Baron was a natural foil to Adelmo, but somehow the two got along. Baron was lithe where Adelmo was stocky; he was quick and agile in combat, while Adelmo was methodical and immovable. He was a trickster who liked to play with his perceived lessers; Adelmo was an earnest man who just wanted to collect his pay and go to bed. Even in the low light, he could tell Baron was toying with the risen creature. He gripped his sword tighter and made it flare, just to get Baron’s attention and encourage him to hurry up.

“Ah well, time to stop the dance,” Baron intoned, then began humming a tune. Adelmo recognized it. It was a funeral song from the Icereaches.

Baron struck the ghoul with Dahlia’s point. Green runes lit up and migrated from the weapon to the undead creature’s skin like an infestation. Each repeat stabbing transferred more of the symbols, until they coated the ratfolk like a swarm. Adelmo called the needle’s magic unholy, but Baron always corrected him with a quip about perspectives. Apparently the inscription process which allowed Dahlia’s runes to eat away at flesh or poison living things was not the work of heretical practices, as Adelmo had thought, it was just a pragmatic application of druidic spellcraft. Baron claimed he had the weapon made by a Swampsmith, Adelmo had the sneaking suspicion he stole it.

The ghoul’s flesh was eaten away until it was as bare as the skeleton Adelmo had fought. Baron needled the joints and watched as it fell apart. Its remains fell into the sewer water, and were carried away by the gentle current. Adelmo said another prayer, Baron made some tasteless joke. The two of them looked for the nearest ladder to begin their ascent back to civilization. The skeleton and the ghoul were the last of twelve risen creatures the two were contracted to dispose of. It was a long hunt, and Adelmo was in dire need of a bath.

They found ladder after ladder thanks to Baron’s intimate knowledge of Kharstoke’s undercity. “Here we are, last one.”

"You need to stop showing off when you fight. That last one was a ghoul, what if it scratched you?"

Baron shrugged and hung on to the ladder with one hand and swung out, casting a devil may care smile down at Adelmo who was struggling under the weight of his armor.

"I have you, don't I? The almighty magical sponge. You have plenty of energy to cure me of death's poison over and over, because the day you run dry, is the day the end times begin!"

Baron resumed his climb.

"I could choose to NOT heal you."

"You could, you won't, but the option is definitely there."

Adelmo huffed. His friend was right. "Just avoid unnecessary risks."

The artificial brightness of Dwarven gear lamps greeted their return to the surface. They exited in an abandoned square with a stagnant fountain bearing a green, derelict statue. Baron rested against the edge of the fountain, and checked the contents of a blue sack Adelmo had never seen before.

Adelmo sat next to him. He stared at the bag and coughed to grab Baron’s attention. "... where did you get that?"

Baron pulled out a sapphire. He held it up to a nearby lamp and inspected its facets by the light of the whirring fixture.

"One of the ghouls wore blue robes. Eight out of ten times that means wizard. So I swiped his sack before I melted him."

“So… graverobbing?” Adelmo frowned.

“They were walking, no graves were involved, hence no graverobbing. Just common pickpocketing.”

“That doesn’t make it BETTER!”

Baron put the sapphire in one of his pockets, then pulled out a silver ring with a pale blue center stone and two white side stones. “It doesn’t make it worse,” Baron hummed and looked at Adelmo through the ring. “Nice shade of blue, goes with your fur, here,” he slid the ring on Adelmo’s finger before he had a chance to protest.

“Baron! I’m a man of the church, I can’t wear PILLAGED jewelry!”

Adelmo tried to pull the ring off his finger. He exerted more force than should have been necessary to remove it, but it stayed firmly where it was. It glistened and he swore it grew brighter on his knuckle. He wasn’t particularly overweight, or possessed thick fingers either, so why the ring had become so stuck was a mystery to him. He felt a faint presence woven into the band and the three gemstones, their hues shifting in the city lights. Adelmo spun the ring around his finger, he could do that at least, but any attempts to move it further towards or away from his ring finger’s knuckle proved impossible.

“Suits your eyes,” Baron gave Adelmo a boop on the nose with his finger. Adelmo resisted the urge to bite it off.

Arguing with the stoat was a fool's gambit.

“Let’s just get our money and go to bed, please, before you festoon me head to toe in cursed items you fished out of a ghoul’s sack.”

“Phrasing!” Baron chimed. “And no need to worry, it’s silver, and blue, cursed items are usually… red, or green, black, maybe purple,” he led the way out of the abandoned square through a tight alleyway and on to a main street. He turned over his shoulder to declare he was an expert on colors, magic, and their meaning. Adelmo doubted it, but he admired the confidence Baron had in his own bullshit.

Kharstoke was a large sprawling city populated mostly by Dwarves. Originally a small mining town, the ingenuity of its founders led to an early industrial revolution which solidified it as the engineering capital of the West. Delegates from the four corners of the globe flew in by airship to deal with the city guilds, bartering their resources for machines to automate or improve their lands. That influx of finance meant that all sorts of guilds unrelated to engineering had made Kharstoke their home. The one Adelmo and Baron were interested in was the Adventurers Guild.

They arrived at the Clockwork Hen. The stone brick archway leading to the tavern was a familiar comfort to Adelmo. They walked through the short tunnel that opened to the beer garden at the front of the main building. A few familiar faces greeted him and Baron, and they exchanged customary pleasantries over the din of loud patrons and clinking vessels overflowing with beer. Adelmo pushed the double doors open and cut a path to the guild’s administrative counter, where a tired red kobold was half asleep. Adelmo wondered how anyone could sleep in a pub full of drunk adventurers, maybe it was something unique to the kobold race. He gently reached out and tapped him on the shoulder.

The kobold startled and looked around in a panic like he had been attacked. “Huh? What? I wasn’t sleeping, you can’t prove anything.”

“I’m just here to collect payment,” Adelmo replied in as calm a voice as he could manage. His patience was deep, but covered in foul sludge and tired from battle, it was starting to wear thin. He smiled best he could while he waited for the kobold to come to his senses.

“Oh right, right, uh. You’re… the Paladin, Adelmo. Quest number two two three seven, titled ‘Undead in the Undercity,’” the kobold pulled a face like he had smelled something rotten. “Oof my guy, the sewers? And the lowest level at that? You must be dying to take a bath, that’s where all the chemicals from the alchemy quarter gets drained into. I had a cousin who went down there once, kobold Jim? He came back up as cat Jim, not too different really. He just gets hairballs.”

Adelmo’s smile showed his fangs. It morphed into a threat display unconsciously the longer the kobold kept talking. “Mhm, mhm, anyway here’s the proof,” he took a bit too much delight in dropping severed bones engraved with necromantic symbols in front of the kobold, his Paladin oath suppressed while he enjoyed the chatterbox’s silent open-mouthed gasp.

The kobold took the notice parchment for the quest out from a drawer, stamped it, and scooted the bones into a cardboard box marked ‘proof of completion.’

Adelmo walked away from the counter with a bulging coin purse. He spotted Baron at a window-adjacent table, a tall glass filled with a dark, syrupy liquid already in hand. Likely bought with the pilfered coin he liberated from that undead ghoul he swore was a wizard. He gave Adelmo a smile and invited him to sit down.

“Come, take a load off. You earned it,” Baron said and took a drink. Its sweetness was undercut by the fiery sting of Dwarven alcohol. Adelmo could recognize that smell at fifty paces. It was Baron’s favorite drink, Coalheart Rum. There wasn’t a libation in the world stronger or more cloying. Just being in proximity to it brought back memories of the time Baron made him chug an entire pint of it for a dare, making Adelmo’s stomach gurgle in fear of history repeating itself.

Music from the night’s bard blared in Adelmo’s ear. He shook his head and gave Baron a half wave. “Later, Baron. You might be content to inebriate yourself while smelling of the worst parts of modern alchemy, and Sun knows what else, but I need a clean body before I can relax and enjoy myself.”

Baron shrugged, his entire personality could be summed up by the word ‘nonchalant.’ He took another sip of his rum. “Alright then, I’ll be here.”

Adelmo continued onward to the stairway at the back of the tavern’s main hall. He and Baron shared a room on the first floor. He saw him over the railing as he turned around along the balcony corridor towards his room, the stoat had attracted a host of handsome fellow adventurers and treated them to tales of his heroics. Adelmo’s keen hearing overheard something about his “Paladin sidekick,” and rolled his eyes. He kept walking until he came to room 107, inserted the runed key, and pushed the door. He locked it behind him and removed everything on his person until he was naked, except for the silver ring.

The ring kept refusing Adelmo’s attempts to avail himself of its grip on his finger. He turned the Dwarven brass knobs and waited for the shower to heat. In the meantime he looked at himself in the mirror. He was a stocky, but well built lion in his mid twenties. His golden brown fur was the mark of his father, his blue eyes came from his mother. He noticed a glob of something green and sticky matted in his fur just above the navel. When he went to pick at it, he found it had hardened and would likely require softening under hot water to remove. He paused for a moment and let his hand rest on his stomach.

It was full, and even though he didn’t feel full, the mirror image professed his bloat. He pressed on his stomach and felt a tingling sensation. It was pleasant, though sudden. As a Paladin he abstained from indulging his carnal desires frivolously, but the times he had allowed temptation to guide him, he professed to enjoying belly rubs as a form of intimacy. But he didn’t remember being so… sensitive around the gut.

Adelmo walked underneath the showerhead and applied a heavy dose of liquid soap. A lion’s fur was his pride, he liked to maintain it with a magically enhanced concoction from Kharstoke’s alchemy quarter. It amused him to think that the sewer water he waded in contained the same chemicals as the expensive lather coating his body. He scrubbed vigorously but stopped once he heard the noise of leather stretching taut. He looked around, but saw nothing that fit the profile of the sound. It was loudest when he scrubbed himself, then softened when he rinsed himself clean.

He waited until the water ran clear to exit the shower, dried himself, then put on a set of comfortable white cloth tavern clothes. His belt refused to fasten at its regular notch, so he slid it along three slots, and then exited the room. He swore his stomach looked even bigger after his shower, but that was impossible. He retraced his earlier route and walked towards Baron’s table. The stoat smiled like always, then stopped, and his jaw dropped. He stared at Adelmo like he was witnessing the northern lights for the first time.

“Adelmo, what did you do to yourself!?”

Adelmo gave Baron a look. Was this some kind of joke? His idea of being funny? Adelmo noticed the adventurers from earlier were absent now, and settled into the booth on a cushioned seat where the moonlight was strongest. His back to the window, he liked the way the light patterned itself on the furniture.

“What happened to your groupies, did you run out of stories, or did they figure out you were full of hot air?” Adelmo said, then flagged a barmaid and made an order for mead. His church didn’t outright ban libations or intimacy, it just asked for restraint and sensibility when partaking of either.

“I’m full of hot air? You look like you had a fight with a steam pipe and lost. Your stomach! It’s huge!”

Adelmo blinked at his gut. So Baron ‘could’ see it. That was troublesome, he hoped it was a hallucination.

“You can see it too?” Adelmo laughed awkwardly, patting his round belly which had definitely grown by a foot in circumference since they entered the tavern. With Baron’s shock as proof, Adelmo’s concern grew rapidly. He gave his gut a playful slap, hoping that acting as if it were just an everyday occurrence would lessen the strangeness of the situation. It didn’t, and he felt the same pleasant tingling when his hand impacted his paunch.

Baron shimmied closer. He left Dahlia as far away from Adelmo as he could. “Don’t want to pop you by accident.”

The notion that his belly could be popped like a balloon didn’t help Adelmo’s mood. “That’s not funny! You’re acting like something terrible is happening. I probably just stepped in some… weird concoction in the sewers, and it made me bloated. Alchemy runoff, the kobold at the desk said as much about the lowest levels!”

Baron looked unconvinced. “There’s bloated, then there’s inflated like a weather mage’s observation balloon. I… think you’ve grown a few inches since you sat down buddy,” Baron tapped Adelmo’s gut.

Adelmo blushed, and shivered. His friend was right. He could feel a gentle push and pull in his skin, except it wasn’t localized to his belly. He looked at his right hand, the one with the ring. If Adelmo didn’t have fur, he would have gone pale. He raised his hand to the stoat and showed him his ring finger. The tip was round and inflated like a tiny balloon. The inflation spread down his finger, to the first knuckle, then to the second, and finally to the rest of his hand. His normally deft, sword-wielding extremities were fat as sausages, and getting fatter. He slapped the table with a newly fattened palm and looked around in a panic.

“What do we do!?” Baron yelled.

“Oh my goodness,” the barmaid returning to the table with Adelmo’s mead dropped her tray, and took a step back.

She stared slack jawed at the paladin who’s body kept transforming. He looked like someone had inserted a hose and pumped him full of a dense liquid, like pudding, or heavy cream, until he was a much fatter version of himself. His plain tavern shirt tore down the middle, unleashing his breasts which pushed up against his newly formed double chin. Adelmo tried to push against himself, thinking he could force his body back into some semblance of his old shape. It looked like he was molding bread dough, his cheeks flushing pink when each accidental kneading sent ripples of pleasure through his body.

“It.. .won’t… stop!” Adelmo cried out.

Baron pointed at the ring, then yelled. “It’s the moonlight!”

The moon’s radiance shone down through the window and on to Adelmo’s back. His fur and flesh glowed softly where the beam struck, and if one peered deeply enough, they could see through the lion’s golden brown exterior to the mass of silver and blue building up inside of him. It was as though he had become a great rippling balloon, doomed to fill endlessly with an ocean of magic. Adelmo remembered his natural absorbency and scowled at Baron.

“I knew this ring would do me in, you know what happens to me around magic!” With every heated word that was exchanged, time marched on without a care for Adelmo’s admonishments. He hurled some remarks at Baron, who could only apologize to the inflating lion. The bolted table came undone under Adelmo’s avalanche, and rivets popped out from the floorboard one by one until the entire thing was uprooted.

The pressure exerted by Adelmo’s stomach sent the broken table far into the tavern, announcing his predicament to the entire Clockwork Hen. Some people reacted in a panic and couldn’t leave fast enough, while the drunks and the savvy among the throng started taking bets on whether Adelmo would burst.

“Stop that! I’m not going to explode, and none of you are helping. Find a curse breaker, or a spell smith to break this damned ring.” Adelmo tried to waddle forward.

Without the booth table to block him, he had the room to move. However, while his legs had become thick with the same immaterial substance that fattened up the rest of him, they had not grown in strength proportional to their width. His bulging thighs made short work of his breeches, and burst free with ease, but they did not confer locomotion. They gave out and Adelmo’s push resulted in him falling forward onto his own belly. He was stranded, turtle-like, on top of his belly that spread beneath him. An onlooker who didn’t know the Paladin could be forgiven for thinking he was laying on a waterbed.

Adelmo felt his throat heat up. His cheeks puffed up to the size of grapefruits, and an intense pressure forced his leonine maw open. He belched loud enough to rumble the floorboards, heralding a new rate of expansion. He grew over the edges of the booth and his buttocks swelled like his belly. The coolness of the glass window slick with condensation made him wince. He was well and truly out of control. No longer a paladin, more of a parade float. Except he didn’t have the freedom of tracing the skies like a balloon.

He grit his teeth and tried to focus. He visualized his internal pool of magic. It was overflowing, the ring was charging it well beyond its natural volume. To accommodate that, Adelmo’s sponge-like ability to absorb new influxes of magical energy had transformed his flesh into a suitable elasticity. But everything had its limits. The pleasant heat was on the cusp of transforming into a searing inferno, and when that happened, Adelmo had little confidence he could contain it.

If he didn’t do something to relieve the pressure, he would explode and annihilate the Clockwork Hen. Ignoring his own peril, it wasn’t a particularly righteous thing to let harm befall so many people under his watch.

Adelmo’s soft, rolling expanse firmed up once he grew to fill a full third of the great tavern’s drinking hall. The rolls of wobbly fat grew taut. He creaked like a giant’s leather belt and the sound cut through the hall like a knife. Everyone was quiet, eyes on Adelmo; even Baron was lost for words.

Adelmo remembered the belch he had unleashed earlier. He sighed and decided that the death of his dignity was an acceptable price to pay for avoiding oblivion.

Adelmo took in the deepest breath he could. People muttered that he had finally lost his mind. He was gradually going from turgid to drum tight, why would a balloon on the verge of rupture willingly add pressure to itself?

When Adelmo was certain he had built up enough, he clenched his jaw and began to strain. He tensed, and tried to force his magic to migrate upwards into his throat. The tavern erupted into a second wave of panic. People scrambled for the door, tripping over one another to be the first to escape the impending blast. Adelmo went cross eyed, his neck and double chin ballooned until he held a passing resemblance to a frog. His body groaned, moments away from sundering.

Then he unleashed a belching roar. A gaseous blast so powerful it shattered windows, tore at the furniture, floor and walls around him like a razor wind, and sent the brave few who remained to watch his ultimate fate careening into one another. Adelmo released the arcane pressure in the form of a silvery mist, his belch was like silver dragon breath. He deflated rapidly, but he failed to return to his original, trim self.

He laid on his belly and sighed. “... now can someone please get this ring OFF me?”