Draft #1: Dylan Westloch, and the Bluebeer Tavern.

Dylan kept his hood raised. He gripped the iron lantern for the feeling of safety it gave him, it illuminated the the forest path and he walked on at a cautious pace, narrowly avoiding the puddles and the depressions of the mud road thanks to its light. When the sun had descended past the horizon, the woods seemed to tangibly shift. As if the gnarled boughs were fearful of the light, and were now free to extend their ghastly limbs, ready to snatch the unwary traveller with spidery precision. Like flies unknowingly caught in a web. Dylan said a prayer under his breath, though it still rang loudly. Your breathing always became the loudest thing in the dark.

The aesthetics of the island, when described to Dylan by his handler, sounded like an illustration of a Brothers Grimm story. He wasn’t particularly thrilled to find out just how accurate that description had been, though he should have known better. This island, the feeling of static electricity in the air, and the way his neck hair bristled at random. Magic was afoot.

Dylan reached for his satchel. He rummaged through its contents, and closed his hand around a small pocketbook. It was sealed with a metal strip. He spoke the incantation that only his fae-touched vocal cords could, and the metal fastening the book shut came undone. He settled himself underneath a post with a hanging lantern, setting his own handheld light source down, and looked over the list of names within. They were written in an old Fae-Scots alphabet, securing the privacy of the information from all but a select few who could decipher it.

Each name was a young man between the ages of nineteen and thirty-five. They had gone missing, either one by one, or in small groups. A case of disappearances wouldn’t ordinarily require the intervention of an Arcane Detective like Dylan, but certain facts came to light two weeks ago which raised eyebrows. 

First, none of their families had filed missing person reports, not even one from over twenty disappearances. Close friends and co-workers, when questioned by Dylan’s peers, were strangely unconcerned about the length of the absences. Traces of thought-altering spell craft had been found on nearly everyone, and the discretion which it was applied suggested a master of deception and control magics. Curiously, tangential relations, such as off-and-on friends and internet contacts did display some worry for the missing men. Suggesting that whoever was responsible used their thought-spellcraft as means of preventing police and legal involvement only.

Second, they all had a very similar niche interest. Dylan had been informed they were mostly a selection of gainers, fetishists, and exhibitionists centred around the fatness and expansiveness of the male form. Being a half-fae, Dylan’s understanding of mortal fixations wasn’t particularly erudite, but he knew that the community from which they all apparently came from was incredibly diverse in its themes and desires. It was an umbrella term for a wide spectrum of interests, and that made his job of finding a common connection a ballache.

Finally, every one of them had been contacted by an individual whom Dylan and the greater magical community had been keeping a scrutinizing eye on for some time. Baron Albrecht Groß Gottfried. Usually referred to as “The Baron.” He had contacted each of them through a landline – which didn’t exist, according to the phone company – and arranged travel to this land, off the coast of Germany, which didn’t exist on any major map. Further cementing Dylan’s hypothesis that whatever was going on, was deeply magical in nature. 

Dylan had managed to trace one of the names on the list via a locator spell. Performing the same ritual on the others had no effect. He withheld any feelings of accomplishment for the moment. If the disappeared men were hidden behind a scrying ward, and this single individual was the only one he could find through Divination, then that meant one of two things. He was being made purposefully easy to find, or he was radiating a tremendous volume of magic.

Neither boded well.

“Show me Devin,” Dylan commanded his book to show the way. The name lifted from the page, swelled with a tumult of magical energies, and flew into the lantern at his feet. He picked it up and noted that the light was now stretching in a direction, and to his frustration, it was further into the woods. He trudged along the path for what felt like hours, now convinced the trees were out to get him. So, he walked as centrally and as quickly as caution would allow. Just as his feet began to ache, he came across windowlight. It was a tavern, and it was lively. Against sense, he approached the dark oak doorway and pushed inside.

It looked pleasant enough.

Belied by its grim exterior, the inside was light and heady with the mirth of a dozen or so drunken patrons. Right away, Dylan could tell that few of them were human. His lurid green eyes, Fae-blood gifted, allowed him to see through illusions. Over half of the drinkers were Dwarves, dusty with coal and with their sacrosanct mining picks either left on the tables next to their drinks, or held firmly in one hand as they raised it to the roof bawdily to emphasize the stories they were telling. Not seeing any reason to keep up the pretence, Dylan lowered his hood. The pointed ears from his mixed lineage revealed to the public – he had forgotten to pack a glamor charm before venturing into the woods.

“Oh, we got a new face.” The bartender, not a Dwarf, but heavily muscular and bearded as one, looked down at Dylan. He smiled toothily, showing a pair of reversed fangs. A shapeshifter, likely wolf-kin, he thought.

“I’m just passing through.” Dylan replied, quickly, but not rudely.

“Aye, most folks who come to the island usually are. Say, you from the homeland as well?” The bartender polished a mug and filled it from one of the heavy casks at his back. A potent, sugary smell wafted from the drink he presented to Dylan. A bubbly, royal blue liquid. Something about it made his mouth water.

“I didn’t pay for this,” Dylan said.

“Och, it’s on the house. Tell me lad, you’re from the island, aren’tcha?” The bartender leaned in, his braided beard jingling.

“O-oh!” Dylan blinked away the strange feeling. “I’m from Scotland, part of it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“The part which most folks don’t get t’see, aye. I’ve had a trundle through the hidden city in the Northwest meself, but I was born tae mundanes. Didn’t get the sight til I slept with a real hairy beast of a bastard, and he bit me. Woke up with the start of a beard and ate a pack of square sausage raw.”

Dylan took a sip of the blue drink. He nodded politely to the bartender. His story was… intense, but Dylan had learned to be a good faux listener when needed. He was more focused on his drink. It tasted of blueberries and had a mild alcoholic burn, but he could tell, right away, that it wasn’t popular among the Dwarven patrons for its taste. It was loaded with mana. Magical essence, the fuel of spellcraft. Dwarves guzzled mana with the same thirst as they did alcohol, and this blueberry beer was essentially a fruity alcoholic mana-potion.

“Where’s this stuff made?” Dylan asked. Interrupting the barman’s lewd recollections.

“Where’s it made? Well, in me basement. It’s a secret. Big Baron Gottfried hired me t’make it for him.” The bartender gave Dylan a look. “Why? You aint from around here, are you trying t’steal me recipe?”

Dylan feigned shock. “No, no! Not at all.”

“Right, well, good. Even if y’did get down there, I’ve got me lads for backup anywho.” He thumbed at the two tables full of Dwarves, stomachs bloated and tinged blue from the consumption of arcane brew. Dylan did a headcount. Thirteen, in total. Each full to the gunnels with mana, and wielding rune carved pickaxes. He wouldn’t last more than five minutes alone with one of them, let alone the entire drinking party. Unlike others, Dwarves only got more competent as they drank. It was like the stereotype of the Drunken Master in kung-fu movies, only hairier, and more violent.

“Which way to the bathroom? I’ve been holding it in, didn’t want to go in the forest.” Dylan said.

“Good thing, too. The trees are temperamental. Sure, it’s just round there.” 

Dylan quickly made his way for the bathroom and closed the door behind him. He had to act quickly. It was one of three single-room lavatories, and there were thirteen alcoholic Dwarves drinking their weight and double in the tavern proper. He only had a very short window to explore the premises before someone needing the loo got violent and broke down the door to find him disappeared.

Dylan closed his eyes. He expanded his senses, and his consciousness became temporarily detached from his body. His hands and feet went numb, he stopped smelling the bleach left open next to the toilet bowl, and he stopped hearing the din from the tavern. All that remained was his sight, which drifted upwards away from his eyes and began surveying the building from up above. He focused, turning everything to a monochrome, leaving only things which radiated magic as a series of discordant colours. Dylan sharpened his focus, and he saw the blue dots which represented the Dwarves and their magic-filled stomachs. A pale orange, which was the shifter bartender, and… a great, royal blue circle, beneath the building.

There.

Dylan locked on to that signature. There were no defensive charms, or teleportation blocks anywhere on the premises. He recoiled from his spectral vantage point back into his flesh and blood, and with a sequence of incantations and twisting hand gestures, he wreathed himself in a cocoon of temporal force. The laws of space and time were suspended for a moment, and in an eyeblink, he was somewhere else. Somewhere dark, with the sound of someone’s breathing at his back.

He conjured a wisp of flame, and made it roar. The stone walls of the cellar were revealed to him in the amber glow of the burning orb, along with a long, turgid hose that led into a metal fixture on the ceiling. He could still hear that breathing, and so he snapped to face its source. Though he wishes he hadn’t. He wasn’t prepared for what he saw. 

“Who’s there…?” A male voice. Distorted now, made deeper, and followed by a nearly deafening susurration of bubbles. It was like the rush of foam when a soft drink was poured into a glass, every time he spoke. Dylan was about to speak up, when the male voice moaned out in… discomfort, pleasure? It was hard to tell, but it was followed by a loud slurping sound as the thick hose leading into the ceiling bulged with a blue, gaseous liquid.

“Are you… Devin?” Dylan asked, gingerly. He didn’t feel the presence of a mage, or magical creature, so he presumed he was speaking to a human. Except there was a tremendous volume of mana within him, to a degree Dylan had scarcely witnessed in a tank -meant- for storing mana, let alone a person. He was laying eyes on a ginormous blue sphere, with thick, tyre-shaped protrusions where a human’s shoulders and hips would be. He could see fat, plump fingers and toes, and round balls, which might have once been a pair of hands and feet. Atop the blue expanse were two mounds, connected to another pair of hoses, and further up was… a face.

Dylan summoned his pocketbook. He conjured up the image of Devin he had researched before leaving for the German coast and compared it to the creature in front of him. He had an almost frog-like inflated double chin, comically round facial cheeks, and lightly squished facial features as both pushed against his visage… but the eyes, nose, and short black hair all matched. His unkempt goatee had grown considerably, now shaggy and matted with the fizzy blueberry juice spilling from the corners of his mouth. He had been here a while.

“Yeah… that’s me… ooooooh,” Devin moaned. He was completely nude, save for a pair of stained white underwear that had been enchanted with a spell Dylan presumed to keep the last vestiges of his modesty intact. Or, less fortunately, to prevent leaks they couldn’t salvage. In one horror-filled realization, Dylan understood the situation.

“How long have you been here?” Dylan circled him. There were no restraints, save the main hose siphoning excess juice from his belly button and the two auxiliary hoses which were milking his swollen blue breasts to fill smaller barrels nearby. Just as Devin’s body pulsed, about to generate a new gallon of blueberry juice, the suction of the hoses increased. They must have been trying to keep him at a manageable size, like a milking cow.

“Hehe, I don’t know, a month. Maybe?” Devin laughed. How he could find levity in this situation was beyond Dylan’s comprehension.

“You’ve been here for longer than a month, Devin. I’m here to rescue you… do you remember anything that could help you get out of here, anything at all?” Dylan cast a warding spell on his hands. Just in case he touched the juice, he wasn’t particularly keen on ending up like Devin if the purer substance being drained from his water-balloon of a body turned out to be contagious.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“… doesn’t matter?” Dylan felt one of the breast-suction hoses begin to come loose.

“Yeah, after all. I asked him to do this to me.” Devin smiled, no, he grinned. Elated. He… chose this?

“Why the hell would you ASK someone to blow you up like a fucking blueberry!?” Dylan forgot himself, and then, a knock came at the basement doors. “Shit, out of time.”

“Oh man, you’re in trouble, aren’t you?” Devin stopped grinning. He looked genuinely apologetic. “Look, I… uuurp, asked for this. Well there’s a few things I wish he’d let me do, instead of just sitting down here all the time.” Devin couldn’t hold back a belch. All the jostling from Dylan trying to wrest the hoses free had excited the carbonation inside of his precariously pressurized body.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m going to get you out of here.” Dylan sketched two symbols. One for heat, one for a blade. A sword manifested in his left hand, ablaze with supernatural heat. He used it to cut through the hoses, leaving them dangling from Devin’s ripe blue body. “Though with how volatile you are, if I try and blink with you in tow you might explode…”

“Explode?” Devin replied. His eyes widened.

“Any number of things could do that. If you move too suddenly, or a wayward spell hits you, you’d go off like a bomb.”

“A bomb…” Devin moaned. “Think I’d take out the tavern if I went off?”

“And a chunk of the forest, why are you asking—”

The doors burst open, and sure enough, Dylan was face to face with a gaggle of mana-fed Dwarves. Their pickaxes crackling with magic that engineered to break through bedrock, and unfortunately, being half-fae didn’t give Dylan’s skin any supernatural hardness to protect him.

“Step away from the boy!” The leader of the thirteen Dwarves stepped forward. Greying, with innumerable braids tied off with gold that jingled like Dylan’s death knell. He readied his pickaxe above his head, ready to smite the half-fae with its earth-breaking force. 

“Get behind me.” Devin whispered.

“What?” 

“Just do it, alright?”

Dylan complied, sprinting behind Devin’s bloated silhouette. The Dwarf disengaged his pickaxe’s magic, wary of setting the boy-berry off with a wayward strike.

“When you get the chance, do that blink thing to get outta here like you said.”

“What!? Alone, what about you?” Dylan began preparing his spell, but he was baffled by Devin’s insistence on staying.

“Say, if I were to explode, what do you think would happen to me?”

“… what kind of question is that!?” Dylan was utterly confused. “You’d… I don’t know, with the amount of magical energy inside of you, you could turn into anything! You might just be living juice for all I know, what the hell are you planning on doing!?”

Devin grinned so wide, the pressure of his smile muscles pressing on his cheeks caused a small river of juice to flow from his mouth. “Hey, short-stacks!” Devin waddled forward, probably for the first time in a long time he’d moved of his own volition. The Dwarves were edging away from the blue monstrosity, they had noticed his body begin to pulse and stretch. He was ballooning, inflating, like a balloon on a faucet now that there was nothing to siphon off the excess juices and prevent them from building up.

“Devin, stop! If you move, you’re going to shake it up!” Dylan had prepared his blink spell, he stared, mystified. 

“Oh I’m GOING to shake it.” Devin began to jostle his own body, practically humping the ground as it was the only other range of motion he was capable of. A deep bassoon whine erupted from his body, and the cut lengths of suction tube left stuck to his breasts and belly were spraying out litres of juice in a vain attempt to avail pressure from the living blueberry. A mixture of wet, heavy sloshing, mixed with the discord of a gaseous whine, as Devin surged in size. His hands and feet being lost to the all consuming sphere which he had become, a deep wicked smile mounted between cheeks and a double chin which were now threatening to completely hide his face.

“I asked the Baron for this, but I didn’t ask him to lock me up in some tavern out in the middle of nowhere!” Devin moaned, and then belched, the gas within him reaching a fever pitch. “Go, you idiot! Blink outta here!” Dylan did so, he didn’t get far, just a few meters past the front door to the tavern. He briefly contemplated looking for a weapon and returning for Devin, when the ground shook.

A thunderous crash resonated from the tavern. Through the window, Dylan could see the floorboards being destroyed from below as a deep blue mass surged to fill the interior of the building. Glass shattered, the upstairs windows were becoming concave and bowing at their foundations as Devin continued to fill, and fill, and fill with… Dylan remembered, was an explosive mixture of mana and blueberry juice.

Dylan backed away, just as the roof crumbled away and Devin – presumably still yelling down at the Dwarves – laughed with a booming tone, amplified by the rampant mana within him. If he could learn to control it, he would have been akin to a demi-god, but he couldn’t, and he was – without question – going to burst, at any second. No, not burst. Explode. He was going to take the whole damned patch of forest out with him.

“If you half-pints and your dog-breath boss make it out after this,” Devin moaned involuntarily. Like someone being made to experience a violent orgasm unexpectantly. He was cresting release, juice leaking from everywhere it possibly could, and luminous blue pinpricks of gas were starting to appear at his edges like he was a faulty boiler overloaded on steam. “Tell your Baron that his prized blueberry…” his voice strained.

Dylan booked it. He ran, and ran.

Devin began to glow, the forest was awash with blue light.

“… WENT OUT WITH…” 

The tavern was gone, Dylan looked back, a giant blue orb was expanding uncontrollably into the tree line. It pushed against the cursed, jagged branches of the forest, but even without that… the pressure was too much for one human to contain. It reached its conclusion, Dylan ducked behind a tree.

“BANG!” Devin roared in a mixture of triumph and pleasure. Juice gushed out of his titanic breasts and belly like a fountain, and then, a resounding blast nearly deafened the half-fae detective. He was spared from the rapids of blueberry juice running across the forest only by the thickness of the tree he had hidden behind, everything else was awash in blue. A rainfall of juice bookended his failure to rescue the boy, but he had at least made a connection between his odd fate and the Baron.

Dylan raised his hood, not wanting to get soaked. He could faintly sense Devin’s presence… everywhere but lacked the stamina and the power to seek out whatever the man became as he burst. He just hoped that if he were now some kind of carbonated water spirit, he remained docile until Dylan could finish his investigations on the Baron.

“Was never too fond of blueberry juice,” Dylan said to no one in particular, and walked back the way he came.