WHO: Tasslehoff Burrfoot and Alexei "Tater" Mashkov WHAT: Tater gets rescued from being eaten by an evil box WHEN: Last week WHERE: Near the edge of the forest WARNINGS: The amount of blood you'd expect from getting bitten
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If one did not speak Russian, one would not understand the specifics of the panicked shouts echoing through the clearing, or the furious muttering that occasionally broke it up. The tone, however, would succeed in getting the general impression across even to a monolingual passer-by. The shouts were most likely something along the lines of shit, fuck, what the fuck is that thing, oh fuck it's got my arm. The mutters were more like "why the fuck does this shit always happen to me?" A Russian speaker might also catch "I'm never going on a run without my sword-wielding boyfriend again" and "I hope this fucker can't climb trees."
"I hope this fucker can't climb trees" was also implied by the fact that there was a six foot four hockey player halfway up a sugar maple with blood dripping from his forearm, with what appeared to be a treasure chest with teeth snapping at him from the ground. It was not the best day Alexei Mashkov ever had.
If there was one noise that would make Tasslehoff Burrfoot come running every single time, it was the sound of panicked yelling. Tas might not have been able to understand the language, or even recognize it - it sure didn’t sound like any language on Krynn that he’d heard, but he hadn’t heard all the languages of Krynn - but he could still place the tone. And almost every single time, that tone meant that something interesting was happening.
So Tas ran full tilt until he skidded to a stop, because the sight of some huge human shimmering up a tree to get rid of a man-eating treasure chest was definitely not something Tas saw very often.
He probably didn’t make Alexei’s day any better when he burst into laughter - high pitched, childlike laughter - and nearly doubled over.
Indeed, Alexei was not even slightly pleased by the tiny man laughing at his predicament. He had some choice words he could share in Russian, but it seemed more important to convey that while this situation surely looked ridiculous, it was actually bad news. The man was so little, that evil box could probably devour him in one chomp.
“That thing is not funny!” he shouted, perched on a branch but still ready to make a break for it if it turned out the thing could climb. “It bites! Bites hard!”
“Oh, I bet it’s not so tough, if it’s anything like the ones in the Not Forest of Waywerth,” Tas said, and then began to look around for something to use as a projectile. “Those ones weren’t treasure chests though. They were trees and rocks and things like that!” He found a discarded soda can - not that Tas knew what that was, but it looked easy to crumple into a ball - and crushed it between his hands. “In fact, I bet,” he removed his hoopak from his back, “if you just jumped down from the tree,” he loaded the can in the leather sling, and pulled it backward, “you could probably kill it just by landing on it.”
Alexei wouldn’t have to do that though, because, tongue sticking out in concentration, Tas took aim and fired the can at the mimic. It gave something that sounded almost like an annoyed cry, turned its attention to Tas, and started running toward him - or whatever it could be called when a treasure chest with teeth started rushing toward someone. Tas waited, and once it was in range, he stabbed it with the pointy end of his hoopak. It died pretty much instantly.
“See?” he said cheerfully, and made his way toward the tree. “Easy peasy. Do you think there was treasure in it though? Maybe I should have let myself get eaten.”
Alexei cursed in Russian and let himself down from the tree. That he could do easily enough - he was strong and athletic, but the only fighting he knew how to do was punching a guy in the face on the ice. Dealing with a box with teeth was not even remotely in his wheelhouse, but he could get down from a tree in two swings with no trouble at all.
“Thank you,” he said, and he’d ordinarily offer to shake the tiny man’s hand, but he was still holding pressure where the stupid box had bit him. “I saw box in forest, thought that’s weird, and as soon as I get to touch, box bites! I didn’t know how tough box was, so I think I better run for it.”
Now that he was on the ground, Tas could get a better look at him. He thought Caramon was maybe a little bigger than this guy, but not by too much - he was huge. He certainly towered over Tas, who stood at 3'11".
Seeing the wound on the man's arm, he immediately started digging through his pouches to look for something that could be used as a bandage, chattering all the while. "I bet a big guy like you would have no problem at all taking out all sorts of monsters like this. Did you forget your weapons at home or something?" It was obvious just from looking at him that he was some sort of warrior, after all. "Though I bet with these things you could probably just punch it to death. Caramon definitely could. Ah, here we go! Bend down!" He began to pull the rags out from his pouch. They weren't completely clean, but they'd do well enough to stop the bleeding until they could get him somewhere where they could clean him up properly.
It was good enough for Alexei under the circumstances. He doubted if there was any microbe on the bandages that wasn’t also in the mouth of the horrible box that bit him. Alexei set to winding the rags around his arm, tight enough to keep pressure on the wound but not so tightly as to cut off blood flow to his fingers.
“I am not normally bringing weapons everywhere,” he replied. Whoever his savior was, he must be from a world like Solaire’s, where everybody was carrying a sword at all times just in case. The longer he lived in Vallo, the more Alexei began to understand why someone would never leave the house without a blade. “I play hockey, only fighting I do is punching. Where I come from, we have no magic and monsters, so we don’t need sword always.”
Tas waited until the human was done bandaging his arm, and then he held up his hand for a handshake. "I'm Tasslehoff Burrfoot, by the way, but my friends call me Tas. What's hockey? Where do you come from that doesn't have magic? That seems really weird. How does anything get done? It sounds boring." They must have been very primitive, Tas decided, though he wouldn't be so rude to say so aloud.
"Ah, you must be new here!" Alexei was cheering up considerably now that he had a bandage on his arm and was not being actively chased by a box of lies. He was happy to launch into an explanation that would answer at least a few of the many questions put to him. "Many people in Vallo come from worlds with no magic. My friends and I, we come from one of the Earths, no magic there except sometimes Little B makes pie faster than anyone should be able to do. Oh, and I am Alexei Mashkov! Friends call me Alyosha, hockey friends call me Tater."
Well, at least they had pie. He supposed this "Earth" couldn't be so dreadful in that case.
"I am very new here! I just got here this week. It's a pleasure to meet you, Alyosha!" Tas said, because obviously they were friends now, after Tas had saved him from a small army of mimics. He extended a hand up for a handshake. "Why do your hockey friends call you Tater?"
Alexei was fine with the address - in Russia, everyone went by nicknames all the time. People calling him Alexei made him feel like he was getting in trouble with his mother and being called down by his full name for it. Being called Alyosha was much more comfortable for him than the stuffy English-language formality around names.
“Is joke in English,” he explained regarding the hockey name. While he was at it he started walking back in the direction of civilization, because he really did need a proper medic or healer to look at the mimic bite. “Family name Mashkov, mashed potatoes are food, potato is called tater for short sometimes, and when I first joined Falcons, I was youngest guy on team, so they call me Tater Tot. Now mostly is just Tater.”
Tas fell into step beside him, his gait not quite skipping but not too far from it either. He spent most of his time with humans or elves - since Flint had passed away, all his dearest friends were of the bigger races - and the light step helped him keep pace with their longer stride.
Tas laughed at the explanation. “And here I was hoping it was because you liked to eat a lot of potatoes. My friend Otik, back on Krynn, he makes the best spiced potatoes in Ansalon. Probably in all the multiverse.” That was an exciting new term that Tas had just learned in the last couple days.
“So the Falcons are your hockey team? Do you all turn into falcons to play?” Now Tas had images of a bunch of birds of prey diving at food. He wasn’t sure how they’d punch one another. Maybe they curled their talons up into fists and hit each other with that, though that seemed a little ineffective when they had beaks and, well, talons. Maybe that was part of what made it fun. “I turned into a falcon once. It was a lot of fun. My favourite was when you tuck your wings in to your side and just go plummeting downwards,” here, he motioned with his hand what he meant, “so you think you’re going to land beak-first into the dirt and then you spread your wings at the last minute and swoop up again.”
“That is so cool!” Alexei had been in Vallo for some time now, but the shine of magic had not at all worn off. It was still exciting every time he ran into it--though less so when the magic bit him on the arm. Well, it was still exciting then, just not a good kind of exciting at all. “We don’t turn into falcons, we have falcons--pictures of falcons, I mean--on our shirts. Like how you go to a bar called Leaky Cauldron, but cauldrons there are not really leaking, you know? Is just team name.”
“Oh,” Tas said, only a little disappointed. Krynn didn’t really have shirts with designs on them - not like here, though there was a lot of armour that had things painted on them - and he still found the idea exciting. His own wardrobe was a fur vest over a mishmash of brightly covered everything, covered all over in various poches - plus his ‘sword’ (more of a long dagger for any of the larger races of Krynn) and his hoopak - but he thought he’d like to add something with something drawn on it at some point.
“I guess that makes sense,” Tas said, reluctantly admitting even to himself that birds of prey punching one another was farfetched, as entertaining as the mental image had been. “Would have been cooler if you turned into falcons, but I guess punching each other over food sounds like a good way to spend an afternoon. So long as you didn’t hit each other in the face, I guess. Eating with a broken jaw is kind of interesting, I guess, but not in an especially good way.”
The more Tas thought about it, the more this ‘hockey’ game didn’t make any sense at all.
Alexei shuddered at the memory of the time he’d gotten his jaw broken. “No, thank you, I would not like doing that again,” he promptly agreed. “I ate so many milkshakes, milkshakes weren’t good anymore! I didn’t want milkshake again for four, maybe five years. Is tragedy, taking away joy in milkshake!”
He was still in the midst of mourning the brief period in which dairy treats lost their charm when he recalled that he’d just started strolling along without any question to Tas. “Hey, you mind coming with me to doctor? I don’t think I am probably running into more trouble between here and there, but if I do, I am not much use with bloody arm.”
Tas stared, a little confused. He liked milk just fine, and shaken milk had all those delightful little bubbles in them that tickled his upper lip when he drank it, but it didn’t seem like something especially tragic if one couldn’t drink it anymore. Unless Alexei just really liked milk. Who was Tas to judge?
“If a doctor is Vallo’s version of a cleric or a healer, then I thought that’s where we were already going,” Tas said cheerfully. “If you’re rescuing someone, you’ve got to see the job all the way through. Unless you have something more important to do. Or they’re exceptionally boring, I guess. But you don’t seem boring and I’ve got nothing especially important to do. But I hope you know where they are, because if you’re expecting me to lead you to a cleric, well, we’ll just be wandering around in circles all day.”
Alexei laughed, full and loud - apparently pain in the arm was no hindrance to his general enthusiasm for life. “No, I know way to clinic,” he said. “Last year, I was attacked by wild super-turkey and learned how to get there from forest. Now I think maybe I should stop running in woods unless I take Solnyshko with me.”
Alexei grinned, as he often did at mention of his personal knight in shining armor. “That’s Solaire, he is my boyfriend. He has sword and armor and is very good at stabbing nasty things. I first met him when I was trying to smack giant attack bats out of sky with stick and he killed them all!”
“A wild super-turkey? And giant attack bats?” Tas breathed, the delight on his face evident. What he wouldn’t give to see, and be attacked by, wild super-turkeys and giant attack bats. That sounded amazing. “You can always bring me along too if your boyfriend can’t come. I’d love to see some wild super-turkeys.” In fact, Tas looked liable to turn and march deeper into the forest at that very moment for the experience. “Where can I find them?”
“No one knows,” Alexei solemnly replied. “The wild super-turkeys are birds of mystery. But if it’s drama you like--” He was definitely getting the impression that it was drama that Tas liked, whatever the type. “--just wait. We never go more than a few weeks without something crazy messing with us here. Two weeks ago, Solnyshko was turned into cat! Before that? Tiny man used giant ball to grab up our stuff! You will never get too bored in Vallo.”
Well, all that meant was that Tas was just going to have to explore every dark nook and cranny of the forest in order to find them, which was a task that Tas was more than ready for. He was tempted to go right now and start his search, but he had to remind himself that the murderous super-turkeys would still be there after he got his new friend to the healers, and given how useless Alexei seemed against the mimics - especially with his wounded arm - Tas really should stick close to him.
Tas absent-mindedly drove his hoopak through a flower that had just grown teeth and had started to lunge for Alexei’s ankles. “I was a cat once!” Tas said. “At the same time I’d been a falcon, actually. A sea elf gave me a magical metamorphosis potion, so I could turn into any animal I wanted for a while. It was a lot of fun. But this place sounds great. Turning into cats and tiny men borrowing all your things sounds way better than,” than friends turning evil (or more evil, at least, since Raistlin had been evil for years) and murdering other friends, and gods flinging mountains onto cities. Tas stumbled, then recovered, “than other things.”
“Oh yes, it can always be worse. Like last year, when we got pulled in evil snow-globe!” Alexei had no notion of the trials Tas had been through in his own world. He did notice the stumble, but if there was one thing he knew from being something of a celebrity, it was that there was no greater gift than minding your own damn business. If people you didn’t know well went to the trouble of glossing over their pain or their past or whatever else, go ahead and let them.
They were closing in on the forest’s edge now - Alexei had barely gotten into the forest portion of his run when he’d gone to investigate the angry box. “You probably will do better here than I do, though, it sounds like you have been seeing things like this all your life! I am still learning lessons like do not check out weird box without weapon handy.”
"An evil snow globe? That sounds better than all the other things!" Tas exclaimed breathlessly. Oh, he'd really lucked out when the time travelling device had glitched out and dropped him here. He wished the rest of his friends could come and see it.
"To be fair, most of the time those strange boxes contain weapons, like magical swords and daggers and treasure and things. I probably would have checked it out myself. Though I don't ever not have a weapon anymore. I found Rabbitslayer," he patted the blade that was at his hip - it was about the length of a short sword on him, but for a human it would probably just be a long dagger, "a few years ago, and it likes me so much it just shows up whenever I need it whether I took it with me or leant it to a friend or whatever."
“Rabbitslayer?” Alexei had no doubt that the title was accurate, but it seemed a weird kind of thing to boast about. This guy just kicked a monster in the teeth like it was nothing, after all. Why would he name his sword Rabbitslayer, even if it did slay a rabbit or two? Maybe there were...giant rabbits? Carnivorous rabbits? Or maybe he was remembering English wrong and a rabbit was not what he was thinking a rabbit was?
Tas let out a peal of laughter. “After I found it in Xak Tsaroth - that was where we found our very first evil dragon during the War of the Lance; he spit acid - Caramon, he’s my friend who I thought I came with here but I don’t know if he’s actually here, we used the time travelling device together though, so it would make sense that he got dropped with me here, except I haven’t seen him at all. You’re almost as big as him though! I bet you’d get along really well. He’s friendly and likes to laugh too, and he really, really likes spiced potatoes. Anyway, Caramon took one look at it and he laughed and called it ‘rabbit slayer’ and I thought that was a great name, so that’s what I name it. It does a lot more than just slay rabbits though; it’s slayed - slain? - goblins and draconians and all sorts of nasty things.”
Now the name made sense, even though a large portion of the context definitely did not. Unsurprisingly, the story made Alexei laugh - he loved a good tale of adventure and friendship. "Caramon sounds like fun! And I agree on spiced potatoes, they are very good. There is diner near my house where I came from, they have best crispy peppery fried potatoes in whole world there. Also very good pancakes, especially in summer with fresh blueberries, and--." Alexei laughed again, this time at himself. "Sorry, I get too excited about food, go off topic."
“Food is a very good thing to get excited about,” Tas grinned. “Caramon also likes eating a lot of food. My spiced potatoes aren’t quite as good as Otik’s spiced potatoes, but I could make you some someday, if you’d like. Or pancakes! I make great pancakes.”
At some point, Tas had become the party cook for him and his friends, and he always enjoyed it, even if most of the time when they were the road, they were mostly eating food they’d caught and found along the way. Tas always kept some spices tucked away in his pouches, but he didn’t get much of a chance to make pancakes for everyone unless they were all in Solace. “What’s your favourite food?”
“Why would you ask me to choose between my children?” Alexei asked in mock offense, and promptly ruined his performance by laughing. The conversation about food was definitely doing its job of distracting him from the blood slowly seeping through the bandage wrapped around his arm. The bite still hurt like hell, but a decade of pro hockey was good for teaching a person to keep going through pain. Alexei kept pressure on the bite and went on about food. “I like so many things, I don’t know real favorite. Blueberry jam, banana bread, pelmeni, pickles, sushi...I like all those things lots at different times. What about you?”
Tas laughed. He’d never heard anyone refer to food as their children, but he could appreciate the sentiment. It wasn’t an accident that Tas had turned the conversation to food - it was also a good way to distract Caramon when he was hurt and getting fixed up. Food or fighting, really, but Tas didn’t know anything at all about hockey so he couldn’t talk about that. Flint would always forget about his wounds when Tas said something wrong or entirely made up about metalworking, and nothing could ever distract Tanis or Sturm - they were both too serious to ever think about anything else.
“Otik’s spiced potatoes for sure, at the Inn of the Last Home,” Tas said. “I think it’s probably all of our favourite food - me and all my friends from Solace, I mean. It tastes like home.” It would have been nice if they could have just kidnapped Otik and dragged him all over the place during the War of the Lance, but Tas suspected that Otik wouldn’t have appreciated it as much as the rest of them would have. And besides, a lot of people died during the War of the Lance, and it was probably better that he’d stayed mostly safe in Solace. Tas really should have tried harder to get the recipe. He suspected that he probably wouldn’t be eating Otik’s spiced potatoes for a while, now. “But when we’re travelling, then my rabbit stew can’t be beat. And sweet rolls are always nice when you’re in a city with a bakery! I don’t know what most of the foods you just said were, but I’d love to try them!”
“If you like to eat, Vallo is good place to be!” Alexei chuckled. “Especially if you like sweets - I will tell my friend Bitty you saved me from bitey box, and he will definitely make sweet rolls for you. Or anything else! Pies are his specialty, but everything he makes is so good. And then there are restaurants, cafes, bakeries, coffee shops...any kind of food you want, including food you never heard of, they have it here.”
He continued filling Tas in on the many food opportunities of Vallo and asking about the food of Solace as they covered the distance to the Chakrabarti Clinic. There were other places to go for medical treatment, but this one was by and for Outlanders, and accordingly it was usually Alexei’s go-to every time another weird thing managed to injure him. “This is good place to know,” he said as the clinic came in sight. “Chakrabarti Clinic. They have doctors, nurses, healers, clerics, counselors...if you’re hurt, it is the place to be. And it’s mostly Outlanders, so they’re always ready for things to be weird.”
Tas also liked pies, so if Bitty’s specialty was pies, then Tas would be more than happy to try one. Tas listened, rapt, asking plenty of questions about all the food here, right up until they reached the clinic.
“I’ll make sure to remember it!” Tas said. “My friend Goldmoon was a cleric, you know. The first cleric in 200 years, actually! See, the gods all left Krynn after the Cataclysm - I was just there, at the Cataclysm, I mean, it was really something. The sky turned all green and eerie and there was a lot of raining fire and stuff - but Goldmoon and Riverwind found Mishakal’s Blue Crystal Staff of Healing and she was so good that she convinced the gods to come back so that they could choose their own clerics again.” They were at the clinic now, and Tas pushed open the door, holding it open. “Do you want me to stay with you while the healers look at you?” Tas asked. He probably should - it would be the right thing to do - but he also really wanted to find super murder turkeys. “Because I will if you want me to.”
Alexei had always liked stories, and he was one of nature’s extroverts. More friends were always good, and in this walk to the clinic he’d already decided he liked Tas. He had cool stories and an appropriate appreciation of food in all its glory. It would be fun to drag him into the madhouse that was the Vallo hockey team and its associates.
“Oh, no, no, I am old pro at sitting in doctor waiting room!” Alexei assured him with a laugh. “I have book to read on phone, will be fine. But you and me, we should hang out again when no one is bleeding! Get some pie, and you can tell me more stories about your adventures, yes?”
“The phones have books?” Tas gasped, surprised. Not that he usually read a lot of books - it was kind of boring just sitting around staring at pages - but sometimes there were interesting spellbooks with interesting illustrations that he stumbled across. “But yes! We should definitely ‘hang out’ again once you’re all better! I love telling stories! I’ll tell you all about the super turkeys I find too!”