20200926 Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Butternut Squash Soup

Well, we busted our way out of the trap holding Miss Melinda the Pliskey Alchemist. And I managed to hang onto the Alchemical Apparatus she had built, so I expect I will see her again when she wants it back.
 
That's just about the only thing I managed to hang on to.
 
Everything went so fast. Maybe it's the lack of sleep. Like I wrote, we busted our way out, climbed down to ground level, and ran for the beerwagon. It's weird how sometimes Bruthasmus and Sephia can lay smack to a Hell-Woolie in a stairway, but then they try the same moves on Hell-Woolies in a field, and it's like a fire stick against a boulder. I got to Bear all, which I must admit always feels a lot better than walking around in human form. Granted I could use more combat practice, but even the old claw-claw-bite routine didn't make mincemeat of these Woolies this time. But between all of us, a couple of them did pass on to the great beyond, leaving this Will-o-wisp-looking thing escaping the wooly body. If one of us (maybe Miro?) could figure out what those things are (I presume some kind of demon or something), maybe we could figure out a way to smack them out of a Woolie without an axe.
 
So then we ride to what we hoped would be safety.... No, first there were the two human riders on horseback. Tall, dark, and creepy. Chica thought she recognized them, the riders, not the horses, at least I assume she wasn't calling the names of the horses, no guarantee.
 
Escaping from the Hell-Bovine army again, we still had no better weapon than knowing that stopping the import of garlic into the area would halt their expansion. There was a hint in those old journals that Big M&L knew a way to cut the tap-root on the bovine army, and maybe they are working on it right now. But we're not that lucky.
 
Then safety. Or rather pumpkin squash. I'm really surprised Scaevola Aemula had it in her to grow a giant barrel cactus (basically a pumpkin squash with attitude) all the way around the town of Purgatory Gulch like a fortress wall... in a single night. But I guess I should never underestimate what a woman or a hungry badger can do if she sets her mind to it.
 
So Miro got most of us through the cactus wall and into town, minus the horses and beerwagon. I guess SA couldn't keep the plant army distracted forever; they did come back and take all the people in town for preservation in what amounts to a fruit cellar off to the West. (At least I think she said the West. I wrote earlier about how I think the pumice or something might be mixing up her Ranger-Sense.) But she did keep all the riding animals and bees in town safe - almost literally locked up in a pumpkin shell. The permanent sunshine coming out of Jasper Chapel of the Sunbringer seemed to be the only source of light in town.
 
So it looked like we were going to go our separate ways and I might never get a chance to help SA out of her predicament. Dryads and Liches live a lot longer than humans do, even healthy ones. It didn't look like I would have time to write down my thoughts, and it didn't look like I would get a chance to talk it over with Wrong Way. My "thinking" was: We need to prune back the plant army as much as we do the bovine army, otherwise, one will overrun the other and cause the kind of massive suffering like when you have too many deer and not enough wolves. SA is the general in this army. The Jack-O-Lanterns can't run things like she can. And she has absolutely no heart in it. They will take a loss without her every bit as badly as the bovine army has from our interference. It might even cause more damage to the plant army than I intend because I know she is halfway drawn to serving revenge with fava beans and a nice chianti.
 
Over the last two days (or was it more) I called in every favor from earth, water, fire, and air, even Brother Bear and Sister New Moon. But I still had: (1) a walnut in my hat, (2) my wits, and (3) one big favor from Mother Nature. There's a Druidic favor that pulls curses and diseases off of an undeserving person onto a self-sacrificing druid. It's because we are tough and can handle bad stuff in life.
 
So, by holding her hand and expending my last dram of magic, I accepted her affliction, and took her place under the evil binding. Now she is free. I feel certain nobody is really prepared for SA to be free.
 
And what could it hurt? Whatever binding it was, it probably only worked on demons and half-demons, right? And the self-proclaimed "Master" SA used to serve wouldn't even know, right? He would keep ordering her around, and she could play along, until she's, like, "Nuh-uh!!" And he'd be like, "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?" It would be hilarious, right?
 
Turns out, it's a really smack-down evil binding. The "Master" figured it out right away and mentally popped out of his laboratory to push my face to the ground, (which is not so bad if you are doing it to a druid or a dwarf, if you think about it,) say something about how druids meddle, (or maybe how humans always meddle, or men in kilts maybe,) and seem really displeased by mentioning how much he is totally not displeased with the way the armies and the simple people and SA in particular are turning out, nope, meddling doesn't bother him at all, he's way too mighty for a little meddling to grow any stinging nettles in his poesy patch that he's been tending for so many years. He's quite certain I'll succumb to the evil binding much faster and more so than SA. He must be certain because he said so right before he disappeared again, right? What do you expect from a guy who only wishes he had Lee Chung's kind of fashion sense?
 
It's not that big a deal. A human my age only needs to wait out the clock another seventy years or so. It sounds like SA carried this weight a lot longer than that.
 
And then there's the plant-based-lich, who is less powerful. Master Farvald Kerner, I think. Does he know of the switcheroo? Maybe I can get SA to pull the rug over his eyes. And if he does figure out who has the binding (It's a shell game?) he might not be able to order me around. After all, the "Master" told SA to work for his lichiness, he didn't tell me any such thing. But, maybe I should pretend he does have power over me. If he puts me in her place as general of his plant army and makes me run things... Come to think of it, I might be able to run things better than he thinks. I know how to grow plants better than any lich. A druid running a plant army instead of a Dryad? I might even make his formerly evil plan go horribly horribly right.
 
Wait... Was the creepy singing coming from the creepy farm hands on their creepy horses? I hope so. It would be even more creepy if the woolies can sing.