Clogged Plumbing

         He woke up with a smile on his face and deep contentment warming his chest. With a wide, satisfying stretch, he reached across the bed, to caress . . . a pillow. A frown slowly replaced his satisfied smile and dark disappointment edged onto his good mood. He lifted up the pillow and stared at it for a few moments before he woke up enough to process that, yes, in fact, it was just a pillow.

    He heaved himself up from the bed, his muscles fussing and complaining the entire way. Centuries of battle, training every day without fail, and still, he worked muscles last night he never knew existed, and got his body into positions that he still thought were impossible. As he thought about his fiery daemon lover his smile crept back.

    After getting dressed he struck out in search of the lady of the dwelling, a renewed vigour coursing through him and a spring in his step that he had not known since he actually was as young as he looked. He strode through the castle purposefully. Years of carefully honed tracking skills kicked in leading him toward her, but mostly he was very hungry and was looking for the kitchen, in which she happened to be.

    Blaize had a foot firmly planted on either side of the sink, as she crouched over it, rapier in her left hand and a plunger in the right. After over an hour of maintaining perfect stillness in this position, a long, thick, filth-encrusted tendril finally began to slither out of the drain and inch painfully slow toward the sweetmeat she had placed as bait in the corner of the sink. She fought the urge to redistribute her weight from foot to foot impatiently, as she bided her time, waiting for the precise moment to strike. The putrid stench of sludge troll wafted up from the drain to her nostrils, sending a wave of nausea coursing through her, nearly causing her to gag. She swallowed hard forcing the constriction of her throat down and pushing back that nausea with dizzying results.

    Faster than any human could have possibly registered, the tendril struck out for the tantalizing morsel. Faster than any sludge troll could possibly have registered the daemon’s hand thrust down with the magically enhanced implement of plumbing suction, striking the thickly caked cord. A blue eminence enveloped the tendril and the creature it belonged to, glowing ever brighter, as Blaize leaned back with all of her might and weight. A sound very akin to claws scraping against metal mixed with shrieking banshees, and the deep, cold glub of a drowning man’s last breath resonated through the air.  A massive body was ripped from a drain much too small to have ever contained it.

    Masses of putrid, festering flesh, mounds of clumped up hair, bits of rotting organic material and greasy lumps of spewing sludge clawed and thrashed its way from out of the sink. The man stood transfixed for a second before the centuries of warrior instinct took over. As Blaize and the creature came crashing down on the sparkling clean kitchen floor, he drew his red bladed sword and rushed forward. With a hideously rude sounding slurp, his blade sank deep into the creature’s mushy hide. A rancid river of sickly brown sewage gushed out and covered him. A movement in the corner of his eye showed him that Blaize had rolled out from under the beast’s bulk and was attacking with demonic ferocity at the thing as it writhed in agony. Thrusting at the thing over and over, he sent geysers of the reeking lifeblood of the creature spattered all over the place, coating him completely.

    A hand rested on his shoulder and gripped it tight pulling him back. He glanced up with battle fury and blood lust still dancing in his eyes to meet the smiling, sewage covered face of Blaize. "It is dead, Darling. You can stop now."

    He stood up straight and watched as the thing heaved its final ounce of life then gave up the spirit. He looked back to the daemon woman. "You are a mess. You need a bath."

    She tossed back her head and laughed boisterously and fully, until tears appeared at the corners of her eyes. She swiped them away with muck-streaked hands. "You are one to talk!" She kicked the thing with the toe of her boot. "Dashed sludge trolls. You can count on having at least one of them in the pipes every single time the fae decide to try and take over the place. The price of living here I suppose." She looked back at him, meeting his gaze straight on as she always did. "Let’s say you and I go get cleaned off, Sexy" She ran a hand over his bicep lightly and tenderly.

    He grinned broadly. “Aye, Lady.”