The Guardian

Fighting oversized reptiles

"Not a chance." the bartender said as he crossed his arms to show us that he meant it.
"I'm not letting you guys use my baby as a weapon of mass destruction to save some cheese man."

Without giving us time to convince him, he went to go serve a customer at the end of the bar. The king just followed him with me, Vivian, Rosie, and the rest of the Lanti behind us.
"Come on, La Lo. We need him. If the rats take the rest of us, the Grove is next."

La Lo, the bartender, just shrugged as he filled up a tall mug with blue fizzy juice. The insect he was serving had a long tube for a mouth with fit perfectly in his drink.

"If trouble comes, I'll move. It's getting harder for people to get around, temperatures have been rising, and the underground dictatorship is getting more and more powerful every hour. The last thing I need is trouble with the rat empire."

Now that he mentioned it, it did feel a little hotter than it was a couple of hours ago. We hadn't even made it to where the jungle would be, but it already felt like we were near the desert. La Lo headed to the back to do whatever it was that bartenders do in the back, which gave me time to look around while the king followed him to try and reason with him.

Most of the Lanti either stood around awkwardly or milled around while making small talk with fellow Lanti. Rosslyn hopped off my shoulder and ran to the back with the king and the bartender, leaving me on my own.

I didn't feel like making small talk with a massive caterpillar, so I decided to sit near the window and look out across the landscape. There was a lot of wide open space around the tavern. It felt like we were in the middle of a grass field if the grass was replaced with stone and cobble.

The more I looked around, the more piles of cobble I saw, with holes in the ceiling that were of the same shape as the heaps of rocks that littered the ground. There were some piles that were almost taller than the tavern itself.

Sedimentia must have been feeling the effects of the pirate king's rule because these piles seemed like they broke from the ceiling recently. It was as if the entire kingdom was starting to cave in on itself, and the rapidly increasing temperature wasn't helping the sense of doom that Sedimentia might crumble if we don't apprehend Tymir soon.

As I admired the crumbling landscape, Vivian and Rosie sat at my table with me. They seemed to notice the piles of cobble as well because that was the first thing they talked about.

"If you guys really are the heroes, then you have to save Sedimentia before it's too late."

Seeing the kingdom already starting to fall made our short time to save the world seem even shorter. Artlandia and Sedimentia were already withering, and I'm sure the other kingdoms would be withering soon as well.

Feeling the stress burn in my chest, I tried to nod it off as if it wasn't a problem.
"We've already taken down one of Tymir's outposts. He must be getting weaker. I'm sure the crumbling will stop any hour now."

Vivian gave a polite nod while uneasily glancing over at the room where the king, the bartender, and the Rosslyn were having their debate. Rosie didn't seem too worried, though. She still had the big smile on her face that she had on earlier when we arrived.

"I can't wait! The bartender is gonna let us use his pet snail to fight all the bad rat people! And you'll help save all our friends! It's gonna be so cool!"

I couldn't help but smile as she showed her faith in us. Although I don't know how a pet snail can help us win a war, I like the enthusiasm.

The bartender walked out from the back with his three pairs of arms wrapped around milk crates full of booze bottles. Rosslyn was on his shoulder helping the king debate with him to assist us in the rat war, but he wasn't budging.