08/17/2026: Under the Big Top

Under the big top, the tail-coated ringmaster sweeps into view wearing an outrageous hat, purple shot through with black. Its two bells jingle, throwing off faint silvery sparks with every toss of his head. Gearloose squints at it, thinking the sparks look almost like insects, swarming and settling in the same breath. Vali does the same, tilting his broad orc head, and between the two of them the verdict comes back clear: this is no cheap prop. Whatever the ringmaster is wearing, it's genuinely magical. Neither orc nor gnome can quite say what it does yet.

"Ladies! Gentlemen! Damned souls of every persuasion!" the ringmaster bellows, hat ringing with each twitch of his head. He is a master of showmanship, and he knows it. "Tonight, for your entertainment — a caged demon from the chaos of the deepest Abyss, and his keeper, the Amazing Arsenio, Horned Demon Tamer Extraordinaire! The winner keeps his limbs — as well as a great deal of blood that isn't their own!"

Behind him, canvas curtains part to reveal a sawdust-covered battle arena. Something enormous and simian-shaped rattles the bars of a huge cage at its center. A barlgura. Before it stands an enormous horned devil, flicking a vicious-looking whip at the confined creature, which roars in pain and fear.

⚔

From his seat in the bleachers, Thunk is seething, eyes riveted on the barlgura. He cannot abide cruelty to any creature, not even a demon.

While the ringmaster works the crowd, Thunk sneaks down to the ring crouch near the cage bars, turning over some very bad ideas in his mind. He's got more than one casting of Insect Plague at the ready, and freeing the barlgura by turning the tent into a churning cloud of locusts has a certain appeal. But bug magic has a way of getting away from its caster in enclosed spaces, and Thunk isn't eager to find out what happens when a swarm, a crowd of rowdy devils, an angry demon and their own excitable party share the same square footage. The spells stay uncast, for now.

⚔

Vali's sharp-eyed sweep of the tent turns up something else worth noting: a second horned devil, peering out from behind a curtain fold and doing a poor job of pretending it isn't.

He's jabbed in the ribs by Gearloose, who is munching from a box of crispy beetles. "Hey, isn't that the same devil from inside the performance tent earlier?" the gnome asks, pointing with an oily finger speckled with salt and stray insect legs.

Vali squints. It is indeed the very same one from his open mic set — and it has clearly decided the big top is as good a place as any to settle old grudges.

⚔

The Amazing Arsenio cracks his whip at the bellowing barlgura again, and in the shadow of the spectacle, Reklaw and Borark join a fuming Thunk ringside. None of them has any stomach for this sort of abuse, and each winces as the barlgura is forced to leap painfully between flaming, spiked platforms, driven by the whip's sting.

Reklaw and Thunk float the idea of casting Enlarge on the barlgura before it can be sent back into its cage — bigger, at least, might mean harder to whip. Or able to make it a more even fight against the Amazing Arsenio.

The plan gets shelved before it's ever cast as the barlgura is whipped back to its cage.

The ringmaster, oblivious to the party's calculations, announces the next event with a flourish of his sparking hat: an arm-wrestling match. Between Borark and the pit fiend.

Reklaw and Thunk stand dumbstruck. While they'd been quietly plotting a jailbreak, Borark had struck his own deal with the Amazing Arsenio entirely — a wager, sealed on the spot. Glory for Arsenio, if he wins. The barlgura's freedom, if he doesn't.

The crowd roars its approval before the barbarian has even taken his seat across the table.

Borark's hand closes around the pit fiend's claw, and for a long, ugly moment, neither of them moves — though the quivering of straining muscle betrays the effort underneath. The devil grins with too many fangs. Borark grins back with fewer teeth, but considerably more menace.

Gearloose and Kiki lend their own covert support, a burst of arcane current steadying Borark's hand at the exact moment it matters most.

Something in the pit fiend's forearm gives way with an audible crack. Borark has broken it. He slams the ruined limb down against the improvised tabletop with a whoop of victory. Borark has slammed the pit fiend's claw to the sawdust. The barbarian stands, bloodied and grinning, arms raised, while the tent roars around him.

The fiend does not take defeat gracefully. It retaliates with its undamaged claw, raking a line of fire-hot pain across Borark's side — payback dealt in blood for the arm it's just lost the use of. Borark, undeterred, powers through it, rage compounding on rage.

⚔

Across the arena, the other horned devil is loading something into a circus cannon. It appears to be a scoop of raw, glowing lava. But before it can finish packing the shot into the bore, the crowd erupts.

Startled, the devil loses its grip on the magma mephit it is attempting to mash into the barrel.

The magma mephit wants no part of the cannon. It is sputtering and hissing and shoving back against the determined horned devil trying to force it into the mouth of the canon when the devil's hand slips.

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Still in the stands, Gearloose watches the contest for exactly as long as it takes him to stop deliberating between Fireball and Magic Missile spells. He chooses subtle over collateral damage, and sends his darts screaming at the mouth of the cannon.

With no small satisfaction, Gearloose grins as the fiery darts detonate the mephit into a shower of molten grit. Whether the blast catches the Amazing Arsenio or the Ring Master in its radius is hard to say in the chaos — but nobody is inclined to mourn the mephit's passing either way.

But hot lava does spatter the horned devil, who has finally gotten its cannon lit.

Vali's Bigby's Hand slams down over the barrel before the shot can clear it, plugging it like something out of a cartoon. The explosion goes off anyway — muffled, contained, and furious — chewing through what's left of the mephit and only glancing off the horned devil, the hand's bulk absorbing most of the blast. The barrel of the cannon has been undone like a peeled banana.

Not quite done improvising, Gearloose starts sculpting sand beneath it into a shape best described as an insult, aimed squarely at the devil and his cannon.

⚔

With the pit fiend down and the mephit reduced to slag, the barlgura remains the party's problem — and, technically, Borark's debt to collect on.

Thunk is able to pick the lock to free the demon. It barrels out of its cage, wheeling around and baring savage teeth at its liberator. Thunk offers to try to heal it. More snarling.They try reasoning with it. Still more snarling.

Reklaw points out to the demon, not unhelpfully, that Borark just broke a devil's arm bare-handed to free the barlgura, which seems to note this without much concern.

"I'll eat him last," it offers, by way of negotiation.

That settles it, for now. Freeing a barlgura that's already promised to eat the party — even generously, even last — is not a risk anyone's willing to take tonight, wager or no wager. Better to keep it contained and figure out the rest later — and hope the Amazing Arsenio doesn't come looking to collect on a debt of his own.

⚔

The tent has caught fire.

Nobody agrees afterward on exactly how — a knocked-over brazier, a spark from the ringmaster's hat, the devil's cannon finally finding a target after all — but the canvas goes up fast, and in the scramble that follows, the barlgura bolts loose into the crowd. It is possible to follow its progress by the screaming.

Amid the smoke and the panic, TBA plunges in after the ringmaster's hat, teeth first, flames licking at his fur without apparent concern, and drags it clear of the wreckage before it can burn.

And somewhere in the confusion, Mr. Wiggles animates. The magical wax that has kept him stiff and mounted on his base all this time runs, melting in the heat. His beady little eyes blink open, scanning the bedlam for Borark.