08/24/2026: The Performer's Dream Hat

The big top empties in a hurry to escape the rapidly spreading inferno— even the pit fiend doesn't linger for an encore. At the top of the bleachers, Kiki slits the canvas with her dagger and slips out through the hole rather than fight the panicked bottleneck at the entrance. Inside the burning tent, the barlgura is still eating whatever weaker infernal it can reach. Performer's Dream Hat

What's left of the crowd spills into the oven-heat of the Maladomini fairgrounds: a gang of horned devils, a pair of spiny devils, a smoke mephit drifting in their wake, and the enormous pit fiend — nursing a broken arm, courtesy of Borark from an ill-advised arm-wrestling match earlier in the night.

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Gearloose emerges riding Horatio and attempts to charge straight on the attack. Horatio shakes the goblin from his back and retreats out of the line of fire, prayer beads clattering in one massive paw.

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Thunk, smoking, comes out holding the ringmaster's stolen hat. That hat turns out to be the crux of the problem.

The horned devil who used to own it — a preening creature in a ringmaster's coat, entirely too proud of himself for an infernal who is, by any metric, going bald — strides over and asks for it back. Politely, at first.

"My hat, please."

"I think I'd like to keep the hat, thanks," Thunk says. "It's a very nice hat."

The devil explains, with wounded dignity, that his hairline needs covering. Thunk is unmoved. So are Vali and Borark, who point out, at length, that no hat in the Nine Hells is generous enough to cover that hairline.

The devil does not appreciate the commentary. He produces a trident-like fork, its tines glinting in the firelight of the tent now rapidly going up around them. His first jab at the trio misses. The second doesn't — it comes wreathed in flame. Thunk is pierced, then scorched, as the wound catches fire. His clothes go up like kindling, and he's left patting frantically at flames with no intention of going out on their own.

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Gearloose, out of patience with Horatio's saintly indifference to the whole scrum, wheels around with his crossbow. One bolt catches a lemur loitering nearby with a rubber 'whump.' A second bolt finds a spiny devil, who only grins wider for the trouble: the shot has rattled harmlessly off its thick hide.

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Meanwhile, the pit fiend has decided Borark is worthy of a rematch, and for a moment it looks like the barbarian is outmatched. Then Borark heaves his greataxe arcing over his head and buries it deep in the devil's chest.

This solid blow the pit fiend shrugs off, infuriatingly, without so much as a flinch.

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Vali is stung, viciously, by one of the horned devils. Ordinarily, his Hellish Rebuke would lash right back — but he's been struck dumb, his voice gone along with everything else tonight, and the infernal wound is already festering and bleeding freely no matter how hard he tries to stanch it. He looks around for Thunk to heal him, but the bugbear is still tangled up with the ringmaster.

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Staggering out of the smoking ruin of the big top, singed and bedraggled, comes a now-animate Mr. Wiggles. Borark recognizes him as his formerly taxidermied rat, reconstituted, revived, and now, somehow, revealed to be a wererat with a perfectly serviceable halfling shape concealed under whiskers and the black button eyes. Mr. Wiggles wraps himself around Borark's leg, eyes shining with gratitude.

Borark is charmed instantly. "I love him!"

Before the moment can go any further, the pit fiend begins casting something Borark recognizes with dread as Fireball. He throws himself over Mr. Wiggles, shielding the wererat with his own body — more protective, in that instant, of the wererat than of himself. The blast scorches Borark along with Thunk, Vali, and Gearloose.

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After the smoke clears, Borark and the pit fiend trade taunts. Eventually Borark tires of the standoff, disengages, and breaks for the tree line after Kiki. He tucks Mr. Wiggles beneath one meaty arm and over his shoulder, he calls a parting gift: the pit fiend is welcome to keep the greataxe that Borark left buried in the devil's chest.

Behind him, Vali — still voiceless, still bleeding — peels off from the fight to tend the infernal wound himself. After a tense moment, he manages to stanch it.

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Kiki finally reaches the lava field where they left the truck. She yanks the Immovable Rod free and stamps on the accelerator; the truck lurches forward across the fairgrounds, throwing up ash in its wake. Reklaw and Borark throw themselves into the bed as it flies past.

Whether she'll make it in time for the others in their party is anyone's guess.