Chuck vs the Adventures in Buymoria

Chapter 7 — Happy Little Accidents

The party emerged from the heavy stone archway of the dungeon just as the sun dipped beneath the horizon, bathing the treeline in a deep crimson glare.

Nobody spoke for several seconds. They simply stood there in the cool, crisp evening air, blinking against the twilight as if their eyes had entirely forgotten what the open sky looked like after hours in the subterranean gloom.

Casey, however, was not inclined to appreciate the sunset.

He marched straight toward Chuckles, his heavy iron plate armor caked in gray dust and damp clinging tendrils of something Chuckles very much hoped was only dungeon moss. His jaw was set so tight his teeth gritted audibly.

"What was that one rule you had?" Casey growled, stopping barely two feet away.

Chuckles looked up at the towering knight, swallowing hard and trying to look as non-threatening as a magic-user possibly could. "Which one?"

Casey stared down at him. "The one rule."

Chuckles thought about it for a long, agonizing heartbeat, running through the mental list of ancient arcane warnings. "Oh." His shoulders dropped several inches. "Don't raise the dead."

Casey's jaw tightened even further. "And what did you do?"

Chuckles rubbed the back of his neck, staring down at his dusty boots. "Raised the dead."

"Exactly."

Before Casey could bellow, Sarah stepped fluidly into his line of sight, placing a gentle, reassuring palm against Chuckles' forearm. Her touch was warm, instantly anchoring him. "It's okay, Chuckles."

Casey whirled his glare onto her. "It's okay?"

Sarah nodded calmly, her blue eyes unwavering. "He meant no harm."

Casey let out a low, rumbling growl in the back of his throat.

"Yeah, come on, Casey. Give the dude a break," Bryce chimed in, stepping forward from the shadow of the stone portal. He attempted a smooth, reassuring wink at Chuckles to lighten the mood. Unfortunately, one of his eyelids refused to cooperate entirely—his fogged, pale eye simply remained wide open while his left eye closed tight. The resulting grimace was significantly less reassuring than Bryce had intended.

"A break," Casey repeated, his voice dangerously quiet. He jabbed a thick, gauntleted finger toward Chuckles. "Yeah. He needs a break, all right." He took a heavy step forward. "I'll break his neck or something in his body."

"Enough, Casey." Sarah moved decisively between them, her posture straight and rigid. "He had no ill intentions."

Casey looked over her shoulder at the figure standing a few feet behind them in the grass. "No ill intentions?" He gestured wildly toward the newly reanimated warrior. "Good intentions, evil activities—whatever the heck you want to call it, what are we supposed to do with a zombie?"

The zombie slowly raised a single grey, stiff finger.

"Hey."

Nobody moved. The forest went dead silent.

Bryce glanced around at the gathered party. "Just so we're clear…" He pointed directly at Casey. "I can hear you."

Casey slowly turned his head back toward him, his eyes narrowing to slits.

Bryce offered an awkward, lopsided smile. "See? He's adapting already."

"He's a zombie," Casey spat.

"Technically."

Casey squeezed his eyes shut, taking a deep, ragged breath through his nose before opening them to lock onto Chuckles again. "How long?"

Chuckles blinked. "How long what?"

"How long is he going to stay like that? Before getting feral, you know."

Chuckles looked past Sarah at the zombiefied Bryce. It stared back at Chuckles, tilting it’s head slightly. Chuckles swallowed hard, shifting his weight. "I'm… not entirely sure."

Casey closed his eyes again, rubbing the bridge of his nose in utter defeat. "Of course you're not."

Sarah gave Chuckles' arm a soft, supportive squeeze. "It's going to be fine."

Chuckles glanced sideways at her, offering a faint, grateful smile. "You're very optimistic."

"No." Sarah looked over at Casey with a small, knowing smirk. "I'm just used to you."

Casey grumbled under his breath. "Unfortunately."

The zombie raised his hand again, wiggling his fingers slightly to catch everyone's attention. "Can we maybe discuss the important question?"

All four of them turned to stare at him. "Which is?"

"Do I still get paid?"

Casey stared. Chuckles stared. Sarah stared.

"That's actually a very good question," said Bryce with a pale face.

Casey slowly dragged both hands down his face, groaning aloud. "I hate this party."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"But Dad," Leila interrupted from the warmth of her bed, tugging the heavy wool blanket higher around her chin, "you said Bryce was killed by the dragon."

Morgan nodded solemnly from his chair by the hearth, stoking the glowing embers with a iron poker. "Yes."

"And before that, he fell off a cliff."

"Oh…"

"Another time he was crushed by a giant boulder."

"Really?"

Leila frowned, her forehead creasing in deep concentration. "How is he alive?"

Morgan opened his mouth, clearing his throat as he set the poker down. "Well…" He began counting off on his stubby fingers. "He was killed by the dragon, fell off a cliff, got crushed by a boulder, was eaten by—"

"Morgan," Alexis' dry, amused voice echoed gently from the kitchen across the hall.

Morgan snapped his mouth shut. "Sorry, honey."

He turned back to the children, leaning in close with a conspiratorial whisper. "So Bryce was…" He gestured with his hands. "…kind of undead."

Luke looked thoroughly confused, tilting his head. "Kind of?"

Morgan nodded sagely. "Imagine being dead, but still having opinions."

Leila pondered that for a second, her eyes brightening. "Like Dad?"

Morgan looked deeply offended, sitting back up straight. "Hey!"

From the kitchen, a sudden burst of Alexis' laughter echoed across the room. Morgan pointed a dramatic finger toward the doorway. "Your mother is supposed to be on my side!"

"She is," Luke said sweetly.

"Then why is she laughing?"

"Because you're funny."

Morgan let out a long, theatrical sigh, a small smile breaking through his pout. "Thank you, son."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Back in Buymoria, Morgan and Alexis were doing what any sensible, self-preserving members of an adventuring party would do when confronted with an angry knight, a confused wizard, an Amazon warrior, and a newly resurrected corpse.

They sat back on a fallen log, pulled out their rations, and thoroughly enjoyed the show.

Chuckles, unfortunately, was having considerably less fun.

He stood several feet away from Bryce, watching the pale man poke experimentally at his own forearm with two fingers, testing the resistance of his own flesh.

"Does it hurt?" Chuckles asked quietly.

Bryce considered the question for a moment, rolling his shoulder. "No."

"Can you feel anything?"

Bryce reached up and pinched his own cheek firmly. "Apparently." He paused, frowning slightly. "Although I can't feel my cheek."

Chuckles pinched the bridge of his nose. "That's contradictory."

"I know." Bryce shrugged effortlessly. "Being undead is complicated."

Casey marched past them, hoisting his heavy sword onto his shoulder without looking left or right. "I'm going to bed."

Sarah watched his retreating back. "You don't have a bed."

Casey stopped dead in his tracks, staring into the dark woods. "…I'm going to find somewhere to be angry."

"That sounds more like you," Sarah called back softly.

Casey grunted a response and vanished around the bend of the trail.

Bryce turned back to Chuckles, pointing a thumb in the direction Casey had gone. "See?"

Chuckles let out a heavy sigh, shifting his staff to his other hand. "What?"

Bryce grinned, his single uncooperative eye giving another bizarre half-twitch. "Happy little accidents."

Chuckles stared at him blankly. "I really don't think that's what those words mean."

Bryce shrugged. "Close enough."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Actually, after his change, he became a very laid-back and almost nice guy," Morgan said with a warm grin.

"That he was," Alexis laughed, shaking her head fondly as she set her tea down. "Oh, Morgan, you've got to tell them about the boulder…"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Night had fully fallen over the mountains by the time the embers of their small campfire began to pop and glow.

Chuckles sat alone on a large, flat granite boulder at the far edge of the clearing, his elbows resting heavily on his knees and his face buried deep in his palms. The crisp wind rustling through the pines did nothing to cool the lingering flush of embarrassment on his face.

He could still hear Casey's thunderous voice echoing inside his head like a reverberating battle horn: What the heck are we going to do now with a zombie?

Chuckles let out a quiet, muffled groan into his hands.

He hadn't meant for any of this to happen. Arcane spells were notoriously finicky, but this was entirely out of hand. He had only wanted to help. He had seen someone in need, panicked, and reached for whatever thread of power he could grasp.

A moment later, the tall grass shifted softly beside the rock.

Sarah sat down next to him on the stone. For a long while, she said nothing at all. She simply settled into the quiet space beside him, close enough that the leather of her sleeve brushed warm against his shoulder, creating a small sanctuary against the dark.

"Don't mind Casey," she said eventually, her tone calm and steady. "I know you wanted to save him."

Chuckles slowly lowered his hands, staring blankly down at the dirt between his boots. "Yeah."

Sarah glanced sideways at his troubled face. "And you did."

"I just thought…" He let out a heavy sigh, rubbing the back of his neck. "I thought if I could heal him, then maybe we wouldn't have to lose him."

Sarah's vigilantly guarded expression softened, the hard lines of the warrior giving way to something gentle and deeply human. "You were trying to help."

"Apparently my version of helping involves creating undead people," Chuckles muttered bitterly.

"Apparently it did."

Chuckles looked up at her, caught off guard by her bluntness.

A tiny, irrepressible smile was curving the corner of Sarah's mouth. Seeing it, Chuckles couldn't help the small, helpless smile that tugged at his own lips in return.

She nudged his shoulder lightly with hers. "You know what?"

Chuckles frowned in gentle confusion. "Not a clue."

Sarah looked toward the center of the camp, where Bryce was currently engaged in a spirited debate with Morgan over whether his lack of a beating heart technically qualified him for a discount at local taverns.

"Bryce is now your mistake too," Sarah remarked casually.

Chuckles turned to stare at her. "My mistake?"

Sarah nodded, her blue eyes gleaming with faint amusement in the starlight. "You brought him back."

"But he's not exactly…"

"Alive?"

"Yeah."

Sarah considered this for a moment, tilting her head. "Not exactly."

Chuckles let out another long sigh, sinking an inch lower into his robe.

Sarah leaned just a fraction closer, her voice laced with quiet humor. "So we both share him in some wasys."

Chuckles glanced back over toward the fire. Bryce was sitting comfortably on a mossy log, calmly using a small hunting knife to peel an apple, seemingly unbothered by the fact that he had been dead just an hour ago.

Noticing Chuckles watching him, Bryce looked up and raised the apple slice on the tip of his blade in a friendly gesture.

"Want some?" Bryce called out with gravy voice.

Chuckles gave a quick shake of his head. "No, thanks."

Bryce shrugged easily, popping the piece into his mouth. "More for me."

Chuckles turned back to Sarah, utterly bewildered. "He's really taking this well."

Sarah's smile widened just a little bit more. "I told you."

"What?"

"Your mistake too."

Chuckles groaned dramatically and buried his face back into his hands.

Beside him, Sarah laughed softly—a bright, clear sound that echoed warmly through the dark trees. And somehow, sitting there in the cold mountain air, her laughter made the entire catastrophe feel just a little less disastrous.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Next day they wandered onward through the sun-dappled canopy of the forest, following a narrow, overgrown dirt trail that wound deeper and deeper into the heart of Jill County.

Behind the lead scout Casey, Sarah kept a vigilant eye on Chuckles.

She wasn't entirely sure why her gaze kept anchoring itself to him. By all rights and tactical logic, she should have been furious. Or at the very least, profoundly annoyed. Bryce—her former boyfriend, a man she had once cared deeply about—had been reanimated into a walking zombie by Chuckles. Whose primary talent seemed to be turning every simple, straightforward solution into a completely terrifying, unpredictable problem.

And yet… as she walked the winding forest path, a quiet, strange sense of happiness rested in her chest.

It made no sense. Not even a little bit.

Bryce was undead. Casey was practically vibrating with apocalyptic rage. Their already perilous quest had somehow become ten times more complicated than it had been three days ago. A few paces ahead of her, Chuckles kept tripping over exposed tree roots, catch-stumbling, and muttering frantic, nonsensical bits of arcane theory to himself as he adjusted his oversized robes.

None of it should have made her happy.

But it did.

Sarah watched him take another awkward, overly careful step over a patch of moss.

There was just something about him—something fundamentally honest and gentle that she couldn't explain or rationalize away. It felt like a growing, quiet pull between them. Almost magnetic. Every time he turned around and flashed her one of those warm, hesitant, earnest smiles, something tight in her chest loosened and tightened all at once. Every time he launched into a long, fast-paced ramble about spellcraft, she found herself leaning in, listening to the cadence of his voice. Every time he did something utterly ridiculous, every instinct in her body urged her to smile.

And that was entirely unacceptable.

Sarah the Amazon warrior did not get distracted.

She did not blush like a little girl. She did not develop inconvenient feelings for a bumbling wizard's apprentice who could barely manage a basic light spell without nearly setting his hair on fire. And she certainly did not find herself wondering, in the quiet pauses of the march, what it would be like if he looked at her again with the breathless, electric focus he had shown right after their kiss.

No. Absolutely not.

Sarah forced her gaze away, staring hard at the mossy trunk of an ancient oak tree beside the path.

Focus.

Her heart, unfortunately, appeared to have received none of these strict operational instructions. It continued to beat with a stubborn, erratic rhythm.

Sarah almost slapped herself right there on the trail to break the spell. Instead, she clenched her jaw, tightened her grip on the hilt of her spear, and drew in a long, slow, grounding breath.

Concentrate.

She gathered every single ounce of hard-won discipline she possessed. She was an Amazon—trained from youth to master her mind, to control her emotions, to conceal them under armor, to ignore pain, and above all, to never let personal feelings interfere with the mission.

She looked at Chuckles again.

He was now walking completely backward down the trail, gesturing animatedly with both hands as he explained some overly complex theory of necrotic magic to Bryce. Bryce was trailing lazily behind him, listening with the placid, mildly curious expression of a man who had completely forgotten he was technically deceased.

Chuckles took one more backward step and walked directly, headfirst, into the solid trunk of an ironwood tree.

"Ow."

Sarah bit the inside of her cheek so hard she nearly drew blood.

Don't laugh. Don't you dare smile. Don't—

A tiny, helpless smile escaped anyway, curving the corner of her lips before she could stop it.

Sarah immediately averted her eyes, staring down at her boots as a sudden, betraying flush of warmth bloomed across her cheeks. She closed her eyes for half a second, cursing the afternoon sun.

No!

When she opened her eyes again, Chuckles had turned around, rubbing his forehead with one hand while looking right at her. He caught her watching him, and his face instantly lit up with a soft, irrepressible grin.

Sarah's heart skipped a heavy beat against her ribs. She wanted to desperately fold her arms around him… And kiss him.

She hated that. She hated it almost as much as she liked idea.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Yo… Chuckles."

Bryce’s easy, relaxed voice materialized out of thin air right beside Chuckles' ear.

Chuckles flinched, glancing sideways. Bryce had somehow managed to catch up with him without making so much as a rustle in the underbrush—a remarkably stealthy feat for a reanimated corpse. Before Chuckles could take a step back, Bryce casually draped his heavy right arm over Chuckles' shoulders.

Chuckles frowned, trying to adjust under the dead weight. "What?"

Bryce offered a crooked, pale-lipped grin. "I see what's going on here."

Instinctive suspicion immediately washed over Chuckles. "What's going on?"

"You like her."

"What?" Chuckles nearly tripped over a gnarled root in the trail, frantically scrambling for his balance. "No."

Bryce raised a pale eyebrow, his unblinking eye bright with amusement. "You want to be with her."

"No, don't be ridiculous!"

"Cut that crap, Chuckles."

Chuckles shot a terrified look up the trail, double-checking to make sure Sarah was far enough ahead not to hear them. "Keep your voice down!" he hissed.

Bryce’s grin widened. "I'm gonna help you get that girl."

Chuckles stared at him in sheer, unadulterated shock. "I didn't see that coming."

"As neither did I that little foker." Bryce tapped the handle of the rusted goblin knife still casually embedded in the center of his leather cuirass. He flicked the dull blade with a pale forefinger.

Ping.

The sharp, metallic sound rang clear through the quiet forest canopy.

Chuckles stared at him in horror. "Bryce…"

Bryce flicked it again.

Ping.

With a dry, brittle snap, the wooden handle snapped off completely, dropping into Bryce's palm. Bryce looked down at the broken piece in his hand with mild interest.

"Oops." He tossed it carelessly over his shoulder into the ferns. "Wasn't me."

Chuckles shook his head, rubbing his temples with his free hand. "You're really taking being undead surprisingly well."

Bryce shrugged easily. "Not much I can do about it." He tightened his cool arm around Chuckles' shoulders again. "So. Chuckles."

"Oh no."

"I'm going to help you make her fall in love with you."

Chuckles stopped dead in the middle of the dirt path. "You are?"

"Yep."

"Why?"

Bryce looked at him as though the answer were the most obvious thing in the world. "Because I'm dead."

Chuckles blinked. "That doesn't explain anything."

"It means I have time."

"That's somehow worse."

Bryce nudged him forward, continuing their steady march. "But you don’t have time. So we'll get her to love you. Till happily ever after."

Chuckles hesitated, keeping pace alongside him. "Or?"

"Or a long time."

"That's not nearly as romantic."

"I'm fresh undead, man. Manage your expectations."

Chuckles let out a long, weary sigh. "And what exactly is your plan?"

Bryce grinned, a flash of his old charm showing through his pale skin. "You don't even have to pull a Montgomery on her."

Chuckles frowned, searching his memories of ancient bardic tales and field maneuvers. "Which one?"

Bryce counted on his fingers. "The one where you drink until you black out?"

Chuckles nodded quickly. "And the other?"

"The rose."

Chuckles' face instantly changed—the color draining slightly as the significance of the words settled in. "Oh."

Bryce smiled softly. "Now we're on the same page."

Chuckles looked up ahead down the winding forest path. Sarah was walking several yards in front of them, her golden braid swaying with her steady stride. As if sensing their eyes on her, she slowed slightly and glanced back over her shoulder.

Their eyes met for a breathless fraction of a second.

Chuckles immediately jerked his head away, staring intently at a completely uninteresting patch of wild clover.

Bryce leaned closer to his ear. "See?"

"See what?"

"She's looking at you."

Chuckles swallowed hard, his throat dry. "She's probably just making sure I don't accidentally resurrect another person."

Bryce shook his head with absolute conviction. "Nope." He grinned broadly. "You're doomed."

Chuckles sighed, staring up at the canopy. "I have a feeling you're going to make this much worse."

Bryce patted his shoulder reassuringly. "That's what friends are for."

From somewhere behind them in the dense brush, Casey's gruff, menacing voice carried clearly through the trees.

"I heard that."

Bryce looked over his shoulder without missing a beat. "See? Everybody wants to help."

Casey materialized between two towering pine trees, his broad hand resting heavily on the hilt of his broadsword and his expression downright murderous. "I don't."

Bryce flashed him a brilliant, untroubled smile. "You're just shy."

Casey stared at him with pure, unadulterated venom. "I hate undead."

"Welcome to the club," Bryce replied smoothly.