Isekai Terry: Tropes of Doom (An Isekai Adventure Comedy)

The deeper Terry got into the village, the more unsettled he felt. Mostly because the place just looked so innocuous. Nothing looked too new, but most of the places looked cared for. There were adults, a smattering of children, and some teens who looked like they were aching to make a bad decision or five. What he didn't see was any evidence of superhuman magical powers. And if a place this remote was going to survive, there should be some uberhumans throwing their weight around like assholes. Granted, everyone stared at him when he walked by, but it was possible that they were just stunned to see a stranger. Then, he saw the inn.

There was simply no reason for a village this far out to have an inn. A tavern with a couple of shitty rooms upstairs, he might have been willing to accept. But an inn? Inns were places for travelers to stay, but travelers only showed up when your town was connected to other places where people lived. Terry glowered at the building for most of five minutes, all but daring it to turn into something evil. It didn't, which just made him glare harder. I get it. I bet the evil doesn't start until after it gets dark. Knowing that Kelima was almost certainly inside already, he trudged over to the door while grumbling under his breath.

"That goddamn girl is going to get me killed."

Stepping inside, the place smelled like an apple and cinnamon pastry. He was pretty sure it wasn't a pie, but something like a tart or maybe a turnover.

"Another stranger," said a cheerful, heavyset man sitting behind a table.

"I arrived with the other one," he said.

There was no point in hiding it. Every small-town trope said the gossip network would spread the word of that in no time. Besides, the only way the evil could evilly do its evil business was if it was well-informed.

"Will you be sharing a room?" asked the man, giving Terry a look that rode the line between paternal and vaguely disapproving.

"Good god, no," said Terry before he could think better of it. "I definitely want my own room. Do you offer baths here?"

"We do. It'll be a silver for the room and the bath. A silver and two coppers if you want dinner too."

Terry wordlessly dug out the money and handed it over. If nothing else, he could probably grab it once they were forced to destroy the entire town. After collecting his key and being told he'd have to wait for Kelima to finish her bath, he followed the innkeeper upstairs to his room. Because, of course, it's upstairs. Can't have your victims in downstairs rooms where it's easy to run outside or jump out of a window. After he thought about that for a moment, he remembered that he could probably fall from a hell of a lot higher than a second-story window without getting hurt.

He swiftly discovered that waiting around in his room was just making his paranoia worse. It was the information deficiency. If he'd been able to guess what kind of awfulness was going to spring itself on them, he probably could have settled down and taken a nap. Rest up for the coming festivities, as it were. As things stood, his mind just kept conjuring increasingly outlandish possibilities. At first, he just imagined that the whole town was a ghost that would try to trap them there. Things deteriorated from there. Pretty soon, he was imagining that everyone in town was an Elder Thing that would inevitably strip their sanity and make them do something that would truly kill their souls, such as endless tax paperwork.

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By the time someone came to tell him that his bath was ready, he'd moved past possible-but-unlikely options into full-on silliness. He had images of masked killers chasing them around with cursed rubber chickens. He was almost grateful that the innkeeper had come to save him from his own imagination. Grabbing a clean set of clothes, he let the innkeeper lead him down the hall to what was surely going to be a Bath of Nefariousness. And he was right. The bath tried to trick him into complacency by being hot and relaxing. There was even a bar of soap that gave off a floral note when it got wet.

Terry wasn't fooled, though. He mostly wasn't fooled. Kind of. He remained at least ten percent, well, possibly five percent vigilant while soaking in the water. He kept an eye out for flesh-eating fish in the big wooden tub. None appeared, so that seemed like a sufficient level of observation. After not being lulled in any way by the bath, he dried himself off with what was clearly a fluffy Towel of Deceit and put on clean clothes. It felt really gratifying to be actually clean, and not the pseudo-clean he could get by briefly dunking himself in a river where he might be attacked by monsters at any time. As he stretched, he decided that the bath might well be worth all the trouble that was bound to come later.

As he was walking back to his room, Kelima popped her head out of her room. She wore a smug, triumphant look.

"I told you that you were imagining things."

He shook his head and gave her a pitying look.

"Just enjoy this part while it lasts. That's what I'm going to do. I figure that we can probably get a hot meal out of the deal before everything turns to complete shit."

"Good things do happen occasionally," said Kelima with a scowl.

"Yeah, sure they do," answered Terry as he walked back into his room.

He was happy that his meals arrived before his imagination had too much time to generate new and inventive scenarios. He eyed the food warily. There was a large bowl with what appeared to be beef stew, as well as a small loaf of bread.

"This might be where it starts," he thought aloud.

There could be anything in the stew. Terry lacked the knowledge to decide if the meat wasn't originally from a cow.

Hey, is there any way to know if this food is poisoned or has some kind of hallucinogen in it? Terry asked other-Terry.

Sure is, answered other-Terry.

Really? What is it?

First, put the spoon in the bowl. Then, use the spoon to put the food in your mouth. Chew, and then swallow the food. If you don't die or start seeing dancing pink elephants, it's probably safe.

That isn't what I meant, complained Terry.

I know that isn't what you meant. But since I'm not a mass spectrometer, I don't know what the hell you expected me to tell you. Besides, there's about a ninety percent chance you'd be immune to anything they put in there anyway, said other-Terry.

Why would that be the case? Also, what the hell does a mass spectrometer do?

It's stupidly difficult to poison anyone with a core. Especially one as strong as yours. You need some truly specialized stuff for that to work, answered other-Terry. A mass spectrometer analyzes the chemical composition of stuff.

Why would you need to know that?

I didn't know that. You did. You clearly don't realize how many crime shows you've slept through over the years. Now, eat your food and get some sleep. You'll probably be grumpier than usual if you don't get a couple hours before everything kicks off.

What if it's made of people?

Does any of this feel like a 70s dystopian science fiction movie to you?

"Yeah, I guess that one was a stretch," said Terry before he decided to eat the food.

After he polished off the stew, he sprawled on the bed for a nap. Between the bath, the food, and a relatively comfortable place to rest his head, he dropped right off. He wasn't sure how long he slept before he heard the sounds of fighting in the hall. His eyes snapped open.

"I knew it!" he exclaimed.

It was only a moment later when he realized that someone was trying to stab him in the chest with a huge knife.