20210508 Wrapping Everything Up

Now it's all the downhill slide, I'm certain. Just tying up the loose ends now that the head of the Demonic forces is stuck permanently in a genie bottle and MFK is somewhere banishing his evil forces from the ranch forever. Hopefully his ritual works for that; I already talked about how Lich's don't feel in any hurry to finish things, apparently, so the ritual is probably an "untested recipe" as alchemists and chefs say.
 
 
 
Then it will be pretty easy to convince the farmers and ranchers that they need to form a peaceful settlement where they are all on the same side (and demons from hell are on the other side) where every rancher is also a farmer (managing the food supply for their herds) and every farmer is also a rancher (developing fertilizer for their crops).
 
Let's see, how did the next several seconds of battle and investigation go down? Oh, yeah. Remember when I said, "Maybe there's someone up in the hay loft up that ladder in the middle of the room"? Well there was, but the ladder was nowhere down here to be seen, but this someone didn't need a ladder. He was a barn cat. A really big-boned, hopefully well-fed, barn cat. You know the difference between a Unicorn and a Dagnabbit? (About two tons of muscle.) Well, it was about the same way for a regular barn cat and this barn cat. So, you know me, even in this manufactured home with the cut stones and cut wood, I asked Mother Nature to help me talk with animals. I should have asked his name, but it didn't come up organically in conversation. I lied and said I was a housecat who had been cursed by a witch in a swamp to lose my fur and take this human form. In real life that seldom happens, but everybody has heard a story like that. So why not start off our relationship with a lie? The CAT wanted his people back, by which he meant not kittens, but humans, the ranchers who gave him treats like rhubarb pie. (I am SO hungry, when was the last...?) Anyway, I said I would find them and bring them here so the CAT could guard them and keep them safe from hell-bovines, etc. How he got that big is not my problem as long as he is not demon-possessed, in my book. So, he liked my plan.
 
We couldn't figure out how the burnt rosemary-garlic smell got splattered onto the walls of some stalls, particularly without landing on the removeable partition between cells, but it must have been something evil and not good in any way. As long as we got rid of the demonic hoards, it probably wouldn't be a problem any more.
 
So we left by the South-ish door and I latched it behind me.
 
Lee Chung flipped up to the roof and I sauntered along the wall of the building. This fog was so thick even I couldn't make out much, but in Druid Camp you learn to deal with stuff like this. We found Bruthasmus at the corner. An arguably-evil cabbage attacked him, so - ordinary day for him. I tried to talk it out of fighting, but it didn't go for it, so - ordinary day for me. So, dead cabbage.
 
I asked Brother Wind to bless Bruthasmus with a light enough step to skip right over the brambles like they weren't even there. Brother Wind and I are good friends like that.
 
Around the corner where the door to the ranch house is (hopefully with CAT's "people" not too badly harmed inside) ... uh... oh, a lot happened. Lee Chung went in. A dire coyote ran out, (Miro hopefully). Zhang Sephia landed and we told each other what was going on. She said MFK was a "bad" guy, but I've thought about that. I wouldn't call him a "bad" guy, more of an "evil" guy. And those evil guys are such precious little pun'kins. They all have a plan to control everybody, and they all know all the evil plans that came before them fell apart, and they are all certain it was exclusively because the evil guys before them were all morons, not any other reason. They never get it that there are massive forces of Nature that stop people from controlling other people for very long. It's just not in their nature. But the evil guys just keep their heads down and keep thinking next time it will be different. Such precious little pun'kins.
 
So, here's what I'm certain will happen. MFK will banish the demons. Then he will try to control the farmers and ranchers again. Then either the SNAFU Posse will squish him down into a little seed again or maybe they won't. But either way, his arguably-evil Plant Army will wither over the following days because Miro has MFK's Stormborn-in-a-bottle, and no way will MFK ever ask a weather cleric to help him provide rain. So, I'll be in charge again, having to produce - let me think - I think I can summon 756 gallons of Sister Water a day if I ask no other favors. So, either way, MFK gets to sit brooding over his eggs for probably a number of months while Scaevola Aemula and I grow our cavate garden into a beautiful druidic grove and while the farmers and ranchers form an alliance, because the only thing that makes us humans change our ways is a humiliating defeat by a common enemy. And no way will MFK expect that the farmers and ranchers will be tougher to fracture next time. He won't learn to let the Druids handle everything. He will try again and fail again, and I will pick up his little seed again when he does.
 
I'm trying to remember if Sephia went in the building or flew off. Anyway, Bruthasmus showed back up again. He had taken a detour to pick up a badly injured Ranger Horn. He had cabbage tracks all over him. Maybe that's when the dire coyote ran out of the door. It was all really fast. Anyway, Bruthasmus and I compared notes and went our separate ways, him and Rowtag going after the coyote we assumed was Miro with a plan, and me and Wrong Way going with Ranger Horn to stow him in a soft pile of hay in CAT''s barn.
 
So, CAT in the barn of course made it known that Horn was not one of the treat-bearing people he wanted, but not an enemy at least. So, as planned, I stowed him in a horse stall to sleep it off safely. Then there was some kind of kerfuffle outside, so Wrong Way and I went out again, latching the door behind us. It sounded like there were more unfriendlies to fight out there.
 
Oh, and it snowed... along with the fog... and the smoke. So that's also a thing that happens in the desert plains nowadays. Interesting times.
 
I really wanted to summon some more Oatman Crawlers because they work so well out here, or Wild Shape myself into one, but Wrong Way suggested a Dagnabbit was what this fight needed. That's why now I am a two-and-a-half-ton wrecking beast headed to clean up the rest of the demon-possessed mess.
 
I'm certain I'll make quick work of the remnants.
 
Then, I'm certain we will all live happily ever after.