Phillip pulled his nose back from the glowing purple mushroom. He took a huge breath through his nostrils.
He sucked in as much of that purple powder as his little nose could hold. It went straight up into his head. It felt cold and weirdly tickly. It felt like he just inhaled a bunch of powdered fizzy candy that was way past its expiration date.
The big gray wolf with yellow eyes froze right in his tracks. He had his front paw lifted in the air. His furry mouth was wide open in shock. The green goblins all stopped waving their small wooden clubs. The skeleton soldiers stopped making their creepy bone rattling noises.
Everything in the dark forest went totally silent for five long seconds. You could hear a pin drop on the dirt.
Phillip stood up slowly. He wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve. He put his hands on his hips and smiled real big. He looked at the circle of monsters surrounding him. He felt pretty proud of himself.
"Ha!" Phillip yelled out loud. "See that? I did it! You guys wanted to stop me because you wanted this super magic mushroom power for yourselves! But I was faster! Now I am going to get super powers!"
"Come on magic power," Phillip whispered to himself. "Make me fly! Make me super strong!"
The gray wolf stared at Phillip with his yellow eyes bulging out of his head. He lowered his paw slowly. "Is he okay?" the wolf asked out loud. "Did the kid just sniff the stink shroom on purpose?"
"I think he did!" the goblin leader squeaked from behind a thick tree root. "He took a super deep breath right over the top of it!"
"Is he insane?" another goblin yelled. "Nobody sniffs the stink shroom! Even the wild boars run away from that thing!"
Phillip opened one eye and looked at them. To his ears it still sounded like crazy angry growls and weird barking noises. "Keep growling all you want!" Phillip shouted. "Your growls cannot scare me anymore! My magic transformation is about to start!"
Right on cue his body started to do something extremely weird.
It did not start with giant muscles. It did not start with golden wings or cool eye lasers.
Instead a tiny purple dot of light appeared right on his tummy. Then another purple dot appeared on his left knee. Then his hands started to glow.
In less than ten seconds Phillip was glowing bright purple from his head down to his toes. The light was pulsing. It went bright purple then dim purple then bright purple again. It looked like he was a twinkling Christmas light that you plug into a wall in a dark bedroom.
"Whoa!" Phillip said looking down at his arms. "I am glowing! I am a purple glowing superhero! This is so fucking cool!"
He did a little victory dance on the grass. He shook his hips and waved his arms around. "Look at me! I am the purple flash! You monsters cannot mess with me now!"
The gray wolf took two steps backward. "Oh no," the wolf whimpered. "Here it comes. The glow is starting."
"Get back!" the goblin leader screamed, waving his green arms in a panic. "Everyone get back right now!"
Then the smoke started.
Thick purple smoke started pouring out of Phillip’s clothes. It came out from under his shirt. It came out from his pant legs. It came out from his collar. Then it started coming out of his mouth when he talked. Small wisps of purple smoke even started shooting out of his nose and his ears every time he took a breath.
The purple smoke rolled off his body in big round clouds. It pooled around his feet like thick heavy fog. In just a few moments the whole area near the high stone wall was completely covered in a dense purple haze. It was so thick you could barely see the grass anymore.
Phillip stopped dancing. He looked at the smoke coming out of his own shirt. "Wait a minute," Phillip said. He waved his hand in front of his face to clear the fog. "Why is there so much smoke? Is my body on fire?"
For about five seconds the purple smoke just hovered in the air. It looked kind of pretty in a weird way. But then the wind blew gently through the dark forest. It pushed the thick purple smoke straight toward the group of monsters.
The big gray wolf was standing closest to Phillip. He had a super powerful wolf nose that could smell a meatball from five miles away. He took one tiny little sniff of the purple air.
The wolf froze. His yellow eyes went totally wide. His pupils shrank down to tiny little black dots. His furry ears went flat against his head.
"ARGHL!" the wolf screamed at the top of his lungs. He slapped both of his furry front paws over his snout. He dropped straight down onto his knees on the dirt. "OH MY GOODNESS! MY NOSE! MY NOSE IS ON FIRE!"
The wolf started rolling around on the grass like he was hit by a lightning bolt. He was kicking his back legs in the air and whining like a sad puppy. "IT BURNS! IT TASTES LIKE DEATH! MY SENSE OF SMELL IS DESTROYED FOREVER!"
Then the purple smoke hit the goblins.
The goblin leader took a breath and instantly started gagging so hard his green face turned bright blue. "ACK! UGH! COUGH!" he shrieked. He fell backward over a rock and landed flat on his back. "WHAT IS THAT ENORMOUS STINK?!"
The other goblins started screaming and running in circles like crazy. They were tripping over each other and falling into the bushes.
"IT SMELLS LIKE A THOUSAND DEAD FISH!" one goblin yelled, covering his nose with both hands.
"NO IT SMELLS LIKE ROTTEN EGGS MIXED WITH OLD SOCKS!" another goblin wailed.
"IT SMELLS LIKE A DUMPSTER THAT WAS LEFT IN THE HOT SUN FOR A HUNDRED YEARS!" a third goblin cried out, dropping his wooden club and tearing at his own green ears.
Phillip stood in the middle of the purple cloud, looking at all the monsters freaking out. "What are you guys crying about?" Phillip asked. "It cannot be that bad!"
Phillip took a small test sniff of the air around his own chest.
The second the air went up his nose, Phillip almost passed out. His eyes watered instantly. Huge tears started rolling down his cheeks. His throat closed up.
"UGGGGHHH!" Phillip gagged loudly. He held his nose as tight as he could with his fingers. "OH MAN! FUCKING GROSS! WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THAT?!"
It was the absolute worst smell in the entire universe. It smelled like a giant pile of rotting corpses mixed with sour milk, bad cheese, dirty diapers, burnt rubber, and old trash. It was so thick and awful that you could practically taste it in the back of your throat.
"Who smells like that?!" Phillip gagged, coughing wildly. "Is there a dead creature under this grass? Did somebody drop a stink bomb?!"
He looked down at his own glowing purple hands. Smoke was still pouring out of his sleeves.
"Oh hell no," Phillip realized in total horror. "It is me! I am the one who smells like a rotting corpse!"
The chaos in the clearing was totally out of control now.
The big gray wolf was crawling on his elbows away from Phillip. He was dragging his furry body through the dirt, trying to get as far away from the purple smoke as possible.
"Stay away from me, kid!" the wolf howled in a high pitched squeaky voice. "Do not come any closer! I am warning you! My nose is bleeding from the stink!"
"I am not coming closer!" Phillip shouted back, holding his nose tight. "I don’t want to be near myself either! I smell terrible!"
"You smell worse than terrible!" the wolf yelled, ducking his head behind a big mossy boulder. "You smell like a dragon farted inside an old boot and left it in a swamp!"
The goblin leader popped his head out from behind a tree. He had pulled off a huge green leaf from a bush and tied it around his nose and mouth with a piece of string. He was breathing heavily through the leaf.
"Hey wolf!" the goblin leader shouted through his leaf mask. His voice sounded totally muffled and funny. "What do we do now? We cannot leave the human here! The lords said all humans must be brought to the dungeon!"
"You go grab him then!" the wolf snapped from behind his boulder. "You have a smaller nose than me!"
"I am not touching him!" the goblin leader screamed through his leaf. "If I get any closer to that purple smoke, my eyeballs are going to melt out of my head! Look at him! He is literally glowing with pure stink!"
"Well somebody has to grab him!" the wolf yelled. "I am a high ranking beastman warrior! I am not dying today because a tiny human smelled like rotten meat!"
"I am just a simple goblin!" the leader argued back. "I have a family! I have six tiny green kids at home! I cannot die of stink today!"
Phillip was standing there, watching them argue back and forth. He blinked.
"Wait a second," Phillip thought in his head. He lowered his hand from his nose for a split second. "I can actually understand what they are saying right now. They are talking about their families and their noses."
Earlier, when the wolf and goblins talked to him, it just sounded like wild animal noises and angry growls. But now, every single word coming out of their mouth was totally clear in his brain.
"The mushroom did this," Phillip realized. "The magic mushroom didn’t give me super muscles or eye lasers. It made me glow purple, it made me smell like a dead body, and it gave me the power to speak monster language!"
He looked over at the wolf. "Hey! Dog guy! I can understand you!" Phillip yelled out.