The morning was grey with mist out on the water, the harbor steeped in a blanket of translucent fog. Ships of all sorts were docked, their masts rocking gently in time with the waves of the sea. People were wandering about among them, getting an early start to what was likely to be a long day. It struck me as ironic that after a long and eventful life, the Ruesti were simply assigned to a new one here, little different from the last. Why did they even need to eat? What was money for, here? What economy could possibly be sustained by the ambulatory souls of the dead Fey? At least, in the case of the Abyssals and Infernals, I knew where they stood on matters. What it was they were fighting over.
But to die and be reborn here, just to keep living as if in the mortal realm, it made no sense to me. What crosses a Ruesti’s mind as it sits on a latrine seat? Ho-hum, had a great life, lived it well, died saving my people and now am granted a seemingly endless afterlife. Boy! Now I have to take a massive dump!
Something is definitely askew in the matrix of the heavens, if this is what it all supposedly comes to.
I held the rope, standing at the prow of the ship, and shook my head. Finishing the apple I was eating, I threw the core into the foam atop one of the picture-perfect waves we were riding into dock on. Sered was belowdecks, at last report vomiting furiously into the bilges. At least that pain would be spared him later, once we’d made shore. I might not like him much, but no one deserves the kind of seasickness he is subject to.
I noticed quite quickly that we’d drawn some attention as we approached the port – many of the Ruesti had stood up straight and were straining to see us through the fog as we approached. One or two had run at first – probably those with the better eyes, fetching whatever it was that passed for a cityguard or militia here.
Sure enough, as we drew closer I could see a large number of armed Fey jogging out on the docks, scattering the civilian Ruesti before them. They took up positions along the leading edges of the dock platforms, nocking arrows that sprang to light as they readied themselves.
I did as I was supposed to – I stood tall on the prow and waved the white shirt I’d extracted from my goods, slowly and purposefully giving what I hoped was my best “non-threatening” pose. The real test, the one I was ready to break and run on, was when we crossed what I considered reasonable archer’s range for a Fey bowman. We met it, and crossed it, and I wasn’t rendered into a living pincushion. I breathed a little sigh of relief and thanked Corellon for granting his exalted with reasonably good eyes.
When we were close enough, I rifted across to the dock and held up my shirt. “Galeal is aboard, he will explain, please assist in the mooring.” I pointed to our Eladrin guide, standing at the railing, for emphasis. Two of the Fey guards stood by me with weapons drawn, while the others moved to assist the ship as it closed.
Galeal jumped down once the ship reached the docks, and spoke with a few of the guards. He then approached mine and waved their weapons down. “These are allies, this ship is a prize vessel. Their mission is urgent and time-sensitive.” The two sheathed their swords and went on to assist in the mooring.
Once the plank was lowered, Karac and Morin came down, Deimos fluttering along on a small wind he’d summoned. Sered leaned on Karac’s shoulder, looking more green than his usual light blue. Upon reaching the dock, everyone gathered around Galeal.
He looked us all over. “I will lead you back to your quarters, unless you would rather leave immediately and resume the journey.”
Sered waved his hand while shaking his head. Karac interpreted for him. “Maybe it’s best if we let some legs grow under us again for a little while. I don’t think all of us are in shape for travel just yet.” Morin grinned a little, but it was hidden well under his beard, appearing as though his moustache flouffed out for a moment.
“Then we shall adjourn to your quarters and leave at your direction.” He turned on his heel and led us away.
It was with some surprise that three hours later, we were summoned from our rooms back to the same room in which we’d held conference with Callax. I hadn’t seen the Seven Deadly Sins in port, though I had been very watchful for – and wary of – her.
We entered the room to find a dunkel on the far side, speaking to two attendant Eladrin in a soft tone. Clothed in rich furs, his white hair was done up in a single braid down his back, and decorated with a broach that sported one large violet jewel. I didn’t even try to speculate at the cost of that particular piece.
When he turned, I almost stepped back in shock – it was Thalvar, the merchant brother whom I had met in the City of Brass. He nodded to me, a thin smile playing across his face. “Greetings to you and yours,” he said.
“Who are you?” Deimos asked.
I was about to answer him, but decided best to let him speak for himself.
“I am Thalvar, of late from the City of Brass. I am brother to the other tradesmen you have met – Gendar, Devar, and Morvar . Your associate,” he motioned to me, “and I have had dealings in the past.”
I spoke up this time. “What brings you here? And how can we be of assistance?”
He withdrew a small box from his jacket, opened it and laid it on the table. Within was a single coin pressed into a pad of velvet. The coin was on fire – blue and red flames drifted across its surface, but somehow did not burn the setting.
“It is I, Azrael and Fellbane, I who come to offer you a service. Do you know what this is?” He pointed to the coin. I shook my head in the negative, and glanced around at the others, who each expressed similar ignorance of its nature.
“This is a shara’al’abnur. It has a nominal value of around five hundred of your gold currency in the Bannerlands. Its true value is not its explicit qualities, however, but in a single implicit one.” His eyes traveled up from the coin to pass over us all, before settling on me.
“I see…and what would that one be?” I already knew what was coming, but I figured I’d let him take a first salvo, I might get lucky and he’d let slip something.
“That one is the subject of my proposed service to you. When I learned it, I recognized that such information, along with the coin itself, would be of some…significant, value to you.” He paused around ‘significant’ to make the point thoroughly obvious. Hopefully thinking of the dwarves rather than me.
“Well, obviously word of our being hunted is already spread around the City of Brass,” Sered said. “I take it the information you are offering is a bit more specific than that?”
“Indeed so. What would such information be worth to you?” He pushed the small box gently across the table.
We gathered around one another, glancing back and forth. “What about the ship? That’s worth a hefty sum,” Karac suggested.
“Perhaps a bit too hefty,” Sered countered. “What else do we have?”
Morin scratched his beard. “The furs and other gear we recovered with the ship itself have to be worth a good bit, probably between a hundred to hundred and fifty [name for heavy trade bar – plat].”
Thalvar spoke from across the table. “Unfortunately, mundane items are of little interest to my family, and coin of interest only insofar as it is responsible for the purchase of housing and food. No, your companions already know the currency that drives me.”
“Enchantment. Items of wonderment. That’s their stock and trade,” Karac said to him. “They trade in magic. Speaking of which,” he turned to Thalvar. “What are the odds you might be in a position to trade for something right now?”
Thalvar spread his hands. “I have brought only this, which I thought of interest. I do not carry my stock around with me.”
Karac shrugged. “Worth a try,” he muttered. He turned back to us. “So, what have we got?”
I started looking my gear over, thinking easy won, easy lost while contemplating the small dagger made from Sariel’s claw. Before I could reach for it, Deimos spoke.
“What about those books? The ones we found in the Library? Wasn’t there a Mordenkainen’s Tome in there? And the other one was a book on fire magic, wasn’t it?”
Karac nodded, “Yeah, the books!”
Sered nodded as well. “Who has them?”
“I do, one moment,” Morin started digging through a bag at his side. I hadn’t noticed it before, but he was carrying two enchanted bags similar to mine. “Yep, here we go,” he drew out the two large tomes.
“Try with just one first, those are pretty expensive,” I suggested quietly. “And try to keep the one about fire, please,” I added for good measure.
Morin put away the book with the charred cover, and walked to the table. He placed the silver-locked book over to the waiting merchant. “Will this be sufficient?” he asked.
Thalvar drew the book to him and unsnapped the latches. I noticed he used no key, but the lock disengaged itself without a second thought for him. His fingers drifted through the pages, their metallic sheen glimmering in the light.
“Hmm, perhaps, yes, this will do. You do not disappoint me, and I can see your wisdom in assigning proper value to information.” He raised his eyes to us.
“Should any excess value be recognized, Thalvar, I would appreciate it if you would expend it in expressing a good opinion of us if the opportunity arises,” I asked.
“I never speak of my customers, but should it come to pass that I do, I will certainly speak well of you,” he replied. “I weigh the information I have against this, and I find my end tilted a little too lightly. One moment,” he dug about in a pocket, withdrawing a small bottle and a coin-purse.
“This,” he pushed the bottle across to us, “is a potion that enables perfect mimicry. Observe someone, drink it, and you can take on all aspects of their behavior and appearance for a short time.”
I looked up at him. “How short?”
He shrugged wordlessly. He then fingered through the purse intently, before his eyes widened. “A-ha! Yes, I knew I had one of those hidden around somewhere.” He drew out a single copper penny and laid it on the table next to the coin and potion-bottle.
“A luck pence, it carries a charm that you may find useful in a fight. It can only be used once, I’m afraid, but one stroke of luck at the right time…” he trailed off, leaving the sentence unfinished.
“And now, you have paid me and I owe you a service. This,” he pointed to the flickering metal, “…is a blood coin. There are many more like it making their way around the City of Brass as we speak. The efreet you killed…”
“We did not kill him,” I interjected.
Thalvar paused. “The efreet that died under suspicious circumstances while in your company, was a member of a powerful family. They have a great deal of money behind your capture. They also have a great many ears in a great many places.”
“Callax, he must have lied through his teeth about us, blamed us for this.” Karac grumbled.
“Or just encouraged following a particular conclusion,” Sered volunteered.
Thalvar continued. “The spirit of this prince slain in your presence is that of an elemental. While not truly dead, he is banished for a century to a…lesser, form. Be conscious that his family may have questioned him directly, in which case he may not be altogether forthcoming with the true tale behind this issue.”
“In which case, they probably haven’t even heard that his ship was destroyed by the Astral Warwings with that destroyer engine.” Deimos spoke quietly.
Thalvar shrugged. “Perhaps not. But at present, his, and perhaps this Callax’s, version of the story is the only one they are given.”
“You said capture, not kill. Why capture?” I was thinking probably for torture, and so on.
“Efreeti justice is an interesting system. Technically you are not murderers if found guilty, since the prince is not actually dead. But whoever is found guilty at trial of the death will be sentenced to one hundred years of slavery, in the service of the family whose member was lost.”
“Surely there would be some protections for a slave there, wouldn’t there?” Sered asked.
“The killing of a slave under sentence would yield a similar punishment to the murderer, and no permanent physical harm is permitted…” Thalvar put his thumb beneath his chin. “There are all manner of laws surrounding slavery among the Efreeti.”
“They’re big on that, it would seem,” I suggested.
Thalvar inclined his head. “As you say.”
“Which leaves the door open for a century of torture, and there’s no guarantee you won’t be working in a mine for a full hundred years,” Sered said.
Not a pleasant thought. “What are our odds in court?”
Thalvar turned a little. “They are the only odds you have, and they are not the best. If you prefer, I can accompany you back to the City of Brass and connect you with some of my business partners, who are themselves experts in the Efreeti judicial system.”
Sered disagreed, waving his hands slowly. “No, we have a job to do, and regardless of the personal cost to us, it must be done.”
“As you say.” Thalvar hooked his thumbs into pockets on his coat.
“You said this efreet was a prince, is that so? Was he a son of the king?” I really didn’t want to know the answer to this question, but it needed asking.
“He was heir to the family Azim, whose father sits on the Ring of Smoke. In fact, his father is Grand Vizier to the King, and sits at his right hand. The Sharif Al’Azim is he who has placed this coin upon your collective heads.”
I groaned. “This just keeps getting better,” I said.
“Yes, it does not sit well with the king that his close personal friend’s son be defeated by what they will see as an upstart pack of mortals.” Thalvar finished. “The Grand Vizier is an exceedingly wealthy man.”
“Hopefully a wise one, as well.” Sered replied. “For not killing his son, he sure does have a bone to pick with us.”
“He thinks we murdered his son. Wouldn’t you be a little upset?” Morin asked quietly.
“Yes, I suppose so, but he was evil, and trying to drag us into his fight!”
I shrugged. “Not much we can do about it now. If we were to return to the City of Brass, could we expect fair treatment? If we were to turn ourselves in for trial, that is?”
Thalvar raised his hands unknowingly. “Fair to one is rapacious to another. I suspect you do not share perspectives on the definition of that word. You would be arrested and incarcerated, and in all likelihood tried as a group.”
“Maybe if we get lost in the Red Prison for a century or two, we will be forgotten or considered to have served out the sentence.” Deimos was half-joking.
“Unlikely,” Thalvar said. “Efreeti have long memories, and a reach to match.”
“What does this trial mean to us?” Sered asked.
Thalvar thought it over. “Kaza’el Azim, the efreet who was kil…who died, is the price to be paid. As I said, that price will be one hundred years of slavery to house Azim, should you be found guilty. You would be given the opportunity to present your side of the case, in court in the City of Brass. Your words would be held up against those of Kaza’el, such as they are.”
“Fantastic, we get tried and as a witness against us, a diviner paid by the father of the victim, auguring the whimpers of a crippled marmot or something,” Deimos fumed.
I grinned at the thought, even if it was a grim proceeding.
“Scoff if you will, but the laws of the City of Brass are respected across the planes, despite their intricacy. Should you need it in the future, as I mentioned, I will establish a link between you and at least one of several barristers in my acquaintance.” He looked from one to the other of us, then took his hat from one of the Ruesti standing behind him.
“And now, I have delivered the message I brought, and a fair exchange has transpired.” He clapped his hands and held them, palms out, towards us. “I thank you, and I look forward to our next meeting.”
“Given the circumstances, it may be a while before then.” I said apologetically.
“Perhaps. In any case, good journeys to you.” He raised his hand to the brim of his hat and gave a farewell gesture.
“My thanks, and to you as well.” I bowed with a similar gesture.
The others bid their farewells as Thalvar left. As soon as he was gone, Karac looked at the table.
“I suggest Morin take the luck charm,” I said. “Of all of us, when luck goes badly, at least he is there to catch us. He is not so lucky.”
There was no objection, so the penny made its way to him. “What about the potion?” Karac asked. “Who is likely to need to disguise themselves?”
I thought it over. “Well, it chagrins me to say so, but I am probably the most likely of us to be attempting anything of a deceptive nature like that. I guess I put my hand in for the potion.” Again, there were no objections.
“Now,” I said, looking at the small velvet case and the burning coin within it. “What about the shara’al’abnur?”
Sered grimaced sourly. “Damn it, alright, give it here.” He snapped the lid shut and pocketed it.
“So, back on the road to Carantharas, eh?” Deimos asked.
“Yes, let’s go.” Sered said.
I thought it over. “Perhaps we’d better leave soon. If anyone and their brother can track us down this far, and the Azim family is as wealthy and powerful as all that, then maybe its best we remove ourselves from the site of the ‘most recent sighting,’ don’t you think?”
Karac nodded. “Two hours from now? I gotta go pack.”
Morin shrugged. “Two hours, fine, let’s go.”
I had no idea what would take two hours to get ready, but I was up for it.
* * *
The following day dawned cool again, misty with a light rain once more as we walked out into the wilds from our campsite.
“Why are we walking again?” Morin asked, panting somewhat. “Not that I mind walking, it’s good for the legs, but couldn’t we be on, you know, horses?”
Deimos grunted agreement.
Galeal looked back. “Horses are walking sacks of meat. Where we’re going, eight hundred pounds of meat on the hoof is almost guaranteed to slow us down, while we fight off every aberration within fifty miles.”
“Is that how you lure them?” I asked. “With horses, or something like? When you hunt, I mean.”
“No,” he replied. “Only the dumbest will simply be lured like that. Though I think I did hear of someone doing it a while back.” He began to whistle a little tune.
Karac apparently hadn’t slept well. He grunted: “You’re so cheerful, what for? We’re heading into the wilds, there are lots of critters that want to eat us, and you’re just whistling along.”
“Any time I venture into the Hunting Lands, it reminds me of home. This is how home should have been, it feels more right, you see?” He waved about with his bow.
The Dwur grunted wordlessly.
The day wore on, with the ‘sun’ (I say it that way, because while there was light, and it did seem to come from a specific direction, there was no glowing golden ball one would normally consider to be a sun) traversing the sky in a predictable fashion. Slightly after noon, Sered and Zatsa came up from the rear after a short and quiet consultation. Zatsa looked different – darker, somehow, shaded in greens and browns, its eyes a deep and clear shade of green. They’d been white when I’d looked at it this morning, I swear.
“We have a problem,” Sered said.
Morin looked up from his trudging. “Hmm?”
Zatsa gestured behind. “We are being followed,” it said. “Five, at least six enemies. They smell like fire.”
So soon? I wondered. “I take it these are the first fingers of the arm of Azim coming our way, then?”
“Most likely,” Sered confirmed. “They’re at least thirty minutes behind us, so we have a few choices before us – evade, confront, or continue.”
Karac thumped the haft of his weapon on the ground. “I hope that last one was a joke.”
“It’s an option.”
Zatsa waved a bra…an arm towards the fore. “There is a small river ahead, suitable territory for an ambush.”
“Confront, I prefer it,” I said. “No way they’re going to let us get to our destination and perform a big ritual without interruption. And fighting on a stair with no guardrail, and no guarantee of its duration, doesn’t seem so wise to me.”
“And an ambush seems like a really good idea,” Karac said. “Let’s let the other guys have it for a change.”
We double-timed it forward, to a place where the trees thinned out slightly, adjacent to the river Zatsa had referred to. Zatsa and I looked around and plotted locations and angles for a moment, and we decided this would be a good site. I pointed out a few trees, to which Zatsa agreed, and we set about laying our trap.
Sered would be the trigger – when he acted, the rest of us would fly into action.
Morin hid between a few boulders, while Karac found a tree with a large hollow rotted out of it some distance back – where he could wait for the trailers to pass – and stuck himself inside it. We covered him up with some loose mulch laying around, and re-brushed the area around him to look normal.
The rest of us made a set of tracks beyond the river, to maintain the illusion of our recent passage here, before attending to our own hiding places.
Zatsa went up the side of a tree and seemed to meld right into it, fading into the leaves. I could still see it, but that was because I knew where to look. There were one or two moments where I looked away and for a second and for the life of me, that thing just vanished.
When I look back, I realize again that for someone like myself, having been born into a society and species where gender took on a specific role, everything about a person’s life demanded that – even language bent itself towards expressions of things having gender. Inanimates were always “it”, but every creature and living thing was either “he” or “she”. I was confounded by this plant-like thing (and who knows? It could have been entirely plant, but even in the Feywild plants that moved were rarely truly ambulatory, they seemed to always have to carry a root system around with them, that itself demanded a period of inactivity and rest in earth). I needed a way to refer to it that wasn’t in the same vein as what I would use to call a table, yet Turathian language did not permit me in that regard.
Fascinating insights become available to you when you have the time to consider them. Perhaps that’s why hindsight is considered so valuable. I suppose when you have potentially years of time to re-evaluate and consider possible outcomes, things are so much more clear.
But enough of that. This is a journal, not an indulgence of insight.
Sered clambered up a tree as well, somewhat less gracefully than Zatsa’s ivy-like clinging, but well enough that he moved without too much difficulty into the lower branches. He pulled his cloak in around him and became to a passing glance little more than a squirrel’s nest. Deimos flew high up into the branches of another, well out of sight from the ground.
I rifted up, flickering from branch to branch until I found one that gave me a good view of the clearing while concealing me from the pathway below.
We waited. I was pretty sure none of them were fishers, and I hoped that we wouldn’t blow the shot with someone getting impatient.
After only a little time, I could smell the smoke too. Beneath us, I could hear something passing. A sizzling, almost like frying bacon, passed beneath us.
Before long, they moved into view – leading the group was a huge hound, easily ten stone in weight; smoke oozed from its muzzle and trickles of flaming spittle dropped from its jaws as it snuffled its way left and right, following along our path. Two Archons followed it, a good thirty feet apart and well behind the hound; I recognized them from my wanderings in the Elemental Chaos with Lion’s Lun…
Funny, even now, knowing what I do, that’s still hard to think of.
In the center, a large efreet carrying a roll of chain over its shoulder. Flanking the efreet, slightly behind, two floating pyres of flame – pure elementals – attended it. Mercenaries all, I supposed, or perhaps the personal forces of House Azim. I drew out Riftspar and Dreaming Fire, preparing to move against the efreet. Sered would no doubt choose the main creature to attack.
As if on queue, he did just that. I heard the air displace and saw the flowing grey of his robes as he translocated across the field to lay a grip on the efreet’s chains with his off hand, the greatsword in his right held ready for a swing. As his blow began its swing, they both were pulled away to one side of the group, away from the support of the other elementals. His blow fell upon the armor of the huge leader, and although it did not penetrate the plating, it laid a dent upon the steel plates that I was certain would have cleft a man in two.
At the same time, I took the efreet’s spirit in my figurative grasp and twisted it, linking a fey curse of prescience on it, and its form immediately took on the slight halo revealing its nearest strand of fate for my companions and I to take advantage of.
And did we ever! Karac roared out of his hiding place like the inexorable fall of a boulder down a mountainside, and smote the efreet with his axe so strongly that the being stumbled back against a tree trunk fully twenty feet away. Zatsa was doing something among the leaves beneath us, but I couldn’t make out what it was, and Morin had blasted the hound into smouldering bits with a blast of light from his hammer.
Where the efreet had crashed against the tree, Deimos unleashed a bolt of lightning that wracked upon its armor, with power so fierce that it must have flash-vaporized the sap of the bole where it stood, because the trunk of the tree exploded outward. The efreet was thrown to the ground, where it lay twitching and juddering.
Zatsa’s own spell took effect then, pushing the two elementals up against the Archons, where the four fouled each others’ movements. I rifted own out of the tree to the ground beside Sered, as the four began to close with him. Karac closed ranks with us as well, while Morin moved to a safer vantage.
Being extra careful to avoid giving my enemies a chance to afflict my companions with my own spell, I opened a new portal to the realm of Nightmare between us and the approaching elementals, catching the lead two in its blast and giving the others the choice of entry into it or forcing them around it – effectively delaying their close while causing maximum harm.
Karac and Sered moved around to one side of the fountain of terrors while I kept the portal open, sliding it slightly off to encourage the others’ moving around further away. While they closed with an elemental and an Archon – the other two still fighting their way around my zone – Sered paused for a moment to shout at us.
“Ware below! Enemy beneath!” He gestured downwards, and continued to close alongside Karac.
The four came together in a flurry of strikes, fire and steel glimmering in the mixed light of the glade. I saw Morin taking on the other Archon, on the opposite side of the fight before me, and darted through a rift to get across to him. I appeared closer to it than I’d intended, in reach, and it swung at me with a clenched fist wreathed in flames. I took the blow full on the chest, growling through the pain while pushing a thrust of Dreaming Fire into its side. I saw Morin grin savagely as he saw the chill of nightmares ripple through the Archon, distracting it enough that he had an uninterrupted full swing with his hammer. I felt his blow ring through the Archon and down my own blade to sing out in my hands, and the elemental burst into ash and cinder between us.
I heard a shout behind me, and turned again to face the four behind me, and felt the ground rumble. I was thrown from my feet by a sudden ripple in the earth, as if it had suddenly turned fluid and subject to waves as the ocean was. The fiery elementals were also suffering similarly, and amazingly even Karac seemed to have trouble keeping his feet. Sered bounced back, away from the melee, just as the ground beneath us drained away and down into a dark, pulsing well.
I’d never been in the gullet of something so huge – and hoped never to be again. Whatever this thing was, it had to be at least fifteen, perhaps twenty feet across, and my orientation was completely shot as it rolled around. The interior was lit at least for a short while by the burning elemental and archon, but both were lost to my sight as I was forced further down into the belly of the creature.
I found myself somewhere deep, encased in a muscular sac that was lined with rough barbs, I assumed which had to be pointing deeper into the creature. Morin was there with me, struggling to pull himself up and out. I latched Dreaming Fire to my harness and used Riftspar to anchor myself by digging in into the side. The walls were covered to dripping with an acidic mucous, and pushing out with my arms only succeeded in splattering more of the stuff on me. Taking a good grip on the walls, I managed to shove Morin up a ways before losing sight of him. I heard him call back to me “Hurry yourself out, I’ve got a way myself,” before he vanished out of my vision.
I struggled forward a ways after him, pushing the inert cinder-form body of the archon further down. I managed to make it almost far enough to where I could begin to see glimmers of light – perhaps I’d found the mouth of it.
Of course, that wasn’t going to happen, as I discovered all the thing needed to do was swallow. The walls contracted sharply around me, shoving me back down with such force that I almost lost my grip on my dagger.
The swallow had forced me past several of the barbs quite roughly, and I was bleeding from half a dozen places when I finally realized what a fool I was being. I was holding my escape route in my hands! I focused on Riftspar and used it to slash open a hole in the world beside me, and sent myself a long distance to one side.
I appeared out in the glade, the sudden light a welcome feeling on my eyes and skin. I stood quickly, to find myself looking back at an enormous wurm, whose diameter must have been at least twenty feet. It’s indigo surface glimmered with strange reflections, and I could feel the sense of death radiating from it. Sered was charging it, and I could see a foot – probably Karac’s from the size of it – sticking out of the great maw as it raised its head off the ground and gulped him down with huge swallows. It opened its mouth again with a roar, and Sered leaped directly in, catching the roar up with a short hurking noise.
It nsapped its maw shut behind the flailing Deva, and before any of us knew what it was about, it had shoved itself down into the earth beside us. The huge bulk of the thing slid fast as a snake down the hole, leaving a hole wide enough for a dancing hall behind.
“It went down! Come on! They’re stuck in there!” I shouted, and leaped down into the hole behind it, using the flying enchantment on my boots to glide in and chase after it, coming to rest behind the huge thing. I knew if I struck at it, it would be only a parting shot, as the thing could no doubt move faster than I could through the loose earth. Instead, I rifted myself back, to what I hoped was out of reach if it turned on me; the rift leaking stuff of nightmare and chill, slowing it in place with the distraction of the spillover of horrors.
It worked as I’d hoped, the thing crept forward only a slight bit, just as my companions reached the edge of the hole above and dove in after it. Deimos flinging lightning, Morin spewing fire and radiance from his hammer, while Zatsa reached the edge of the hole above. Galeal, meanwhile, was shouting from above.
“I can see its track, I’m following it up here!” His voice faded even as he shouted this, presumably running further away.
For a few moments it seemed as though this would work, having me run up to the creature and rift away, slowing it down to keep it accessible to my companions. We manged a few good strikes this way, until it shook us off like so many fleas – it vibrated its bulk within the tunnel, and brought the roof down on us. Suddenly, all was black and it was everything we could do to dig ourselves free. By the time we had extricated ourselves, theremust have been who knows how many tons of dirt and rock between us and the enormous wurm.
While Deimos and Zatsa continued to dig, I displaced myself to the surface, and went chasing after Galeal. Perhaps if it was keeping close to the surface we could find another way to snare and destroy it before it completely digested Sered and Karac.
My concern turned out to be misplaced, for as the Ruesti and I raced along the bent ground after the huge wurm, the ground beneath us gave a great heaving, and collapsed partially beneath us with a waft of noxious vapor. All around us, brush and trees fell dead, and an enormous tree before us expired almost instantly – it seemed to rot all at once, from the ground upwards. The leaves of it fell in unison, a sudden rain of brown and grey; its trunk sloughing bark as a snake shedding skin.
“They must have killed it,” Galeal called out. “Down here beneath us somewhere!”
“Okay – wait here, I’m going to have the others keep digging. If it kept to a relatively level course, they should be able to use the tunnel to get out. Otherwise we go in from here, down.” He nodded and looked around.
We did eventually get through – digging through the original tunnel through which it had fled. We found Karac and Sered down there, somewhat worse for wear, but alive. Once we got them out, we ascertained that everyone was without severe injury. A quick jump in the river cleaned off the remaining gastric fluids.
While we were searching across the field to glean what we could of the elementals’ remaining gear, the others related to me that the remaining elemental had fled the field at the emergenceof the wurm. I wished they’d been able to destroy it, but there wasn’t much to be done on that front. Perhaps whatever tale it told of us would discourage others from pursuit.
Or force them to bring stronger forces with them. That would be my luck.
In any case, we were not accosted by another elemental team for quite some time. We spent the next three weeks in the wilds, searching for the ruins of Carantharas. Along the way, the terrain shifted several times – from the familiar enormous woods we were in, to grey, rocky mountains, and finally into meadowlands.
We also stumbled upon many signs of the land’s inhabitants on our path. The first, a ruined camp with several bodies – outsiders such as ourselves, their bodies rotted away, leaving skeletons bound together by skin and sinew dried with age. While checking the camp out, Sered found a ring of some enchantment on one of the bodies [TJT note – what ring? And who got it?]
We also saw a strangely-mottled behir among the mountainous rocks, which we avoided with care. As well, we skipped by a collection of beholders, holding some form of convocation like a circle of perverted mushrooms. At one point further on, we ended up in a short confrontation with a group of fomorians, who broke off the fight shortly after it began when we dropped their leading Redcaps. About two weeks on we were accosted shortly by a pack of dire wolves, who were dissuaded from treating us as prey by a lightning show Deimos put on. Only three days before finding Carantharas, the strangest finding of all greeted us: an enormous flattened space in the mountains, as if some giant hand had leveled the ground around us. Within it, what we initially took to be a dead and petrified forest turned out to be bones – the remains of a dragon so huge we could hardly bring ourselves to believe its magnitude.
Galeal put a name to the beast – Kazurax, also known as “Broken-Wing.” The dragon had terrorized the wilds for ages, and had served for quite some time to keep the area purged of abominations (and Ruesti) until two or three centuries past. It had vanished then, most thought finally falling prey to age or defeat. Whatever the case, we’d found its final resting place, the bones cleaned of all flesh. We figured its lair to be nearby, but our time constraints prevented further investigation. I and Morin made careful note of the location, intending to one day return to put the search on – for such a great beast’s treasure would be considerable indeed.
When we finally reached the broken and shattered remains of Carantharas, the light was lowering deep in the sky. We were all worn and tired from the weeks of what seemed like endless travel, and everyone desperately needed a bath – even Sered. Especially Karac. We had taken to walking a good distance apart, but that often didn’t save one from an unfortunate change in the wind. I took to observing us as we walked, the shifting pattern of who-walks-where that was so similar to watching the movements of a herd clustering against the cold. A shift of the wind, and a wide-open lane would shift like a wind-sock around the party, melting away from one side only to reappear on the other.
The walls, such as they were, were stone-masonry of about thirty feet in height. Time and battle had taken their toll, and the natural growth of plants and vines had draped green carpets all across their faces, reaching up beyond the crenellations. Blossoms were everywhere on the green, from the tiniest white stars to enormous pink and yellow blooms the size of a dinner plate, and the air was thick with their scent over the wet decay of the swampland around us. Insects occasionally chirped, but unlike the Feywild, there were no massive parasites.
Evening, such as it was, would be upon us soon. We viewed the walls of the doomed city from a distance, observing the clefts and ruin visited upon them. All around the outside, the land was wet and swampy, dotted with pools and dark-leaved trees of broad stature. Old, torn tents were also scattered about, as though the remnants of Tarsis had been somehow transplanted and the lost homes of the Al-Kabeth were returned to a dingy life here.
In spite of our exhaustion, we decided to broach the walls and enter the city before nightfall, to take advantage of the possibility that moonlight might be available this night. Although our chest and its inscribed ritual contained the correct moonlight, it only served as a trigger for the stair – the power of the enchantment that manifested its precarious steps came from the pure flood of lunar power available in real moonshine. I hadn’t been a fan of just marching through, instead suggesting that we take a breather for a day or two and take advantage of some of the clearer pools to handle some of our less appealing fragrances. Unfortunately I was overruled, but at least I tried. My argument that we’d be easily tracked just by our vapor trail was apparently not as convincing as I’d first imagined.
As we approached the walls, choosing a larger breach where we’d likely find it easier to climb through, something else caught on the wind. A low, moaning trumpet, very close – almost too soft to carry over what wind there was here. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to voice a warning, and before I knew it, the first attacker topped the walls. Even though the city’s barrier was some thirty feet in height, the spider-legged horror that clambered over it made it look like little more than a tall garden fence. The creature was probably about eight hundred pounds, and formed a bit like a centaur – except, of course, using a spider rather than horse for its lower half.
I’ve seen driders – strange spider-dunkel fusions assembled by their demon-queen matron. Those creatures are put together cleanly, the fronts and backs or tops and bottoms generally look like they are at least supposed to be that way. This thing…didn’t. Its parts overlapped unevenly, and where man met spider, a reddish oozing pus fell from the join. Stretched end-to-end, I guessed the thing’s legs would easily have spanned fifteen feet. Upon its back, offsetting the black bristling hairs there, a crimson-and-white pattern decorated its back that looked like some strange ancient calendar, circular in form with a wide variety of symbols in it. Part of me wondered if those symbols were meaningful, or simply some part of the natural colors of the spider whose abdomen that used to be.
The face of it was elongated, thin, like the nose of a racing dog, and it’s maw was crammed full of teeth of the same variety, with a whip-like black tongue that reached up and combed over its face. The eyes were a dull green, the oblong pupils reminiscent of a goat’s. To either side of the mouth, wicked-sharp tusks mounted to the sides of its jaw flung long strands of yellow-green pus as it whipped its head back and forth.
As it slid down the wall, its claws digging small gravel out of the great stone blocks, it shrieked with a ferocity that spoke more of the pain it suffered than the pain it intended to inflict.
We all spread out, instinctively getting distance in case the thing could fling some form of bomb, or more likely web, that would entrap us as a group. Weapons came out, spells were readied. Sinking my grip into the spirit of it, I found myself with Dreaming Fire in my hand, rushing up with Sered beside me and Karac just beside him. It was at that moment that I realized something and found a singular thought crossing my mind.
How the hell did I end up doing this?
Beside Karac, one of the pools of fetid water burst upward in a great plume, something humanoid and lizardlike rocketing out of the water. Propelled by an enormous crocodilian tail, it had momentum to not only exit the pool but to bring itself to a crouch and cast a thick net around his ankles as it readied a spear to skewer him.
I kept going forward while Sered hung back to assist Karac, and found myself – regrettably – alone. Although I was certain I could root the huge spider abomination in place for a short while, I wasn’t so sure I could hold it off from them forever. Still and all, dug through the barrier between the worlds to the fields of Levistus once again, casting small rift-charged spears of frigid cold at the thing. As the ice beganto spread down along its legs, I used the power of my curse to rift it a fair distance back towards the wall and southward, putting another pool and a large tree between it and my companions. As it emerged from the portal I’d created, the ice completed its work, cementing the creature in place where it stood, howling its frustration at me.
I was about to look back to Sered and Karac, to offer what help I could, when I was distracted by movement at the wall. Glancing quickly over, I saw an old crone emerge from the greenery draping the wals, a tattered hood covering her. She gestured at me, andI felt the familiar sensation of a rift opening – though this time, it was not me doing the opening. I felt myself pulled through, and found myself face-to-face with the old woman. She looked up in almost a leisurely fashion, before whipping a claw across my face, scoring me with sharp claws. And claw it was, long nails blackened with age and unwashed filth, the knuckles easily twice the width of the fingerbones they joined. Her face was staggeringly out of place – she had the fresh blonde bangs of a youthful adolescent, surrounding a lovely face that belonged on a farmer’s daughter.
Except, perhaps, for the pitted and discolored teeth that she smiled at me with. Following through with her raking pass over my face, she brought the bloody claw to her mouth and licked a bit of me into her mouth, then spat it back at me. I felt the rift take hold of me again…
…and found myself in similar surrounds, but completely alone. My companions were missing, my enemies were missing, I was without company in this swampy mess and evening light.
It didn’t take long before I realized I was on the opposite side of the wall, as looking back showed me the huge stone edifice covered in greenery. More pools and trees surrounded me, the sun was still where it belonged (though I was in its shade now, the wall between us), and listening revealed the sounds of a fight on the other side.
Perhaps it was the battle sounds that kept me unaware. Or the pressure differential in my ears of being unexpectedly rifted. Whatever the case, I didn’t hear my assailant coming…I certainly picked up on him when he wrapped his long fingers around my neck, though, that’s for certain.
“Glaak!” was the most intelligent thing I could think to say as my hands reflexively leaped to grasp the ones busily throttling me. I practically stabbed myself in the brain with Riftspar when my hands went up, gave myself a wonderful slice on the right side of my head, right up to the base of my antler. I also felt a deep pain in my core, whoever it was had done something similar to my curse – not a harmful one though . More like a marker, a drag on me that I felt clinging like a leech.
I twisted about, and it didn’t take much twisting around to realize that I couldn’t see my attacker. Not as in, I couldn’t get him into view, as in he was invisible – even staring right at him, I couldn’t see him at all. Much as I had Fey curses that could render me unseen to my targets, this fellow was unseen completely – I didn’t see him before he touched me, and he didn’t materialize after attacking me. Not much could do that. I’m schooled in arcana, even if I’m bound to different power sources now, and there are only a few kinds of invisibility that are genuinely common. One throws a veil over the subject, so that passersby all fail to see the subject – but that takes a lot of energy to maintain, and such a veil is generally pretty fragile. Violent acts – specifically the aggressive emotions involved – tend to rip such a veil up. Another is one of the kinds I use, where the subject is actually blinded, either to a specific target or blinded in general (the latter being a more powerful form). These usually require a touch or a contact through attack.
Then there’s the third one I know – and that’s native invisibility. As in, the creature is naturally invisible, or can achieve the state with little or no trouble. That, or it suffers no disruption due to violent actions and the thoughts that accompany them, so a veil simply flows around it without interruption.
Or perhaps a combination of them. Given my experience here, I’d say either my attacker achieved invisibility as a natural state, or violent thoughts gave it no more of a hiccup in its existence than scratching a pimple.
Or both.
None of this gave me a whole lot of comfort, I should point out. In fact, I found it pretty freaking alarming. Because there aren’t many creatures known that work that way. One or two of them are undead – but they generally smell bad. Air elementals are, by nature, made of air and are hard to discern – but they’re loud as hell when they’re mad, and the grass would be flying every which way. That left only one off the top of my head, and that one worried the snot out of me.
Well, that might have actually been it choking me, I do remember in a distinguished moment blowing a big booger out onto my cheek while it was thrashing me around.
Snot aside, this had to be one of the worst assassins of the Astral Sea. An Astral Stalker had its claws around my neck. It certainly made sense with regard to that clinging thrum in my spirit, they were known to mark their chosen prey for tracking. And that tracking could go for ages, across planar boundaries even.
Not a pleasant consideration.
With that in mind, I focused a deep curse into the Stalker and stabbed at where I figured its center mass would be, and felt Riftspar bite in. The Stalker hissed viciously as the blade sank into it, and one hand’s grip released from my throat, and immediately fastened around my wrist. The instant release of pressure on my neck gave me a chance to draw a ragged breath while pulling Riftspar’s own reserves of power to open a rift and slip across the wampland. I left it a little leaky, wisps of frost and shadowy tendrils of nightmare slipping out and whipping around. The ice and shadow wrapped around the stalker, and as I slipped into the half-realm and away from its grasp I could see them wrapping around it, slowing it down.
I emerged fifteen yards or so away, whipped an Eyebite at the stalker, and immediately rippled myself across the landscape again, to emerge at the top of the wall. I couldn’t see any of my companions, though I could hear the sounds of fighting nearby, somewhere. The sound was being bounced around off the giant wall and the trees, and unfortunately all the foliage was softening the direction of it all.
The real shocking part was seeing that thing come after me. After it ripped itself free of the impediments of my slash in the planar wall, it immediately started in my direction. I saw the grass parting, and the water of a nearby pool splashed furiously where I suppose a foot stepped in it. I assumed it still couldn’t see me, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t trace me by the mark it had made on me.
I won’t make any bones about it – I ran. I immediately ported down to the opposite side of the wall and just opened up at a full sprint of rifts, bouncing from one location to the next.
I have no idea whether that worked or not, but for some reason it chose not to pursue. Maybe it picked up on the sounds of fighting and joined in, or perhaps it simply decided to play with me and give me some lead, but whatever the case, it left off and I found myself alone in the lush green of the swamp.
The silent lush green of the swamp.
Oh, holy crap. I was alone. I’d become separated from the group and was alone in an abomination-infested swampland. Yeah, frying pan wasn’t looking so bad now.
Once I caught my breath, I started porting my way back the way I’d come, until I reached the wall. Its broken face hidden beneath the waves of flowers and leaves spoke volumes of the grandeur that must have once been on display here. I imagined legions of Ruesti marching along its length, spears and bows in hand, standards fluttering in the breeze. The visions and the sweet smelling flowers were intoxicating. I even forgot the pursuit, the fight.
I snapped out of my reverie to realize that it was full nightfall. Some sort of frog was chirruping loudly all around me, a cacophonous symphony of animal life. It gave me pause – were they born here, these frogs? Were they truly alive? Or were these the spirits-granted-flesh of frogs long dead in my world, the Ruesti of the amphibian world?
What a strange thought. It seemed like the drug-induced ramblings of a terrible storyteller, or a great indicator that gods – even Corellon – were simply insane.
Having read enough holy works, I knew the former to be true. Seeing as I was in Corellon’s own creation, the latter might be as well. Why would they bother? What use did gods, or the spirits of the dead for that matter, have for a re-enactment of the world they’d already departed? I knew the gods had envied the world, wanted it for their own, which was why they fought the Primordials to save it, but why re-create a version of it here in the Astral Sea? Surely not just for the creature comforts.
This deserved more thought. I filed it away for reference, and re-tuned my priorities.
In particular, the one about finding my friends.
