16 Mesic Husa (cont’d)
I stepped forward to speak with the lead redcap, a spriggan named “Blood Milk” – who apparently has a bit of a history in our regular world. He opened his cloak and showed off a wide variety of jewelry, small weapons, and perhaps a scroll tube or two. Calling himself the “magic man”, he spun a rhyme about being full of trinkets and gems he wanted to trade.
Being curious, and seeing an opportunity to possibly trade for at least some information, I approached the shore and exchanged some words with him. I offered to meet him on the little island in the river, the one with the fountain on it. I did a fast move across the river – we all still had the water-walk enchantment working – and waited while he and his compatriots approached the shore. He brought two of them behind him, and the other two melted back into the brush. He seemed unwilling to cross the river to meet me, and even went so far as to throw some form of bridge from what I can only describe as golden pixie dust. Not being a total fool, I demurred and reasserted my invitation to ‘neutral’ ground.
While waiting for the fellow to decide, I kept glancing around to be sure we were doing alright. The other members of the group were attending to their injuries, and a few seemed exasperated that I was even talking to Blood Milk here. As he was rhyming, I figured I’d throw together a few as well, which I think surprised him a bit. While I was looking, I spotted a group of red-caps behind the brushline where we’d emerged at first – they might have been tracking us. Except there were quite a few of them, and they appeared to be setting traps and snares. I couldn’t help but assume they were laying an ambush for us, and I was not pleased. So rather than let it proceed to what I saw as the inevitable conclusion, I wove an attack together and bound it into my final rhyme – striking home and dragging Blood Milk into the river.
He shrieked rather loudly as the fish had at him, and Bingo tossed an arrow or two – I didn’t look, I was moving off already – before he spluttered out of the water and vanished into the brush off the bank. His two friends followed suit, melding back into the leaves.
Of course, as I expected, I suddenly heard trumpets all along the river coming from behind the treeline. I also caught sight of several swarms of tiny fey, little pixies all armed with needles and razors of silver. They all moved upstream, rapidly – I am guessing towards a bridge or fjord clear of the fish.
As I was watching this through the corner of my eye and clambered up and out of the river to join the group, other red-caps – who had been apparently sneaking their way down to our location on our side of the river – burst from the brush and came at us at a run.
We made a fighting retreat for a little while, but it became somewhat obvious that we were going to be in dire trouble if we didn’t really put some speed beneath our feet. So, off we went – and it seemed everything went our way. The red-caps were quite insistent, and occasionally one would catch up and we’d have to deal with it, but after a while they seemed to lose interest. Fortunately, several of the team knew their way around in a forest environment, since I am something of a bumbling fool when it comes to nature. I threw my footsteps behind theirs, to give me a chance at moving something approaching swiftness. I was even able to divert the chasers with a quick distraction, so I got away with at least a little pride in the effort.
Once we’d proceeded on a bit and we got ourselves sure we had lost the pursuit, we were able to pause and catch our breath. Taking stock of where we were, we realized we’d actually made some headway towards Moss Kag and the goal of reaching Veyd. We grabbed a bit of food as I checked to make sure everyone had come through without lasting hurt.
Well, at least I intended to – we were interrupted shortly after by the sound of a woman screaming a short distance away. Although we had a moment of conflicted emotions, as a whole we rose in only a few seconds to see what the commotion was and to try to help if possible.
We were confronted with the appearance of a pair of eladrin facing off against two cyclopses in a clearing among a group of water-filled sinkholes scattered throughout an old ruin’s walls. The eladrin, a man and woman, appeared to have been ambushed – one cyclops had a spear on the man, while the other was attempting to net the woman. Knowing a little of the fomorian culture here, I assumed this was a pair of slavers who’d ambushed the two fey. I was, unfortunately, wrong.
As Sered and Rhogar charged in, focused on the cyclopses, the eladrin male instantly turned on Sered and slammed him with I can only describe as a strength and speed of preternatural quality. It was around this point that the glamour faded away and the man revealed himself as some kind of unlife – smooth of skin, but its visage was positively horrifying. Meanwhile, the woman’s own disguise faded as she turned on Rhogar, exposing herself to be a woman-form who seemed filled with terrible black beetles. I also later was to find this woman was a creature called a lamia.
As we reeled from this revelation and the suddenness of their attacks, we failed to notice that several trees behind us had mobilized and were slipping up – at least, we didn’t notice until Canon was wrapped up in clinging vines! Over his choking and Dei’s surprised remark (he also found himself restrained by the moving trees), the cyclops began roaring and I only just barely realized Sered was having his life drained out through his eyeballs by the undead – I’ve since discovered it was a bodak. Fortunately, I was close enough to wing him a fast healing enchantment to preserve his life and twist the necrotic drain around to curse the bodak for a little while.
I’d like to say we handled ourselves well, but unfortunately the creatures had pulled off an almost perfect ambush on us, and it did draw our attention away from our focus. The fight went on for some time – but in the end, we were brought low. As I was driven to my knees choking on a vine that had stretched out and harnessed me by my neck, I was certain we were dead. I think – I can’t be sure of this – that Bingo escaped, as I remember him leaping away into the underbrush. The rest of us, though, were laid about, scattered and bloody.
So it was with some level of surprise that I found myself stuttering to wakefulness, through bleary vision. Bruises and scabs made it difficult to open my eyes, but when I did, I saw the lot of us all around me. We were in some stone chamber, chained to the walls. Some creature – I think it was the lamia, but my vision was fuzzy enough that I could not be certain – was bargaining with a cloaked and hooded figure, apparently over the purchase of several of us.
That figure, that cloaked and hooded person, had a badge upon its shoulder – and I was shocked to see it. I couldn’t believe it at first, I thought I was hallucinating from the shock to my head, or from the asphyxiation. But as my vision cleared, it was simply undeniable.
It was the symbol of Mahar, my former commander in the Cairn Jale.
