The huge beast stands still for a moment, the massive head swinging from the forest to Sigmar and then back again. It stamps the ground once (in doubt?), and lets out a bone rattling bellow, more felt then heard. Then, without further ado it ambles down the hill at an easy pace, not even pausing as it casually crashes through two hedgerows and a wooden fence. Sigmar can't be sure but it seems, for now, to avoid the exact same trails as the lizardmen took.
Who knows?
Well, that was nice. Freedom and stuff. Good vibes.
A tiny whisper. What was that?
"I said, GOOD VIBES!" Ozzy shouts in his battered, mangled ears. "Dude, I've been talking for awhile but I think you checked out there. Everything ok?"
Before Sigmar can answer his sandy friend, another voice can be heard.
"You got lucky." Turning, Sigmar is confronted with Herluf, the old soldier carrying a bloody rapier in one hand. His tattered uniform is a bit mud spattered and he is missing a boot, but otherwise seems unharmed. In fact, he seems more spry then ever.
"Very lucky," He goes on, sniffing a bit, 'Going off on your own, no plan, no reserve. Grabbing an enemy mount and stomping around the battlefield. Could have killed half a dozen of our own men."
A long frosty silence but then the old man shrugs, "But you didn't. My old commander used to have a saying. 'Better to be lucky the good.' Well done, young man." he claps Sigmar on the shoulder. He turns to the slowly growing assembly.
"Casualties?"
The Fort Holiday force seemed to have gotten off lightly. There had been no deaths, only some injuries. Even now they are being healed by a ramshackle collection of potions, a wand and a few spells by the gifted locals. Even Oyok is pressed into service, the ranger helping heal a shattered leg.
Quite a few dinosaur corpses are scattered around and three dead lizardmen. They stink to all the high heavens, a acrid scent that reminded Sigmar of old milk and bad eggs mixed with more then a touch of dead animal. A few of the other sailors report two other corpses hauled off by the enemy.
Most credit Sigmar and Uzhg as the two most stalwart defenders. The short-lived debate between the two factions is still ongoing when Arianne comes over, covered in blood from head to foot. The mute is grinning like a madwoman, and holds up a bloody hand to Sigmar. He watches as she reveals a sharp dinosaur tooth, nearly the length of his finger. Some of the fleshy root is still clinging to it, hacked out by the gunslinger. She holds it out, indicating Sigmar should take it.
'Well done, men and women." Herluf says shortly, "That could have gone a lot worse. We saved the farms so we will eat next month. Let's head back up to town and tell the others. Gods only know what they are doing."
"Hey man," Sigmar laughed at the elemental's concern - as it were - over being ignored, "I've got two hands and exactly enough brain matter to work magic with one whilst working the other into someone's face. Must have lost you in the kerfuffle."
His eyes were still on the armored dinno-sar trudging its way downhill. A fence was flattened in the process, the obstacle not slowing the beast's pace any more than would a dandelion. What a life, he thought again. What a magnificent existence.
He hoped he could beat the snot out of it should they meet again.
Like, not fatally so. Not necessarily. Just enough to definitively establish that of the two he was the superior walking siege engine. Just for the record. He'd even nurse it back to health afterwards! Probably. If he wasn't busy and stuff. If there weren't these little people demanding his attention, for example.
"My old commander used to have a saying. 'Better to be lucky the good.' Well done, young man." He claps Sigmar on the shoulder.
Divorced though he felt from the rest of mortalkind, Sigmar was nothing if not a mere mortal himself. For one, though he didn't know it, said alienation was a common - even pedestrian! - sentiment among teenagers. Truthfully, if believing oneself special was an aberration, the better part of Golarion's sentient souls belonged in asylums. More to the point, he was not immune to flattery: the praise of an authority figure such as Herluf would normally have bolstered his already well-padded ego, as it would for most.
Which was to say, it would have if not for the old soldier's unfortunate phrasing.
"Lucky?" A scoff of the sort only the very young and very conceited could manage escaped the boy. "Old timer, this is my 19th year on this great big ball of madness we call home, and in that time I've dropped more opponents than I have dookie. Luck ain't it. Coming out on top once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. But when it's your entire life?" His grin was broad as "Stompy's" rump still visible in the distance. "Sorry to disappoint your commander, but you'd better believe I am that good."
It has been remarked by poets and theologians both that the devils' favorite sin is vanity. After all, no other vice is so deceptive by nature. A bard might be able to dress up bloody murder as righteous necessity, yet no such effort is required for vanity. For everyone, from the learned scholar to the simple peasant, are all too eager to mistake their conceit for benign pride. Untold souls have been condemned in stumbling over the thin line separating pride from vanity.
Hell would have a field day with Sigmar. Though to his limited credit, he was at least glad to see that the collective of castaways had suffered no casualties on this day.
Although it should be said how the arrival of an exceedingly grimy Arianne brought a considerably bigger smile to his face. Hells below, she was a sight. Specifically, she looked like something straight from an abattoir floor. Even desensitized to blood as he was, the dragonling had to admire the girl's lack of... well, girliness. There was a freedom in her utter disregard of appearance and social niceties that his rebellious spirit genuinely admired. Even if said disregard might in fact just be plain ignorance. A fat dollop of muck and blood dripped from her nose.
"Gods, you're beautiful."
He had meant this ironically, another bit of comradely jostling. It didn't sound ironic in leaving his mouth. More concerningly, it didn't feel ironic. Aw hells.
"What, is that for me?" Moving on quickly, he snatched the proffered raptor tooth. An errant impulse went unquestioned upon which the teen placed it under his upper lip, right over his own canine. Not the easiest task when done with burning fingers. "How's that look?" he laughed around the protruding fang, looking nothing so much like an orcish dentist's worst nightmare. "Imma grow a couple a' these some day myself, you know! I am a dragon after all!"
Some draconic pantomiming followed, the single-toothed terror Sigmar Darastrix working his fiercest chomps. Only in spitting the thing out did he consider how he really should find some means of extinguishing his arms. There was no working one's pockets in this state. Where was the nearest stream...?
Oyok lets out a raspy whistle of dismay at Sigmar's placing of the bloody tooth among her his own pearly whites.
"Gods, lads. Do you know where that's been? I get keeping trophies, but clean them first!" His feathers ruffle in real disgust at the rather barbaric display.
Arianne gives him an off, somewhat confused look at his words. Even Sigmar slowly realizes calling her beautiful might send mixed message. Quite apart from romance what did it say about him that he applied the label to a rather scrawny woman covered in mud, blood and probably worse? Nothing good probably.
Happily, the fiery tar seems to be dissipating without the need for water. The fuel seems to have run out, leaving him with arms and hands covered in acrid charred goo, like someone liquefied fireplace ashes. It smelled something awful too, combination of damp forest fire and kitchen mishap. Still the dragonling had no time to dwell on this because Herluf was moving them out.
Something seemed to bothering the old man as they marched back up the steep, cider strewn hill. Sigmar wasn't the only one who noticed because Kell marched the older man's pace and asked, 'What's wrong? We won, if you didn't notice, Her."
The old man shook his head, like a cow shaking off a irksome fly. "Timing bothers me. They picked the exact time when our defenses were weakest, with the vote and all. How did they know?"
"Scouts?" Kell offers, shrugging.
"Maybe." Was all the old man said, eyes narrowing at the top of the hill, lost in thought.
They reach Fort Holiday without adventure and are greeted with a hero's welcome by those who had not come to the battle. People cheer and wave, celebrating the victory. It isn't much of a parade however, as people quickly spilt off into small groups of friends and family, eager to confirm life and limb.
A young man Sigmar doesn't recognize comes over to him, holding out a sunburned, callused hand. "You saved my life, my friend. You ever need something, just ask. My name's Devers." He proffers the hand rather aggressively.
"Hiya, Dee!"
It was a bit like having one's howdy-do answered with an alien babel from the dark side of Aucturn. For the proffered handshake never came, the calloused hand instead seized in a bewildering series of gestures. Snaps of the fingers, bumps of the knuckles and slaps of the palm followed in quick succession, each stranger than the last. Especially given the wet squelching accompanying them. On account of the goo and all. An only half-there Sigmar culminated this shibboleth by hooking their digits in a hand sign only familiar to youth gangs of Absalom. Or perhaps not even them; he may have fumbled one or two steps of the sequence. His attention was on the nascent post-battle celebrations.
"Need somethin', you say?" A rumble like distant thunder was heard behind the dragonling's washboard abs. "Er, what does your pantry look like?"
Although still riding high on the ecstasy of battle, Sigmar's usual pyre was feeling more like cinders at the moment. He hadn't started the day on the best foot, what with the late-night excursion, and the following hours hadn't let up. Rival stomping, mental projections and now a dinno-sar attack. He could do with either a banquet's worth of sleep or eight hours of broiled meat! Maybe both.
Devers grins, revealing a mouthful of battered and wayward teeth. "The best on the island." He wastes a few moments trying to rub off the sticky tar-leftovers before giving up and going on. "My wife used to be a galley cook in the Andoran Fleet, and she is raising up my daughter in the craft. If it's food you want, food I can give. It'd be an honor to break bread with you."
Sigmar is about to demand a feast right here and now, but Oyok insists they wait. They should report back to Vrilu and, more importantly, at least bring some of their own supplies to share. Sigmar isn't so sure how well hardtack will go over but his tengu friends is persistent. Besides, Devers claims her needs some time to get ready and clean up (he once against tries to brush off the noxious black slime Sigmar affixed to him).
Promises made, Oyok and Sigmar head back to their temporary abode in Fort Holiday. They pass among the shacks, hovels and other buildings of the little settlement. A few times Sigmar is hailed or saluted as a victorious warrior. Worse things, the young man supposed, then being lauded.
Still, would it have killed any of them to hand him a sandwich?
They reach their own house on the edge of the square without adventure but, curiously, the wood golem is standing at the door. Like an old man taking in the day, he simply stands in the sun, just past the door lintel. Both Oyok and Sigmar speak to the construct but it ignores them, reacting to them no more then the harsh tropical sunlight playing over the varnished surface.
Eventually they come inside. Oyok heads down to the kitchens and sends Sigmar to tell the Company Woman they are alive and victorious.
"She might care." Oyok whistles, eyes twinkling.
Sigmar heads to her room and finds the door closed. He pauses though because he can hear voices inside. Orphan habits die hard and he can't help but eavesdrop.
"I upheld my end of the bargain." Vrilu says, using her most formal, corporate voice.
The reply is a snarl of hisses, spits and snarls like a snake dragged over sandpaper.
After a pause, Vrilu goes on, clearly replying to the weird sound. "Well, that is hardly my concern. I merely provided the information, what you do with it, that's your own lookout. If you troops can't uphold their end, that is no skin off my nose. It was merely a gesture of good faith, in any case. Open a possibly profitable channel of communication."
More hisses and then Virlu says, "Fair enough. Very well." A last spat of hisses, a sizzle of magic and then silence.
For a moment, in the silence that followed that sibilant spat, Sigmar simply stood there. And then stood there a while longer yet. Only to slowly, by degrees like a great redwood coming down, let himself fall forward, his hands reaching out to either side of the doorway to catch himself. Head down and leaning into the closed door like this, his athletic frame might bring to mind a race horse before its starting gate. No starting signal sounded, however. The eyes were closed and contemplative. A long exhale followed.
Someone close was lying to him.
And someone else equally close was going to betray him.
Well, this established the identity of one of these two. While the line between a liar and a traitor was surely a fine one, this had been the primary conclusions of Ryzhov's divination: that the dragonling had some skullduggery to look forward to. Oh goody. It had bothered him initially, given how his wasn't the sharpest intellect with which to puzzle out his comrades loyalties. 'Had', in the past tense. Right until he reminded himself how he didn't give a toss about these small people and their small plots. He was a dragon, dammit. He was beyond their petty trickery. Whatever knife they planted in his scaled back would be returned fivefold, one dagger-like claw after another. Their betrayal meant nothing to him - not in practice, certainly not in feeling.
Even so, knowing that Vrilu was one of the two conspirators was almost a relief. Had it been, say, Oyok, then shearing the tengu in half might have elicited some actual regret. He liked his bird-bro. The company woman, though? She was comfortably hatable, almost deliberately so. She was so easy to dislike, she might as well have stepped out of some sort of cautionary parable for children: the evil moneyman out to turn the kids' playground into a sweatshop or something. And that M.O. seemed to hold true here. Allying with the toad guys? Selling out Fort Holiday to them? Did Sigmar have this right?
Galloping grindylows, Vrilu. This was low even for her. Any number of castaways could have died. Oyok could have died in the attack. Arianne could have died. Ozzy could have... Eh, no, the sand pile could likely survive an entire stampede of dinno-sars. Did the desert not survive the camels that walked it? Still, though. And for what? Some nebulous deal with the toad boys to find that dwarf? All to raise a company's profit margin? Already hot by nature, this thought ignited the teen's blood further. Of course, some voices might decry this as hypocrisy. Was it not he who dismissed aforementioned 'small people' as wholly insignificant to him? Who was he to deny their worth with one breath, only to get offended on their behalf in the next?
Those voices would be correct. But Sigmar had never heard of sour grapes as anything other than spoiled fruit, and was in no state to ruminate on his coping mechanisms at the moment regardless. Still leaning forward, he raised his head to look directly into the door. It was off to the races. Such a shame. He might not entirely like the woman, but Vrilu had a set of stones that could shame a hill giant. He respected that.
The door nearly flew off its feeble hinges. Standing in the newly made portal was - who else? - the dragon boy, balancing comfortably on one foot. His other leg was still outstretched in the kick that had demolished the door. He hopped inside with a breezy smile. It was a grin the company woman had seen on him once before: the one that didn't reach his eyes.
"Now I know what you're gonna say... but you can relax. You've got nothin' to worry about. Honest." The tone was easy as ever. The fist he raised appeared somehow comparatively heavy. "I promise to raise Plank right after I punch you six feet under."
Was he actually going to kill her? Sigmar wondered himself. He honestly wasn't sure! Impulsive as the lad was, he was happy to let Vrilu's smart mouth and his own itching fists decide this for him. Thinking was overrated.
"Like, are you sure this is wise-" Ozzy just had time to stay before Sigmar smashes the door with enough force to shatter it. A small blizzard of splinters showers Vrilu's room, filling the air with the scent of sawdust and pine sap.
Sigmar's kick is rewarded with that rarest of events, ranked with solar eclipses and double rainbows. A flicker of surprise across the Company Woman's face. She is seated on the bed, as if staring at the wall not the door. There is no sign of the lizardman, but Sigmar notes, on the floor in front of the woman, is a small bit of bone. It is jagged and broken, as if someone had snapped it in half.
In an instant though, Vrilu's mask is reapplied, cool indifference, with the usual hint of annoyance. Still seated she raises a hand, 'Oh, that is quite enough of that." She snaps her fingers, the sound oddly loud in the small room. Then Sigmar suddenly finds himself in mid-air because the previously solid ground below him is gone, replaced with a neat cube of entirely empty space.
He still almost made it. With cat-like reflexes the youth reaches for the side, fingers spreading out. Yet, at the last moment, as if a vindictive god is playing tricks, he misses the ledge and falls downward. The dragon-ling hits the bottom of the new pit with a thump, finding the floor to be rough-cut stone, cold to the touch. He is probably ten feet down, the walls sloped against him slightly.
Looking up he spots Vrilu at the edge, looking down.
"Now, stay still for a moment." She says, like one trying to reign in a troublesome child at a public event. The Company Woman flicks off a bit of splintered door off her shoulder, the bit of wood sailing down into the pit.
"Judging from your actions, you overhead some of my conversation. I am curious why the golem allowed you entrance, I instructed it to prevent all guests." The Company Woman ponders this for moment before nodding to herself, 'Ah, I see. Be glad, then. Clearly the golem considers you a member of the party and not a guest. An oversight on my part, one for which now I must pay the price of explaining myself. To you, of all people."
She pauses a moment, girding herself for an obviously unpleasant and difficult task. Vrilu muttered something arcane and moved her fingers again, but Sigmar didn't noticed anything change. The pit remained as cool and solid as ever. There was no fireball or bolt of lightning.
Then, voice still casual, Vrilu spoke. "Have you ever played whipball?"
Sigmar's head actually hurts at the sudden change of topic, a entirely unexpected changing of gears. Even his desire for revenge and anger is thrown off track for a moment, a wagon wheel jumping the expected rut, even if only for a moment.
Because the answer was yes, of course.
Whipball was a simple enough game. Every player got a 'home', a bit of cracked curb, a rock, this old stump. Then all players tried to kick the one ball toward enemy homes. if the ball connected the owner of that home lost a point and the last non-defender to touch the ball gained a point. The winner was who reached the established points needed. It was a street game that lent itself to the making and breaking of sudden alliances. More importantly it was a game almost exclusively reserved for orphans and urchins, the gutter sweepings of the street.
Sigmar knew it well, of course, but how did Vrilu know it?
Something on his face must have informed the Company Woman for she gave him a frosty smile. "yes, I assumed you would. In any case, I am playing whipball. I hope you can perhaps understand that?"