Clicking Your Heels Three Times
-----
The ancient dwarf throws a fresh log on the smoldering campfire, allowing it to crackle back to life before he begins again.
“Now if I remember right – and it’s funny how the mind causes you to fill in the blanks sometimes—“
“--It all began with Moonpate, or was it Donkor? Can’t remember, exactly.”
“One of those two anyways, figured out that the damned teleporting devil was scrying on us all. “
"That’s how he was rippin into us. He always knew where we was and when to hit us. Never let us rest neither. Strong as ever with our weird pact thing, and we’re still slowly draining away.”
“So I put on my patch and journeyed to the ol’ fire to meet me to find out where the fiend was scryin from.”
“Kinda blows my mind eh? Here I’m telling you, about a time I went ta visit me, only then I wasn’t quite me yet then, was I.” The old dwarf shakes his head and stokes the fire one more time.
“Anyways, the answer was the throne room. Turns out the devil was use’n some kind of magic pool in there.”
“He wouldn’t give up that room so easy neither.” The dwarf cracks his knuckles and pauses as though remembering. “I ever tell you about the time I jumped off a ledge and fell forty feet to bury my axe into that sucker’s carapace? Oh wait – that was earlier.”
“Anyways, once we got the devil’s pool, we got ta lookin around the whole of the place.”
“That’s when we discovered what was waiting for us back outside. I remember Xaven was pretty pissed at the double-cross. Made us look around a whole lot more.”
“Anyways, so it was with use’n the pool that we then figured out that the pharaohs had built a back door into the pyramid. Gandel guessed it was so they could exit, after performing their pact rituals, without being seen.”
“That hidden back door was through one of the song tubes. They’re these stone pipes that makes weird noises when you pass through them as purple clouds, you’ll know what I mean when you see em.”
“Wait! What am I saying? If you’re on the bottom of the pyramid you’ve already come through em before!”
“That totally reminds me. One of the funniest things I ever saw. Hurgah and Karek pick up Hrokon and turn him upside down. Out spills like a dozen cloud potions. Was that before or after the devil’s pool? Can’t remember.”
“Turns out that before the half-orc and his halfling buddy came down the song tubes, they loaded up a bunch of empties with the purple pool liquid to make sure they’d all be able to make their way back. They held back that little bit of wisdom.”
“I remember that Thalia totally called us all fools for not thinkin of it first – but she didn’t either, did she now.”
“Anyways, so we all turned back into purples clouds snuck out the back exit in the dead of night. And that’s when we turned the tables on the rich chick and her devil monks, and that enabled me and Lydia to break through the lines and head back to Sothis to get proof of what was really going on to her boss man, Krenshar, but you didn’t come here to ask me about any of that now did ye, lad.”
“Lad?”
“You still here?”
“Lad?”
“Lad!”
The dwarf sighs, “Youth, they never listen to the whole story.”
“And I was just getting to the important part – what he really needed to be warned about. . .”