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Shadows of a Savage Tide
Henri eyed the rest of the group with his usual wariness…a useful survivor trait picked up on the roads of his youth. Despite the mutual battles shared, he was still wary of this motley group of people he’d found himself thrown into, not the least of which was getting involved in noble politics.
And it was noble politics, even if they didn’t realize it. The things he’d found out about their patron’s brother with some careful digging, and then the follow up information on the people said murdering knave hung out with…the others were in over their heads, and simply didn’t know it. Maybe if they were lucky, the ones they were messing with would also look over their heads…he doubted it, but you never knew.
Rose, of course, didn’t have a clue. Forged were generally pretty blind in social situations, and the mere idea of a druid Forged still goggled his imagination. The fact that her armor plates were all made of dark green ironwood with vestigial spikes on them only made the image the more ludicrous…as if the squirrel that enjoyed sitting atop her carved head like some strange plumed ornament to the living helm that was her somehow sadly carved face didn’t do the same.
That said, he’d seen how hard those fists of hers could hit, and if the vines that seemed to be growing in and around her were a bit disconcerting…well, Forged were disconcerting enough.
Eshe would probably understand better what they were dealing with. The Karrnathi wizardess was a consummate professional, who knew how to fight better then most wizards and wasn’t afraid to show it. She was one of the students of the new Silver Waters philosophy coming out of the Redhand Principality to the north…and wore a black wolf badge on silver to proudly proclaim her allegiance to the equally weird and new kingdom arising around the improbably named Fort Lewt, and the grim reputation of the Karrn they called General Ruin. Now that was a proper moniker for a Karrn, he reflected, looking away from the slender, toned spellcaster before she could catch his eyes. The Wolves had a reputation for professionalism and proficiency, and the trading house they had established here in the city was making a lot of nobles and natives nervous. The Prince of Redhand was a resurrected Karrn archmage or something, by all accounts, a nearly legendary hero who had ‘retired’ into the position of leading an entire city back to power after the ravages of the Age of Worms. And, said man was a member of the very party of likewise legendary people who had stopped the Faceless god of worms from claiming a divine mantle during that horrible time.
Her bodyguard, Threk, was a true Wolf…a heavily armored, towering mountain of muscle, tusks, and scars, shoulders so broad as to be almost ape-like in build. Half-orcs were not a common sight in Karrnath, but he’d heard that a fairly sizable contingent had established themselves among the feared elite heavy scouts of the Wolves of Ruin, and this young one was no different from the rest. Few people would see the intelligence lurking in the reddish eyes, seeing instead the jutting tusks and bristling body hair, looking past the immaculately kept armor and weapons that signified this wasn’t merely one big, ugly pile of trouble, but a smart and disciplined world of hurt. He didn’t slouch, he didn’t swear, he didn’t drool, and he had excellent table manners, too. The fact he had rather strong body odor was helped by continual baths and, surprisingly, to the presence of Rose, who seemed to emanate a freshness of the air that simultaneously dealt with the humid stink, the ever-present rot of fish, the smell of too many people in small places, and the sweat of a big armored half-orc with airy lightness.
Forged Druid. Right.
His own job, of course, was to be the sly one. He loathed having to do it, of course, vastly preferring to avoid a fight or have one straight up rather then being a skulking whisper-monger…but it had become plainly apparent to him that he was the only one who could do the job, and so it had fallen to him. His life of travel had taught him how to relate to people, to loosen tongues and find places and things…and, not coincidentally, to get lost among such stuff and be unobtrusive about it all.
But the rogues of Sasseroon certainly hadn’t been expecting anyone like them to come crashing into their lives. The guild of the Water Dragons was no more…Threk had unceremoniously dumped the severed head of the former guild leader, no less then the eldest daughter of the ‘noble family’ in charge of the waterfront area, onto the table at the great hall where said nobles met, along with a slew of retrieved documentation entailing exactly what said woman had been up to. Of course, they hadn’t known she was the eldest daughter at the time her head had been lopped off, but those were the breaks…
Happily, the very fact that he was a plain, leathers-clad nobody in a party with two Wolves and a forged Druid meant nobody paid much attention to him. He hid his accent well and had been in the city longer then the others…he knew it better then many people who had lived there all their lives.
Now, their lovely patron, the noblewoman who oversaw one of the busier districts of this seaport, had another job for them. She wanted them to find her brother, and bring him back to account for his actions. Henri winced…he had no evidence but drunken words and whispers, so nothing to bring up the fact that not only had the knave robbed his own sister and family, he’d likely murdered his own parents to gain the inheritance. The fact his younger sister had gained it all had obviously derailed his plans…Henri found it startling the young Lady was still alive, in all honesty.
But now, he looked out over the water past the others…the sheltered harbor that was the prize of the Principalities, that was beckoning them to a cove nearby, a place pried out of his informants via a slip of the tongue and the drink to grease it through. They’d be taking ship there…going overland through the surrounding sea swamp and jungle was not only time-consuming, it was far more dangerous. He’d lined up a ride, and the sea was beckoning him, a break in the long roads that had brought him here. Rose didn’t seem too enthusiastic about it all, plants and salt water not mixing, but the Wolves had taken the news with the stoicness of Marines and without batting an eye.
Sure, they were a reliable bunch…but could he trust them? Did he want to? His roads were past, his tracks hidden, his name buried…he had no desire to resurrect them now.
But gold, a new road, adventure, new sights to see…these were luring him on with a force so strong it was almost physical. To be on the road and on the move again…he couldn’t deny the excitement he felt even as the fear returned, too.
Eshe smoothed her close-cropped black hair back as she surveyed the dead creatures, thoughtfully impaled on the arrows of Threk and Henri. Even as she examined the twisted, warped forms of the monkeys, trying to ignore the windy, thin cries rising up out of Rose’s chest as the Forged beheld the ravaged forms of the animals, she could see they were smoking, holes starting to appear in them as if they were collapsing or dissolving from within.
Clinical detachment had been drummed into her some time ago. As a Wolf spellcaster, her duties encompassed the whole of troop support…artillery, enhancement, scouting, movement, and especially recovery. She wasn’t yet powerful enough to fill all those capacities, but that was why she had been dispatched to this city in the midst of nowhere. The Wolves were mercenaries now, for better or worse, and she had been selected as a representative for the ‘new’ model of Wolves, those not dominated by the bitterness and hate of lingering resentments from the Last War.
Which is not to say she didn’t have her own agenda. Bettering herself from the near-total poverty of her family, and removing herself from being married off to burden some other family or produce more sons of Karrnath to die in newer and more glorious battles were merely minor accomplishments at this point.
Her background of living in a port city like Korrth had served her well, even as it hampered her in the more rural duties of wilderness survival that characterized the elite of the Wolves. Stealth training was not her strongpoint, however…she had come to the Wolves, and especially the Lady Hazé, to learn magic, and this she was doing.
The reputation of the Wolves was cemented by what the locals called the Night of Worms, when a great brood-fiend had come marching out of the jungle to lay the city to waste. One of the few wizards of the city had gotten the bright idea to call up the Wolves, the very people rumored to be dealing with these creatures.
Only a few minutes after the writhing, Worm-imbued army had come marching into the southern quarter of the city and down towards the docks, covering everything with a vile, choking green mist, the Stormwolf had hove into the sky over the town and a squad of Wolves led by none other then the General himself had rappelled down into the heart of the mist.
Only a few minutes later, the mist had literally exploded into racing sheets of white flame, devoured by the appetite of the black blade Thorn. Reeling Worm-born were getting hacked down and blasted by sheets of silver magic and silver swords unlike anything the locals had ever seen.
They’d gawked at the airship. They’d gawked at the grim men hacking their way through the terrible tide of undead that had most of the town troops mewling in terror to merely consider them. They’d gawked at the big white circle blasted into the stones of the city where nothing remained of the horrendously powerful, vile creature that had led them.
General Ruin had somewhat later politely asked if he might not be able to open a trading house in the city, and the leaders of the city had literally fallen over themselves to grant approval.
Eshe had seen it all, undergoing basic naval and marine training aboard the Stormwolf. That had been the first time it really struck home that the General wasn’t just serving a great Karrnathi leader, but that she was serving under a living legend.
She had seen it all, and she wanted to be able to BE like that. Albeit without the General’s terrifying scars, those she could do without.
Getting posted here had been a surprise, of course…there were no end of duties for warriors as elite as those being turned out at Fort Lewt and Fort Hole. Among the Wolves, and especially those of Cyran blood, work in the Mournland was most prized, for both danger and the rewards in both gold and reclamation of heritage. The slaying of Valenar was never far from the minds of those who’d survived the Plains of Blood, and elves certainly were less then welcome at the Fort unless of proven Cyran or Karrnathi origin. Certainly those dispatched into the Mournland quickly got better at what they had to do, or they quickly got dead.
These animals, they looked to be common monkeys, had been warped and twisted by powerful magic…extremely powerful magic, judging by the hateful, violent cacophony of cries in the jungle beyond, where the beasts sounded like they were tearing one another apart. The massively overgrown jaws seemed the only common point…jutting bones, extra heads, spiky growths, tentacles, extra eyes and limbs, all wrapped up in a hateful jumble of frenzied hunger.
As she watched, the four monkeys crumbled into stinking goo, drying out with near magical speed from a hissing pool of burbling acidic goop, to a mere steaming remnant and crumbled, warped skeletons.
Not the kind of thing to be lightly tossed off.
She pulled a flat glass crystal from her bandolier, rapidly wove the entire sight from beginning to end as a small illusion, and infused it into the glass. Her superiors would want to see this.
Henri was at the top of the cliff, looking over into the hidden cove beyond on his belly. Slowly, he got to his feet…a clear sign of either total idiocy, or lack of need for stealth. Given the wary, hunted look he always seemed to be sporting, she doubted it was the former. Seeing how far a former Aundairean – yes, she’d been able to pick out the shadows of his accent, and more to the point, his too-fancy Aundair Swordhawk fencing style – had come to get away from whatever was haunting him, she had little reason to either trust or distrust him, but he’d proven capable at his job, which had included the type of intelligence gathering that was the forte of spies, informers and the like, she had to wonder who he had crossed to run this far.
Her superiors would find out. They tended to be interested in the background of adjutant operatives.
Rose was another local, such as they were, wandering out of the jungle with little memory of what had become of her. Deep mahogany-green, and carved with more artistry then it seemed most warforged were, and definitely on the slender side, she had displayed a remarkable green thumb (hah!) and been attending to the gardens in one of the outer city’s parks until lured away by Master Cupral, the polished Forged who directed the Wolves’ business interests in the city. General Ruin had a startlingly open mind about the Forged and their place in the world, and encouraged their education and recruitment wherever possible. Rose had been given a warm welcome and answers for what became a torrent of questions, as Eshe recalled. Her whisperwind voice was gentle and soothing…even if her wooden fists, suddenly sprouting knuckle-long thorns as hard as steel, were anything but soothing to those who crossed her, and she was developing into quite the pugilist. Still, the Forged’s empathy with living things seemed to be her strongest trait, and Eshe knew enough of the unmoving face and posture of the Forged to know that Rose was seriously upset at anything that could do this to poor animals.
Threk moved up to stand beside Henri, towering nearly a head over the slender human. Eshe knew he’d be taking in the tactical situation, formulating a plan of approach and assault based on the new data he’d be seeing…something few would expect of a member of his breed. Ostensibly, his job was to protect her. In reality, his job was to protect everyone the best he knew how, and keeping her alive as her gifts emerged would only help that.
She noted how his large hand rested upon the handle of his axe, and did not come off of it. That was not a good sign. She gave Rose a solid whack on the shoulder – the distracted Forged wouldn’t feel anything less forceful – and hurried to move up beside him.
The smoke fires they’d seen and the animal carnage was clearly indicative of what had probably happened to the camp down below. Eshe swore, wondering exactly how much of their mission had changed, and if the humans who’d been down there had been changed as these poor beasts had. She hoped not, but pessimism had its day.
Whether the conniving bastard they were being sent to fetch was also here was another matter entirely. If he’d been transformed and was dead, they’d have to hope to find some identifying marks among the remains.
“Let’s go. Henri, please test the way,” the startlingly smooth, deep bass of Threk’s voice broke into her survey of the hazy situation. Their scout paced off down the path quickly, eyes darting and wary for movement.
Threk put up his axe and calmly motioned for the others to do likewise, stepping carefully backwards to give the beleaguered pirate captain some room. By the way she’d been tossing about familiar insults and witticisms in her northern Lazaar cant, these things dissolving and crumbling as they tried to get to her and eat her had been her former crew and shipmates. Given the too-bright, fevered stare of her eyes, and the real skill with which she’d been plying the rapier she was holding, he was inclined to not kill her…her precious crew of pirates had gotten a horrible final reward, and as far as he knew, these ‘Scarlet Dragons’ had never dared attack a ship flying a Wolf flag. There’d only been a couple pirates who’d dared that end, and their explosive endings had rather proven the point that the General didn’t support the idea of piracy for profit, especially as applied to his own ships.
“Henri,” he rumbled out, as usual making the slender Aundair jump with the timbre of his voice. “Have a kind word with the beautiful woman with the sword, and see if she might not know the location of our primary objective.”
The human blinked, translated that, and quickly put away his own rapier to step forwards, hands wide reassuringly, and start some dialogue. He wasn’t a wordsmith, but he was the best they had in this situation.
Eshe was doing a quick scan of the area for anything magical…and hopefully not anything as bad as the crumbling black shells carefully tucked into a lead carry-box in his own pack. Her eyes had streamed black tears just looking at the remnants of the magic on the things, and it had come quickly apparent that whatever magic had been associated with them, it had been the center of the transformative magic which had doomed this pirate cove.
The woman’s story confirmed it, Threk listening carefully, just like Eshe was, to the story of the unleashed magic. Their quarry had obviously escaped their clutches, just as he’d managed to slip away back at the port.
His lazy eyes opened slightly as the pirate revealed that she’d sent her second in command back after their employer, in the mistaken belief that the noble house had planned this escapade from the beginning, and holding the blood responsible for the downfall of all concerned. An honest error, if a stupid one…his trainers would have chastised her immediately for such linear logic. The Lady’s brother had proven himself a devious thinker, and the Lady herself far too inexperienced for such a clever ploy. Efficient misdirection.
Whatever, they had best pursue a tactical withdrawal and return home quickly. Given the reluctance of their initial transportation to stick around, and the nervousness they’d displayed at the cacophony arising from the jungle about, he had little doubt that their ride had withdrawn and left them to fend for themselves in getting home.
Happily, one of the ships of the pirates seemed to have escaped the general chaos and fire that had seized the rest of the camp, and was still floating out in the harbor. He smiled inwardly at the chance to claim such a prize…a ship was fine booty in and of itself, along with the rest of the loot they had been able to claim as they made their way through this cave complex.
He was a bit startled when Rose spoke up and in her gentle windsong voice advised the pirate Captain that she was infected with some sort of fever, possibly arising out of the very thing that had transformed her crewmen. He was even more surprised when the wooden Forged presented a pouch of some herbal tea that could be mixed up and drank to possibly help fight it off.
Born with a healer’s heart, he noted, noticing also that her spiked fists were gore covered with the remnants of these strange mutates and she took no notice of it. Indeed, it had seemed that, if anything, she fought these transformed, unlucky souls all the more harder simply to lay them to rest.
He remembered a question once asked of General Ruin by a typically clueless newcomer, as they watched him take apart their instructors in anything but mock combat; smoothly, effortlessly, so far beyond the skill of anything Threk had ever seen that his mouth still wanted to gape open remembering it. The human had asked a question about protecting the healers, inferring that they were soft, unable to care for themselves.
Gods, those eyes. Calm, still, death. The idiot had frozen up as if he’d had a gauntleted fist about his throat.
“A Healer,” the General had said, in that whisper-grind of his mangled voice, “knows best how to save you, and knows best how to make you die. What you want to have happen is to never have one of those gentle souls start practicing the taking of life, for they will show you how you failed…and they will never be there to save you again.”
He eyed those spiked knuckles again, smiled to himself, and scratched the healing scar on his side where one of the feral things had managed a lucky hacking strike with a cutlass. Hands of a healer. Druidic, clerical, bardic…he didn’t much care by what tradition the healing magic came from, he was a soldier and he appreciated it all. He rather suspected Rose herself wasn’t entirely sure, which didn’t make it any the less effective.
Henri was turning away from the Captain, obviously done talking, and the woman seemed somewhat less uneasy and paranoid.
Eshe’s finger rapped gently twice against the back of his right arm. She was done. He moved his arm out and in…he’d gotten his tactical map of the area down, able to firmly visualize the complex for a full later report.
After all, nothing said the Wolves couldn’t use a secret port in the middle of nowhere with ready-made defensive works in place. Pirates didn’t get to have all the fun…
Rose knew little about sailing, but she was strong, far stronger then she looked, ironwood being a molded part of her body, and the fibers that gave her movement and life tougher and stronger then normal human muscle. Work was a good thing – it kept the Forged’s mind off the horrible things she had witnessed.
The flesh-and-blood members didn’t have her insight or empathy into the wild. She could feel every grain in the wooden hull of the ship they were sailing, she could picture with incredible clarity each and every tree these planks had been hewn from. Raising her head, she could inhale the wind the sails were catching, swirling it about the chamber within her head, feel the pollens and nectars of distant vegetation carried on the breezes.
The agony of the land about where the…thing…had exploded made her ironwood skin crawl. The land had been screaming for cleansing, for the grace and relief of burning, purifying fire to rid itself of this blot of infection. She’d felt only an echo of similar potency when she stood about the inner courtyard of the Wolf Trading Enclave, where the Broodfiend had died, and where it had been Fed to the Land by Thorn. Fell, terrible power, scoured clean and given freely back to the land itself.
Truly, the General of the Steel bore a most frightening, and most noble, weapon, to be capable of such a thing. More then anything else, it had inspired her to learn more of these Wolves, and if there was something more profound then merely selling their services for bits of worthless metal behind their activities.
Hard fingers caressed the wooden figurehead of the ship, carved and sanded to an exaggerated resemblance to a half-fish, half-human creature she believed to be called a mermaid, highly stylized with embellishments that didn’t seem quite realistic.
She had best learn more of the sea if she was to live upon an island, and go traveling upon ships over the water. Master Cupral had been endlessly patient with her questions, as had the other Forged she had met at the Wolf complex, which numbered almost all of those present within the city.
Henri was at the wheel of the ship. Rose wasn’t adept in all the forms of human expression, although she studied them intensely…a lot could be read in the voluntary and involuntary movements of a humanoid’s mobile face. He seemed to be radiating both fear and eagerness as he clung to the wheel. Such a strange combination. Threk was busying himself with the ropes, his natural might and obvious training helping him keep the ship on course. The wizardess, Eshe, was down below, taking inventory of the ship and what had come with it. The half-orc had informed her that possession of a ship was quite a prize…it required substantial gold outlay to construct one, and capturing one, even as small as this, intact, was quite a coup.
Rose ran hard fingers over patterns of grains that had seen the wearing of countless hands, and saw again the forest giants from which they had been carved, an echo of the life they had once had.
Magic tingled, ready to be called upon, swirled with possibilities. Some of that life could be brought forth, and in a fashion, perhaps those trees could live again…
Threk levered his axe out of the skull of the batrachian with a grunt, snarling as he saw the pirate who’d brought them here leap out the window. A fellow urukhar, but lost to the lure of gold and green…or perhaps not, given his loyalty to his captain. The Lady was breathing hard, Henri’s rapier in her hand, while the slender man kept one knife at the ready, the other laying at the base of the window with blood upon it from where it had been buried in the fleeing mate’s shoulder.
Eshe calmly drove her stiletto into the base of the skull of one of the slumbering creatures she’d brought down with her magic…it barely jerked with the clean strike, and without a change in expression, she proceeded to the next. Rose was covered in slime and gore and bits of froggish skin…she had charged into the knot of the things, scattering them right and left, and found herself grappling one of them.
Grappling a Forged with iron hard thorns sprouting all over her body was a messy business. Threk noted the carpet in the room was quite ruined.
“The rest of the manse still needs to be secured, Lady,” he stated in his slow, solemn manner, a mode of speaking that drew attention. As he said this, he moved quickly to secure the doorway through which they’d entered, shield up and axe ready. He pulled his head back in time to dodge the thrown spear, which whipped past him and thunked solidly into the headboard of what he assumed to be her bed. “Perhaps, Henri, you should release our allies and allow them to contribute to the defense once again?”
Hurt pride in the face of the other sellswords was enough for him to tell that they’d be motivated to do their absolute utmost not to let down the Lady again, especially given the performance of the relative newcomers to her service. Their disappointing defense would, of course, only serve to make his own team look that much more proficient, and he didn’t intend to do anything to disappoint that image.
He closed the door forcefully, planting his armored foot behind it, and something froggish slammed into the far side with an angry belch, loosening the hinges. Spears and fists beat impotently on the thick wood for a few blows as he shook his head in wonder at the density of their savage little brains, and then the door shuddered under a heavier impact of body weight.
The second impact he timed perfectly, hitting the door at the same moment and taking most of the force himself. As he outweighed the frog-men almost half again, the door merely shuddered a little and didn’t budge much. Behind him, the released guards were scrambling for their gear and weapons, while Rose hurriedly chanted spells to heal the worst of injuries, and Eshe moved up to flank the door, which shuddered again against his shoulder, and then a crude axebit popped through the wood next to his shoulder as the rage of the creatures got the better of them. A second strike punched through and bounced off his armor, which elicited a further flurry of angry axe strikes.
“Rockborn, if you could kindly open the door on a three count?” he asked, except it was not a question. The Dwarf eagerly hurried up to grab the knob as Threk held up three fingers, and counted down.
His spring backwards surprised everyone but Eshe…he shouldn’t have been able to jump so far wearing so much metal. The door swept open, and forced by the weight of those behind, the batrachians spilled into the room.
Literally, because Eshe’s foot caught the oversized feet of the lead one, and it went crashing to the ground almost at Threk’s feet. His axe came down once with a solid crunch and split its skull, and he heaved back up with practiced rhythm, lifting the corpse half off the ground before his axe came free, stepping to one side to smash the second one out of the way.
The three people with ready bows released point blank into the knot of swamp-dwellers, and Eshe tossed a flask of something around the corner. There was a woosh and explosion of snow and ice, and the overeager frogfolk were suddenly happy to be anywhere but here.
Threk drove the handle of his axe down on the skull of his hop-happy opponent, who learned to his dismay that the top of the kite shield had rather sharp edges for a reason. With a grunt of pure brutal power, Threk hurled the frogger away, ripping its inflatable throat out in a welter of gore in the process, waited for the second volley of shots to drop two more of the frogmen, and then was after them with one of the few holdovers from his barbaric youth…a wild and savage howling warcry, shaking the ceiling panels, that heralded that yes, a Wolf was coming, and coming for them!
Life is good.
Axe ready to cut, he pounded after them, Rose on his heels with her pieces of frog-hide still wetly hanging from her, as fearsome and bloody a backup as he could wish for. The others hurried to keep pace, even the Lady getting caught up in the excitement and hurrying along behind them.
"Feed the Land!" he howled, as he caught up to the slowest of them before they could hop down the staircase to the first floor in their haste, and his axe came down. Eyes blazing with the savage joy of his forebears, he didn't slow down, crashing through the railing to plummet into the middle of the knot of those gathering below, striking one with heavy boots and crushing it flat, taking hold of his axe, and letting his reason go for pure animal fury.
Yes, life was very good, indeed.
===Aelryinth
Shadows of a Savage Tide
Henri eyed the rest of the group with his usual wariness…a useful survivor trait picked up on the roads of his youth. Despite the mutual battles shared, he was still wary of this motley group of people he’d found himself thrown into, not the least of which was getting involved in noble politics.
And it was noble politics, even if they didn’t realize it. The things he’d found out about their patron’s brother with some careful digging, and then the follow up information on the people said murdering knave hung out with…the others were in over their heads, and simply didn’t know it. Maybe if they were lucky, the ones they were messing with would also look over their heads…he doubted it, but you never knew.
Rose, of course, didn’t have a clue. Forged were generally pretty blind in social situations, and the mere idea of a druid Forged still goggled his imagination. The fact that her armor plates were all made of dark green ironwood with vestigial spikes on them only made the image the more ludicrous…as if the squirrel that enjoyed sitting atop her carved head like some strange plumed ornament to the living helm that was her somehow sadly carved face didn’t do the same.
That said, he’d seen how hard those fists of hers could hit, and if the vines that seemed to be growing in and around her were a bit disconcerting…well, Forged were disconcerting enough.
Eshe would probably understand better what they were dealing with. The Karrnathi wizardess was a consummate professional, who knew how to fight better then most wizards and wasn’t afraid to show it. She was one of the students of the new Silver Waters philosophy coming out of the Redhand Principality to the north…and wore a black wolf badge on silver to proudly proclaim her allegiance to the equally weird and new kingdom arising around the improbably named Fort Lewt, and the grim reputation of the Karrn they called General Ruin. Now that was a proper moniker for a Karrn, he reflected, looking away from the slender, toned spellcaster before she could catch his eyes. The Wolves had a reputation for professionalism and proficiency, and the trading house they had established here in the city was making a lot of nobles and natives nervous. The Prince of Redhand was a resurrected Karrn archmage or something, by all accounts, a nearly legendary hero who had ‘retired’ into the position of leading an entire city back to power after the ravages of the Age of Worms. And, said man was a member of the very party of likewise legendary people who had stopped the Faceless god of worms from claiming a divine mantle during that horrible time.
Her bodyguard, Threk, was a true Wolf…a heavily armored, towering mountain of muscle, tusks, and scars, shoulders so broad as to be almost ape-like in build. Half-orcs were not a common sight in Karrnath, but he’d heard that a fairly sizable contingent had established themselves among the feared elite heavy scouts of the Wolves of Ruin, and this young one was no different from the rest. Few people would see the intelligence lurking in the reddish eyes, seeing instead the jutting tusks and bristling body hair, looking past the immaculately kept armor and weapons that signified this wasn’t merely one big, ugly pile of trouble, but a smart and disciplined world of hurt. He didn’t slouch, he didn’t swear, he didn’t drool, and he had excellent table manners, too. The fact he had rather strong body odor was helped by continual baths and, surprisingly, to the presence of Rose, who seemed to emanate a freshness of the air that simultaneously dealt with the humid stink, the ever-present rot of fish, the smell of too many people in small places, and the sweat of a big armored half-orc with airy lightness.
Forged Druid. Right.
His own job, of course, was to be the sly one. He loathed having to do it, of course, vastly preferring to avoid a fight or have one straight up rather then being a skulking whisper-monger…but it had become plainly apparent to him that he was the only one who could do the job, and so it had fallen to him. His life of travel had taught him how to relate to people, to loosen tongues and find places and things…and, not coincidentally, to get lost among such stuff and be unobtrusive about it all.
But the rogues of Sasseroon certainly hadn’t been expecting anyone like them to come crashing into their lives. The guild of the Water Dragons was no more…Threk had unceremoniously dumped the severed head of the former guild leader, no less then the eldest daughter of the ‘noble family’ in charge of the waterfront area, onto the table at the great hall where said nobles met, along with a slew of retrieved documentation entailing exactly what said woman had been up to. Of course, they hadn’t known she was the eldest daughter at the time her head had been lopped off, but those were the breaks…
Happily, the very fact that he was a plain, leathers-clad nobody in a party with two Wolves and a forged Druid meant nobody paid much attention to him. He hid his accent well and had been in the city longer then the others…he knew it better then many people who had lived there all their lives.
Now, their lovely patron, the noblewoman who oversaw one of the busier districts of this seaport, had another job for them. She wanted them to find her brother, and bring him back to account for his actions. Henri winced…he had no evidence but drunken words and whispers, so nothing to bring up the fact that not only had the knave robbed his own sister and family, he’d likely murdered his own parents to gain the inheritance. The fact his younger sister had gained it all had obviously derailed his plans…Henri found it startling the young Lady was still alive, in all honesty.
But now, he looked out over the water past the others…the sheltered harbor that was the prize of the Principalities, that was beckoning them to a cove nearby, a place pried out of his informants via a slip of the tongue and the drink to grease it through. They’d be taking ship there…going overland through the surrounding sea swamp and jungle was not only time-consuming, it was far more dangerous. He’d lined up a ride, and the sea was beckoning him, a break in the long roads that had brought him here. Rose didn’t seem too enthusiastic about it all, plants and salt water not mixing, but the Wolves had taken the news with the stoicness of Marines and without batting an eye.
Sure, they were a reliable bunch…but could he trust them? Did he want to? His roads were past, his tracks hidden, his name buried…he had no desire to resurrect them now.
But gold, a new road, adventure, new sights to see…these were luring him on with a force so strong it was almost physical. To be on the road and on the move again…he couldn’t deny the excitement he felt even as the fear returned, too.
Eshe smoothed her close-cropped black hair back as she surveyed the dead creatures, thoughtfully impaled on the arrows of Threk and Henri. Even as she examined the twisted, warped forms of the monkeys, trying to ignore the windy, thin cries rising up out of Rose’s chest as the Forged beheld the ravaged forms of the animals, she could see they were smoking, holes starting to appear in them as if they were collapsing or dissolving from within.
Clinical detachment had been drummed into her some time ago. As a Wolf spellcaster, her duties encompassed the whole of troop support…artillery, enhancement, scouting, movement, and especially recovery. She wasn’t yet powerful enough to fill all those capacities, but that was why she had been dispatched to this city in the midst of nowhere. The Wolves were mercenaries now, for better or worse, and she had been selected as a representative for the ‘new’ model of Wolves, those not dominated by the bitterness and hate of lingering resentments from the Last War.
Which is not to say she didn’t have her own agenda. Bettering herself from the near-total poverty of her family, and removing herself from being married off to burden some other family or produce more sons of Karrnath to die in newer and more glorious battles were merely minor accomplishments at this point.
Her background of living in a port city like Korrth had served her well, even as it hampered her in the more rural duties of wilderness survival that characterized the elite of the Wolves. Stealth training was not her strongpoint, however…she had come to the Wolves, and especially the Lady Hazé, to learn magic, and this she was doing.
The reputation of the Wolves was cemented by what the locals called the Night of Worms, when a great brood-fiend had come marching out of the jungle to lay the city to waste. One of the few wizards of the city had gotten the bright idea to call up the Wolves, the very people rumored to be dealing with these creatures.
Only a few minutes after the writhing, Worm-imbued army had come marching into the southern quarter of the city and down towards the docks, covering everything with a vile, choking green mist, the Stormwolf had hove into the sky over the town and a squad of Wolves led by none other then the General himself had rappelled down into the heart of the mist.
Only a few minutes later, the mist had literally exploded into racing sheets of white flame, devoured by the appetite of the black blade Thorn. Reeling Worm-born were getting hacked down and blasted by sheets of silver magic and silver swords unlike anything the locals had ever seen.
They’d gawked at the airship. They’d gawked at the grim men hacking their way through the terrible tide of undead that had most of the town troops mewling in terror to merely consider them. They’d gawked at the big white circle blasted into the stones of the city where nothing remained of the horrendously powerful, vile creature that had led them.
General Ruin had somewhat later politely asked if he might not be able to open a trading house in the city, and the leaders of the city had literally fallen over themselves to grant approval.
Eshe had seen it all, undergoing basic naval and marine training aboard the Stormwolf. That had been the first time it really struck home that the General wasn’t just serving a great Karrnathi leader, but that she was serving under a living legend.
She had seen it all, and she wanted to be able to BE like that. Albeit without the General’s terrifying scars, those she could do without.
Getting posted here had been a surprise, of course…there were no end of duties for warriors as elite as those being turned out at Fort Lewt and Fort Hole. Among the Wolves, and especially those of Cyran blood, work in the Mournland was most prized, for both danger and the rewards in both gold and reclamation of heritage. The slaying of Valenar was never far from the minds of those who’d survived the Plains of Blood, and elves certainly were less then welcome at the Fort unless of proven Cyran or Karrnathi origin. Certainly those dispatched into the Mournland quickly got better at what they had to do, or they quickly got dead.
These animals, they looked to be common monkeys, had been warped and twisted by powerful magic…extremely powerful magic, judging by the hateful, violent cacophony of cries in the jungle beyond, where the beasts sounded like they were tearing one another apart. The massively overgrown jaws seemed the only common point…jutting bones, extra heads, spiky growths, tentacles, extra eyes and limbs, all wrapped up in a hateful jumble of frenzied hunger.
As she watched, the four monkeys crumbled into stinking goo, drying out with near magical speed from a hissing pool of burbling acidic goop, to a mere steaming remnant and crumbled, warped skeletons.
Not the kind of thing to be lightly tossed off.
She pulled a flat glass crystal from her bandolier, rapidly wove the entire sight from beginning to end as a small illusion, and infused it into the glass. Her superiors would want to see this.
Henri was at the top of the cliff, looking over into the hidden cove beyond on his belly. Slowly, he got to his feet…a clear sign of either total idiocy, or lack of need for stealth. Given the wary, hunted look he always seemed to be sporting, she doubted it was the former. Seeing how far a former Aundairean – yes, she’d been able to pick out the shadows of his accent, and more to the point, his too-fancy Aundair Swordhawk fencing style – had come to get away from whatever was haunting him, she had little reason to either trust or distrust him, but he’d proven capable at his job, which had included the type of intelligence gathering that was the forte of spies, informers and the like, she had to wonder who he had crossed to run this far.
Her superiors would find out. They tended to be interested in the background of adjutant operatives.
Rose was another local, such as they were, wandering out of the jungle with little memory of what had become of her. Deep mahogany-green, and carved with more artistry then it seemed most warforged were, and definitely on the slender side, she had displayed a remarkable green thumb (hah!) and been attending to the gardens in one of the outer city’s parks until lured away by Master Cupral, the polished Forged who directed the Wolves’ business interests in the city. General Ruin had a startlingly open mind about the Forged and their place in the world, and encouraged their education and recruitment wherever possible. Rose had been given a warm welcome and answers for what became a torrent of questions, as Eshe recalled. Her whisperwind voice was gentle and soothing…even if her wooden fists, suddenly sprouting knuckle-long thorns as hard as steel, were anything but soothing to those who crossed her, and she was developing into quite the pugilist. Still, the Forged’s empathy with living things seemed to be her strongest trait, and Eshe knew enough of the unmoving face and posture of the Forged to know that Rose was seriously upset at anything that could do this to poor animals.
Threk moved up to stand beside Henri, towering nearly a head over the slender human. Eshe knew he’d be taking in the tactical situation, formulating a plan of approach and assault based on the new data he’d be seeing…something few would expect of a member of his breed. Ostensibly, his job was to protect her. In reality, his job was to protect everyone the best he knew how, and keeping her alive as her gifts emerged would only help that.
She noted how his large hand rested upon the handle of his axe, and did not come off of it. That was not a good sign. She gave Rose a solid whack on the shoulder – the distracted Forged wouldn’t feel anything less forceful – and hurried to move up beside him.
The smoke fires they’d seen and the animal carnage was clearly indicative of what had probably happened to the camp down below. Eshe swore, wondering exactly how much of their mission had changed, and if the humans who’d been down there had been changed as these poor beasts had. She hoped not, but pessimism had its day.
Whether the conniving bastard they were being sent to fetch was also here was another matter entirely. If he’d been transformed and was dead, they’d have to hope to find some identifying marks among the remains.
“Let’s go. Henri, please test the way,” the startlingly smooth, deep bass of Threk’s voice broke into her survey of the hazy situation. Their scout paced off down the path quickly, eyes darting and wary for movement.
Threk put up his axe and calmly motioned for the others to do likewise, stepping carefully backwards to give the beleaguered pirate captain some room. By the way she’d been tossing about familiar insults and witticisms in her northern Lazaar cant, these things dissolving and crumbling as they tried to get to her and eat her had been her former crew and shipmates. Given the too-bright, fevered stare of her eyes, and the real skill with which she’d been plying the rapier she was holding, he was inclined to not kill her…her precious crew of pirates had gotten a horrible final reward, and as far as he knew, these ‘Scarlet Dragons’ had never dared attack a ship flying a Wolf flag. There’d only been a couple pirates who’d dared that end, and their explosive endings had rather proven the point that the General didn’t support the idea of piracy for profit, especially as applied to his own ships.
“Henri,” he rumbled out, as usual making the slender Aundair jump with the timbre of his voice. “Have a kind word with the beautiful woman with the sword, and see if she might not know the location of our primary objective.”
The human blinked, translated that, and quickly put away his own rapier to step forwards, hands wide reassuringly, and start some dialogue. He wasn’t a wordsmith, but he was the best they had in this situation.
Eshe was doing a quick scan of the area for anything magical…and hopefully not anything as bad as the crumbling black shells carefully tucked into a lead carry-box in his own pack. Her eyes had streamed black tears just looking at the remnants of the magic on the things, and it had come quickly apparent that whatever magic had been associated with them, it had been the center of the transformative magic which had doomed this pirate cove.
The woman’s story confirmed it, Threk listening carefully, just like Eshe was, to the story of the unleashed magic. Their quarry had obviously escaped their clutches, just as he’d managed to slip away back at the port.
His lazy eyes opened slightly as the pirate revealed that she’d sent her second in command back after their employer, in the mistaken belief that the noble house had planned this escapade from the beginning, and holding the blood responsible for the downfall of all concerned. An honest error, if a stupid one…his trainers would have chastised her immediately for such linear logic. The Lady’s brother had proven himself a devious thinker, and the Lady herself far too inexperienced for such a clever ploy. Efficient misdirection.
Whatever, they had best pursue a tactical withdrawal and return home quickly. Given the reluctance of their initial transportation to stick around, and the nervousness they’d displayed at the cacophony arising from the jungle about, he had little doubt that their ride had withdrawn and left them to fend for themselves in getting home.
Happily, one of the ships of the pirates seemed to have escaped the general chaos and fire that had seized the rest of the camp, and was still floating out in the harbor. He smiled inwardly at the chance to claim such a prize…a ship was fine booty in and of itself, along with the rest of the loot they had been able to claim as they made their way through this cave complex.
He was a bit startled when Rose spoke up and in her gentle windsong voice advised the pirate Captain that she was infected with some sort of fever, possibly arising out of the very thing that had transformed her crewmen. He was even more surprised when the wooden Forged presented a pouch of some herbal tea that could be mixed up and drank to possibly help fight it off.
Born with a healer’s heart, he noted, noticing also that her spiked fists were gore covered with the remnants of these strange mutates and she took no notice of it. Indeed, it had seemed that, if anything, she fought these transformed, unlucky souls all the more harder simply to lay them to rest.
He remembered a question once asked of General Ruin by a typically clueless newcomer, as they watched him take apart their instructors in anything but mock combat; smoothly, effortlessly, so far beyond the skill of anything Threk had ever seen that his mouth still wanted to gape open remembering it. The human had asked a question about protecting the healers, inferring that they were soft, unable to care for themselves.
Gods, those eyes. Calm, still, death. The idiot had frozen up as if he’d had a gauntleted fist about his throat.
“A Healer,” the General had said, in that whisper-grind of his mangled voice, “knows best how to save you, and knows best how to make you die. What you want to have happen is to never have one of those gentle souls start practicing the taking of life, for they will show you how you failed…and they will never be there to save you again.”
He eyed those spiked knuckles again, smiled to himself, and scratched the healing scar on his side where one of the feral things had managed a lucky hacking strike with a cutlass. Hands of a healer. Druidic, clerical, bardic…he didn’t much care by what tradition the healing magic came from, he was a soldier and he appreciated it all. He rather suspected Rose herself wasn’t entirely sure, which didn’t make it any the less effective.
Henri was turning away from the Captain, obviously done talking, and the woman seemed somewhat less uneasy and paranoid.
Eshe’s finger rapped gently twice against the back of his right arm. She was done. He moved his arm out and in…he’d gotten his tactical map of the area down, able to firmly visualize the complex for a full later report.
After all, nothing said the Wolves couldn’t use a secret port in the middle of nowhere with ready-made defensive works in place. Pirates didn’t get to have all the fun…
Rose knew little about sailing, but she was strong, far stronger then she looked, ironwood being a molded part of her body, and the fibers that gave her movement and life tougher and stronger then normal human muscle. Work was a good thing – it kept the Forged’s mind off the horrible things she had witnessed.
The flesh-and-blood members didn’t have her insight or empathy into the wild. She could feel every grain in the wooden hull of the ship they were sailing, she could picture with incredible clarity each and every tree these planks had been hewn from. Raising her head, she could inhale the wind the sails were catching, swirling it about the chamber within her head, feel the pollens and nectars of distant vegetation carried on the breezes.
The agony of the land about where the…thing…had exploded made her ironwood skin crawl. The land had been screaming for cleansing, for the grace and relief of burning, purifying fire to rid itself of this blot of infection. She’d felt only an echo of similar potency when she stood about the inner courtyard of the Wolf Trading Enclave, where the Broodfiend had died, and where it had been Fed to the Land by Thorn. Fell, terrible power, scoured clean and given freely back to the land itself.
Truly, the General of the Steel bore a most frightening, and most noble, weapon, to be capable of such a thing. More then anything else, it had inspired her to learn more of these Wolves, and if there was something more profound then merely selling their services for bits of worthless metal behind their activities.
Hard fingers caressed the wooden figurehead of the ship, carved and sanded to an exaggerated resemblance to a half-fish, half-human creature she believed to be called a mermaid, highly stylized with embellishments that didn’t seem quite realistic.
She had best learn more of the sea if she was to live upon an island, and go traveling upon ships over the water. Master Cupral had been endlessly patient with her questions, as had the other Forged she had met at the Wolf complex, which numbered almost all of those present within the city.
Henri was at the wheel of the ship. Rose wasn’t adept in all the forms of human expression, although she studied them intensely…a lot could be read in the voluntary and involuntary movements of a humanoid’s mobile face. He seemed to be radiating both fear and eagerness as he clung to the wheel. Such a strange combination. Threk was busying himself with the ropes, his natural might and obvious training helping him keep the ship on course. The wizardess, Eshe, was down below, taking inventory of the ship and what had come with it. The half-orc had informed her that possession of a ship was quite a prize…it required substantial gold outlay to construct one, and capturing one, even as small as this, intact, was quite a coup.
Rose ran hard fingers over patterns of grains that had seen the wearing of countless hands, and saw again the forest giants from which they had been carved, an echo of the life they had once had.
Magic tingled, ready to be called upon, swirled with possibilities. Some of that life could be brought forth, and in a fashion, perhaps those trees could live again…
Threk levered his axe out of the skull of the batrachian with a grunt, snarling as he saw the pirate who’d brought them here leap out the window. A fellow urukhar, but lost to the lure of gold and green…or perhaps not, given his loyalty to his captain. The Lady was breathing hard, Henri’s rapier in her hand, while the slender man kept one knife at the ready, the other laying at the base of the window with blood upon it from where it had been buried in the fleeing mate’s shoulder.
Eshe calmly drove her stiletto into the base of the skull of one of the slumbering creatures she’d brought down with her magic…it barely jerked with the clean strike, and without a change in expression, she proceeded to the next. Rose was covered in slime and gore and bits of froggish skin…she had charged into the knot of the things, scattering them right and left, and found herself grappling one of them.
Grappling a Forged with iron hard thorns sprouting all over her body was a messy business. Threk noted the carpet in the room was quite ruined.
“The rest of the manse still needs to be secured, Lady,” he stated in his slow, solemn manner, a mode of speaking that drew attention. As he said this, he moved quickly to secure the doorway through which they’d entered, shield up and axe ready. He pulled his head back in time to dodge the thrown spear, which whipped past him and thunked solidly into the headboard of what he assumed to be her bed. “Perhaps, Henri, you should release our allies and allow them to contribute to the defense once again?”
Hurt pride in the face of the other sellswords was enough for him to tell that they’d be motivated to do their absolute utmost not to let down the Lady again, especially given the performance of the relative newcomers to her service. Their disappointing defense would, of course, only serve to make his own team look that much more proficient, and he didn’t intend to do anything to disappoint that image.
He closed the door forcefully, planting his armored foot behind it, and something froggish slammed into the far side with an angry belch, loosening the hinges. Spears and fists beat impotently on the thick wood for a few blows as he shook his head in wonder at the density of their savage little brains, and then the door shuddered under a heavier impact of body weight.
The second impact he timed perfectly, hitting the door at the same moment and taking most of the force himself. As he outweighed the frog-men almost half again, the door merely shuddered a little and didn’t budge much. Behind him, the released guards were scrambling for their gear and weapons, while Rose hurriedly chanted spells to heal the worst of injuries, and Eshe moved up to flank the door, which shuddered again against his shoulder, and then a crude axebit popped through the wood next to his shoulder as the rage of the creatures got the better of them. A second strike punched through and bounced off his armor, which elicited a further flurry of angry axe strikes.
“Rockborn, if you could kindly open the door on a three count?” he asked, except it was not a question. The Dwarf eagerly hurried up to grab the knob as Threk held up three fingers, and counted down.
His spring backwards surprised everyone but Eshe…he shouldn’t have been able to jump so far wearing so much metal. The door swept open, and forced by the weight of those behind, the batrachians spilled into the room.
Literally, because Eshe’s foot caught the oversized feet of the lead one, and it went crashing to the ground almost at Threk’s feet. His axe came down once with a solid crunch and split its skull, and he heaved back up with practiced rhythm, lifting the corpse half off the ground before his axe came free, stepping to one side to smash the second one out of the way.
The three people with ready bows released point blank into the knot of swamp-dwellers, and Eshe tossed a flask of something around the corner. There was a woosh and explosion of snow and ice, and the overeager frogfolk were suddenly happy to be anywhere but here.
Threk drove the handle of his axe down on the skull of his hop-happy opponent, who learned to his dismay that the top of the kite shield had rather sharp edges for a reason. With a grunt of pure brutal power, Threk hurled the frogger away, ripping its inflatable throat out in a welter of gore in the process, waited for the second volley of shots to drop two more of the frogmen, and then was after them with one of the few holdovers from his barbaric youth…a wild and savage howling warcry, shaking the ceiling panels, that heralded that yes, a Wolf was coming, and coming for them!
Life is good.
Axe ready to cut, he pounded after them, Rose on his heels with her pieces of frog-hide still wetly hanging from her, as fearsome and bloody a backup as he could wish for. The others hurried to keep pace, even the Lady getting caught up in the excitement and hurrying along behind them.
"Feed the Land!" he howled, as he caught up to the slowest of them before they could hop down the staircase to the first floor in their haste, and his axe came down. Eyes blazing with the savage joy of his forebears, he didn't slow down, crashing through the railing to plummet into the middle of the knot of those gathering below, striking one with heavy boots and crushing it flat, taking hold of his axe, and letting his reason go for pure animal fury.
Yes, life was very good, indeed.
===Aelryinth
Savage Tide II – The Captain’s Log
(Note: Apologies for the poor formatting. The log entries in the original manuscript are italicized for easier reading. Paizo does not have this editing feature.)
Threk eyed the little crystal speculatively. Eshe used it when scribing mundane notes in her books, saving her the need to carry around a lot of scribe-tools and ink. His own penmanship was just this side of unintelligible, despite his best efforts. He was certain Aureon had cursed all writing implements to be unwieldable by his ham0sized fists.
Still, keeping a journal was the sign of a good soldier and officer…it allowed one to write down one’s successes and mistakes, go back over them at a later time, and draw forth new insights. Too, his memory was not as razor-sharp as, say, that of Eshe, or the General, and it frequently got more then a little clouded when he stayed in combat mode too long.
He composed what he wanted to say, focusing on the crystal, and watched dark lines gather and flow across the thing, in what he recognized was the penmanship he always wished he actually had. Grunting in approval, he started to play it across the blank page before him, and the subtle magic of the crystal sent the words leaping from glass to paper in perfect lines, easily readable.
Ah, the subtle wonders of magic. He hid a smile and kept on with the words.
Captain’s Log, First Entry:
Tomorrow we leave on the journey to Farshore, the colony established by the now-deceased parents of our current patron, Lady Vanderboren. It is to be a long voyage, covering some thousand leagues, and expected to take several months.
Our patron has become quite taken with this colony established by her parents. Scrying has revealed that it still exists, despite the lack of resupply, and she seems determined that this last legacy of her parents will not fall. Accordingly, she has managed to find a vessel, crew, and other potential backers, as well as other colonists interested in starting a new life.
However, those same demands required use of a second vessel, which, coincidentally, we happened to secure from the Water Dragons’ disaster at their hidden cove. With the aid of several of Eshe’s summoned magical servants and the rest of the team, I was able to captain her back to Sasserine, and she has been undergoing extensive refit since that time.
The Wolves’ fleet is admittedly small…the Storm Wolf’s superior speed and size seem to suffice for most of the cargo carrying demands the General requires. However, there are some vessels being used for more mundane tasks, generally operating out of the Redhand principality to the north, and adding our vessel to that number was perceived as a good move by Major Cupral.
Accordingly, the vessel was drydocked, a remarkable process done by no less then Master Molder Lord Trencher himself, who simply raised the entire vessel out of the water on a stone berm with a single spell! His magic was crucial in speeding the process along, as he came very much prepared to accelerate the refit. A spell to literally grind away the accumulated barnacle growth on the hull, and the workers were free to apply their resealers. On top of all this, a new innovation was added…sheets of molten bronze were added to the hull after it had been temporarily strengthened to resist fire, shaped and bolted into place with remarkable speed. This will allow the hull to resist parasitic elements and inevitable ocean damage, and provide a much stronger measure of defense against attack from below. Lord Trencher, seeing that I was the nominal captain of the vessel, also winked and noted that he was going to make it easy for Eshe to work ‘special surprises’ into the vessel, especially the plating.
Above and beyond this was the appearance of the Lady Hazé herself.
Here, Threk paused to catch his breath. The effort of focusing on the crystal fairly made the image of the great Lady leap into his mind’s eye, and any male who was not moved by a sight like the graceful Khorovari was most likely in his grave, rotting hard.
The Lady has an impressive mastery of magic, to say the least, including a great familiarity with reinforcement techniques. Eshe herself was rendered almost mute as she watched the Lady casting numerous spells to strengthen the hull, masts, and superstructure of the vessel, rendering the wood first as hard as steel, then further strengthening the whole of it on top of this. Despite this vastly increased strength, the ship itself retains its flexibility, and even with the additional bronze plating, handles more surely then it did before…or perhaps the additional lessons I have been energetically pursuing courtesy of some experienced ex?-pirates among the local Lhazaar merely make it seem so.
Both Eshe and Rose managed to secure some of the Lady’s time, and discussion of many things natural and arcane ensued. Seldom have I seen Eshe so at a loss for words…it seems that the Lady does most of her teaching telepathically, for faster and clearer education. If she is as brilliant as she is beautiful (and the General has stated her intellect simply overwhelms her appearance), then such contact must have been truly an extraordinary experience.
In recognition of our recovery of the vessel, the team has been gifted with a set of Pack Rings! This is truly a great honor…generally only full Wolf Commandoes are issued such a set, but Major Cupral felt it was warranted. These rings will allow us to maintain silent communication amongst ourselves at some distance, and in addition, the Officer’s Ring I wear will allow direct communication with the Major or his superiors as they deem necessary. A secondary enchantment to sustain us in harsh climates and reduce our need for sleep means we shall soon be as productive as Rose or the other Forged have proven they can be, in their own way, and reduce the need for provisions for us. I have a feeling the extra alertness will be necessary on this long voyage. While the issuance merely makes us a Wolf Pack in the command structure, Henri promptly claimed that we are ‘Sea Wolves One’, and the name has stuck. Major Cupral is inordinately proud that a Marine unit attached to his division was the first to achieve Pack status on its own.
The offending sea maiden figurehead was removed from the ship and replaced with something a bit more martial…a winged wolf that looks vaguely draconic. The Sea Raptor was rechristened with proper fanfare and some excellent wine, and proper provisions laid in.
Master Henri’s previously downplayed talents for navigation will serve us well…it seems he has been a follower of the stars most of his life. Eshe will be serving as Ship’s Mage, while Rose has agreed to serve as both healer and cook! It seems she was given with a minor device that increases her sense of smell and taste even if she requires no sustenance. It also renders any exhalation she undertakes to be very pleasantly scented of wildflowers. As a private note, she has received her very own copy of A General’s Guide to Glop, and An Army and its Stomach, both seminal guides in cooking for large numbers of people. I anticipate no morale problems from the food during this voyage.
Our passengers are a mixed lot, including an itinerant Silver Flame priest (who is notably silent in this place, given the prevalence of the Silver Waters philosophy hereabouts), a shifty teller-of-tales, a gnomish biologist of advancing age, and, of all things, one of the local noble’s sons. This last fool had the gall to attempt to bring his prized steed along, and was whining and moaning about his accommodations the while. Fortunately, Lord Trencher happened to be in town that day, and overheard the simpleton’s tirade. He promptly shrank the admittedly magnificent animal down to the size of a toy and then petrified it, advising me to stow it below, and if the nobleman had any more doubts about his comfort level, he could make the trip alongside his steed and be there in figurative moments! (He informed me via my Pack Ring that Eshe could easily break the spells binding the horse upon our arrival.)
Said nobleman shut up and stowed his gear as instructed. Quite gratifying. Of course, my comment that if he wanted to bunk with me might have had the same effect. I notice that many higher-brow humans have a certain aversion to persons of my ancestry after we have been overseeing the cleaning of the bilges down in a hot, sweaty hold…and then finding out I was the Captain after giving me sufficient excuse to tear his face off with my tusks seemed to take the heart out of him.
The Raptor has plenty of extra cargo space, which has been filled with a great deal of things a colony far from home would like…paper, clothing and tools of all kinds. The Lady Vanderboren was pleasantly surprised by the contributions enacted by the Wolves, as her finances did not have quite the breadth necessary to completely fill our hold with goods. Of course, I imagine that there were negotiated terms for trade goods being taken from the colony in return for such investment, which I am sure will be done equitably.
Threk paused then, casting a wary eye towards the hidden compartment where the Focusing Cone rested, and lifted the crystal momentarily from the page. The device was both a scrying enhancer and a potent teleportational focus…those attuned to it would be able to leap across the leagues to where it was placed with perfect safety and accuracy. It also would allow a sufficiently equipped force to come to the ship even if misfortune actually sunk the vessel, doubtless the reason why it was being transported this way instead of by Lady Hazé simply whisking herself to the far colony and planting it somewhere safe and hidden. With it in place, the Wolves would be able to place a factor in the colony, and assure it of continual resupply and export of trade goods, albeit in limited number, without reliance on the irregularities of ocean travel. A superb strategic move…with potent enough magic, Threk assumed that even a fairly large number of people might be moved into place in mere moments…for conquest or defense, it was not his knowledge. Either would be interesting, he was sure.
The maps to our destination are somewhat old, but as accurate as current divination and past visual exploration can make them. One of our tasks during the trip, falling particularly to Henri, will be to take constant readings to assess and improve the accuracy of the charts. Such things are worth a great deal of money, and the finer the charts he makes, the more Henri will share in their dispersal. I am certain he is eager to be off and prove his worth.
Threk paused again, considering his next words, shrugged, and wrote on.
Divinations revealed dark days ahead…more literal then figurative. I envisioned the impact of storms, but the Raptor is as seaworthy as any ship afloat. I was advised that there are events centered about the ship and its crew, as if we were being caught up in threads of destiny. Major Cupral, who relayed this to me, nodded his agreement with the assessment of the situation, drawing a parallel to the events of those who participated in the pre-events of the now legendary Age of Worms, and how the threads of destiny swirled about them. I protested that we have no Witch of Siberys or great General with us, and his reaction was to scoff, and inform me that if all heroes of legend needed such hamfistedness applied to their paths, there would be no heroes to speak of!
Chastized by a member of a race that did not exist in my grandfather’s time, I remained silent. But, I must admit to a great sense of anticipation if this is true…what awaits for us, lost in the islands of Sargon’s Teeth, among the islands of ancient Xen’drik? I must confess, I am quite eager to know if this rede of our future has truth to it…
Captain’s Log, Day Two…
It seems our zealous attention to security was not shared by the ship of our patron…they had a stowaway! Of even more amusement, this spy had an agenda of her own…the disembowelment of the ir’Meravanchi. It seems there was a bit of a relationship between the two in the past, and he ended it rather badly. I admit to being displeased at having lost a passenger so soon…the spy’s sabotage was well done, and the arrival of the sharks was quite timely. I’m afraid that I will not be plagued by the pithy protests and whelpish whining of the cad for the rest of the voyage. Henri’s sharp eyes did notice the difference between failure and sabotage, and although the passengers might have been responsible, Eshe suggested a ship to stern sweep in proper Wolf fashion would be validated, as the Lady Vanderboren had not undertaken such an action. Cleverly concealed in a crate that could be opened from within, the lair of the stowaway was found, and then it was a matter of searching for her via Rose’s new aptitude at scenting. The stowaway was not very forthcoming about her employers or her master, but from the array of tattoes I suspect the Water Dragons have an interest in the Lady’s brother’s whereabouts, and still dream of vengeance. I believe they should have used a shifter and just stayed among the colonists as valid passengers, but you can’t blame a Lhazaar for a lack of subtlety. On a curious note, the scars on her hands did mark her as an avid member of the Blood of Vol…and the General is known to fairly loathe that faith. Perhaps it is not such a coincidence?
On a better note, Lady Vanderboren’s cook is somewhat more experienced then Rose, and passed on some new recipes my thorny Packmate is eager to try out. An excellent dinner to celebrate the beginning of our voyage.
Captain’s Log, Day 10…
We make excellent time. The spells supplied by the Lady Hazé allow the spellcasters on both ships to maintain favorable and focused winds to drive our vessels along at rates approaching those of the finest Lyrandar ships. I cannot help but notice and be proud of the nimbleness of my vessel compared to our heavier patron’s ship, but then, I am a Marine and I see our duty as escort as much as complement. If there is trouble, I prefer to interdict it before it can threaten our patron.
We passed the infamous Webbed Wall today, the crew watching silently as the Q’barran jungle slid past, festooned top to bottom with great webs and truly massive spiders in the trees and on the ground. Henri’s sharp eyes picked out a water spider that had surfaced between us and the shore, silent and watching us with lidless eyes…the main body was longer then the ship’s launch, and it likely would have straddled the hull. Fortunately, it could not catch us, but woe to any fool who dared set foot in this place…
Sail traffic has actually been fairly steady, although ships are maintaining a careful distance from us, for the most part. Sasserine’s flag is not friendly to pirates, nor is the black wolf on white. One vessel did come bearing in at some speed, obviously with elemental aid. My rapid and prompt challenge seemed to deter it rather hastily from whatever mischief it intended as I easily interdicted its course and closed in on it.
I am perturbed by the number of Sarlonan vessels I am seeing, especially at anchor at the jungle border forts we have passed. General Ruin has expressed deep misgivings about the interests of the Riedrans, and it is known they have a great deal of influence in Q’barra. If they are taking over the staffing of the border forts, that is a great deal of exposure on Khorvaire’s east that could be used to assemble a substantial force of their own. When next the Major contacts me for an update I will relay this.
Captain’s Log, Day 17…
Resupply at Q’barra’s main port seems to have had an unforeseen side effect. The priest, Father Ferres, came down with what at first we thought to be a virulent jungle fever that incapacitated him with startling speed soon after we left port. Eshe’s keen eyes noticed that he had some sort of growth implanted in him, and with great care and a sharp knife carved the thing out of him. She proclaimed it the fetal stage of some extraplanar creature called a slaad, and if it had been allowed to hatch, the creature might well have ravaged the entire ship all by itself.
It seems that Q’barra holds a nest of Khyber worshippers interesting in spreading chaos, and our passenger was little more then a courier to them, to be done away with in a spectactular and grisly manner worthy of their patronage. Yet another detail to be forwarded to the Major…extinguishing the cult would be a fine deed, but likely beyond our current abilities, and definitely should be related to the proper authorities.
As I write this, the Black Pit is sliding by on our stern. This is the charred remnants of one of the early Q’barran forts, ravaged by the lizardfolk of the jungle and turned into a sacrificial pit of dire portents. It has been a decade since the fall, and still nothing grows there, a grim reminder of the strength of the savage creatures who have called this place home for millennia. The Q’barrans, like most humans, tend to forget in their heady air of conquest that this land has many, many more races that have dwelt here far longer then they.
Captain’s Log, Day 27…
Praise to be for the bronzed plating! It likely saved the Raptor from a dire fate.
We had hove to at the mouth of the River Roazhim, where we make the turn south into the open ocean to the crossing to the scattered islands of Xen’Drik and Sargon’s Teeth. A nasty fog sprang up and obscured vision, and we were somewhat jumpy, yet still unprepared for what at first appeared to be flotsam coming to life and assaulting the ship and us!
It was a massive ooze, drooling acid that thankfully had little effect other then surface scoring upon the treated hull of our vessel. A barrage of magical flame, oil, and carefully distant polearm work seems to have slain it before it could devote much effort to the destruction of the hull…or the crew. It seems to have devoured a fair number of other sailors and officers, as calcifying remains were still present inside its…and some booty, as well. We are profiting already!
Navigator’s Log, Day 35…
One wouldn’t think that such a simple magic as I learned from the Lady Hazé would be so eminently useful, but the Triangulation effect has been of immeasurable use in keeping us on course and being able to note even minute deviations of the charts from reality.
The ocean crossing goes without incident. Eshe’s ensorcelled winds keep us on track, Rose sees no inclement weather ahead…but there are still worries.
We are on a route outside the well-established passages, and there remains the sahaugin to deal with. The standard contracts of passage will not work in this area, and if they decide to accost our two vessels as we near the first islands of the Teeth, things could get messy quickly. Suitable tribute for passage has been allocated in the event the sahaugin choose to be reasonable…and this is not a good location if they choose not to be.
Too, the smaller islands we are meant to encounter could well be inhabited by pirates, monsters, or worse…the charts merely tell locations, not inhabitants. In the meantime, I keep the ship on course and my eyes on the stars, and think about the other things the Lady Hazé spoke to me of. She knew things about me from a glance that I had never dared speak of to anyone…and some things I did not know myself! A Witch of Siberys with an interest in me…I do not know whether to laugh or to cry.
The spells and magical winds driving the sails are keeping us on course despite the power of the Pearl current beneath us trying to send us off course. Praise to be for the simple magicks that make travel easier!
Captain’s Log, Day 44…
After managing to cross the ocean without stirring the wrath or interest of the sahaugin, we discovered the reason why. Fort Greenrock, an independent enclave upon one of the early, small islands that behold the entry to the Teeth, has been burned to a cinder. Very tellingly, there are no inhabitants left behind. The seaward sign of the fort displays many of the barbed bolts used by the shark-men, and the sands indicate a great deal of traffic into and out of the waters of the bay, as well as shed blood. The fate of those who lived here is both certain and grisly…we can but pray for their souls, and I will alert Major Cupral to notify the proper authorities. Hopefully, the natives here put up a glorious defense and cost the sahaugin such that they deemed intercepting other vessels to be too dangerous…we shall see.
Succeeding days will have us passing several islands of various sizes, many of them adorned with the crumbling remnants of the ancient civilizations that dominated Xen’drik. Our gnomish passenger is fairly beside himself with eagerness, as he was promised as part of his passage the chance to investigate one of the larger and more famous pyramidal ruins.
Captain’s Log, Day 51…
Our exploration of the temple-pyramid is complete, with surprising success. If, by success you mean recovering booty that perhaps dozens of prior explorations missed, and doing battle with life-sucking wisps and demonic bats, oversized vermin, and ancient sorcerous traps, that is. Professor Forol has had more excitement then he ever craved, and certainly seems to be eager to press on and live the island behind us. His gratitude to Eshe for crystal-recording the ancient glyphs and rooms has happily kept him out of our way as he laboriously scribes and interprets all the various sights he can coax out of the crystal.
As for us, we recovered a fair amount of more marketable swag, including a rather strange golden idol of savage and fearsome aspect, which Henri assures me is not of Jotun manufacture. It clearly has substantial value if we could get it into the hands of a collector…unlikely at our destination. I wonder how prior searchers missed such valuables…typical treasure hunters are interested in booty and would be unlikely to quit until recovering all the valuables they could. Most strange.
Even stranger is the sense that something is tailing us in these waters. Henri has been the only one to get a look at it, for it seemed to glow once under the moonlight to him, before vanishing. I have seen only a glimpse of a dark shadow beneath the ocean at some distance. A great whale, perhaps? I have not seen it surface and blow, however…however, we are no threat to the whales and hopefully have not incurred the wrath of a leviathan or some other great beast of the deep.
Captain’s Log, Day 58
A small spot of excitement today, as we were accosted by a pair of ragged pirate vessels, doubtless hoping to prey on some unprepared merchantmen of Riedran origin, as the Sarlonans cross the island chain we are forging through on the way to and from Stormreach. They were clearly not ready for my enthusiastic readiness to engage them and confront a more manageable foe…this is the type of battle I have been trained for! The Blue Nixie managed a spirited defense as well, but we did not let the ships get away with their foul crews, who sported grotesque mutilation and tributes to unwholesome entities…fallen cultists and by their sharpened teeth, likely cannibals. They were put to the axe, their ships holed, and what booty they had secured.
Of more interest was the fact that as we left, a flight of wyverns came gliding in, first to circle our ships curiously, then to swoop in closer in challenge. Eshe solved that problem with an illusion, animating the figurehead and spitting out a very real bolt of lightning at one over-confident scale-wing, and the whole pack beat a hasty retreat at this display of draconic wrath. They satisfied themselves with plucking corpses out of the waters, away from the hungry sharks, and flying away with them.
Captain’s Log, Day 62…
We stopped to secure our fresh water supplies at an idyllic cove of one of the larger islands, complete with its own river plummeting down with crystalline purity. Of course, this is now Xen’Drik, and the beast that called the cove home was happy to render our opinion of the safety of the place somewhat moot. Eshe’s fiery missiles and Rose’s burning hands were sufficient to kill the multi-headed creature as we kept it away from the passengers and crew ,my task being lopping off the heads and theirs searing each stump in turn.
On the practical side, we also managed to secure a fine portion of meat to complement our stores for the next few weeks. It was good for the crew to dine on large steaks after weeks of more mundane meals, and the Pack enjoyed the repast even if our rings made it unnecessary. Where the Nixie’s chef got this glorious recipe for hydra braised loin cuts I have no idea, but it was certainly delicious.
Rose slapped on aquatic insertion gear to explore underwater and make sure no more large surprises were in store below, as Eshe levitated barrels of water on discs of force and refilled them at the waterfall for us and the Nixie moored further out. After an hour and more of detailing the grisly remnants of the many vessels that looked to have been torn apart by the beast of the cove, she surfaced with some magical gear that seemed to have survived the ravages of the elements. Who knew that sailing a ship commanded such profit? I will have to pass on just how lucrative this profession is to some of my kin…those who do like fighting monstrous beasts and the like, that is.
Captain’s Log, Day 68…
Well, our first meeting with the sahaugin ended rather badly. The toll the creatures demanded was clearly ruinous, and then Henri’s somewhat too-clever negotiations caught the threatening ‘toll agent’ in a lie, spilling the fact that these weren’t even its own tribal waters, it was poaching on those of another weakened clan and attempted to make some free swag!
I admit I was probably a bit presumptuous in my outrage and zeal to test myself against these creatures that dared attack a surface settlement, and removing the creature’s surprised head was likely not the most diplomatic of moves.
A storm is brewing on the horizon, one Rose assures us is not of natural origin. Given the number of shark-men raiders that were cooked by the electrical discharge into the waters about the Raptor, and stymied by her below-waterline toughness, it is likely that one of their legendary priestesses is taking all the vengeance she can…from a safe distance from the correct tribe’s wrath, of course. Standing orders are to make for the colony even if the ships are separated, and given the roiling black of the coming clouds, and the even stranger red lightning, this looks to be a fine blow to test out the ship and crew in proper fashion.
I only hope the priestess shows herself, that Eshe might show her some of the power of surface spellcasters, and that I might return a barbed bolt into one of her goggling eyes.
Captain’s Log, Day 71…
We’ve finally encountered something that truly tested Rose’s belief in the verdancy of the natural world, and put it to fire and axe in proper fashion. This place, Henri revealed, was called Ship’s End…a great and deadly living Sargasso, leagues in diameter. Foul plant-like ‘young’ birthed by the ‘Mother Sargasso’ at the center of this ‘natural wonder’ assaulted us, as animated fronds of seaweed lashed at any showing themselves upon the deck, attempting to drag us to a horrid fate. Even charring the waters black about us could not free the ship…the green stuff simply grew too fast, and we had little choice but to first scout some of the neighboring ships also caught haplessly in this morass of the green, but to take the assault to the Mother herself. The storm brought forth by the sahaugin was not meant to sink us, but to drive us into the slow death this place promises. We determined that daring to attack instead of simply delay our fate was far preferable.
Rose was truly a formidable sight in this battle, with her limbs ablaze with druidic magic, her spikes treated with energies anathemic to the horrid growth all about, leaping onto and grappling the Mother in a flurry of two thorned unwomen having it out on one another, whilst my axe dealt with the Mother’s pods of ‘young’ (grown from hapless crewfolk, I am told), Eshe’s dessicating blasts, and Henri…well, he certainly attempted to keep our enthusiasm up. Perhaps he should be using another weapon then a rapier.
We did manage to plunder what we could of the ships of the great morass before the green mess totally unwound, and rode back to the Raptor aboard one of Eshe’s levitating discs as the great Sargasso began to disintegrate, and the legions of ‘children’ wailed and broke apart. The energetic thrashing in certain areas hastening the breakup, especially as the doomed ships finally sank to their fate, tells me that something enjoys these waters and did not dare the wrath of the Mother, and is working on breaking up the sargasso itself. Whatever it was, it was huge…easily longer then the Raptor and far faster…our curious traveling companion?
However, the Mother may have inflicted a dying curse on us, such as it is…another storm assembles on the horizon, and this one is completely natural and dreadfully powerful. We are close to our goal…I would be much wroth if, having survived the spellstorm of the sea devils, we are to brought low by the uncaring maw of the Devourer. As we weathered the first storm with ease, I swear we will triumph over this new challenge!
Captain’s Log, Day 74…
Even Lady Haze’s spells could not reinforce the Raptor enough to survive being driven full onto a reef by the power of a hurricane. Thankfully, we were able to ground the ship even as the storm began to pass, but with a distinct problem…even though we are able to fix the rents and holes in the hole, we were driven far above normal tide levels, and the ship is officially grounded. Even at high water, the ship is completely beyond the waterline, and we have not the manpower to drag her back to her home. I must admit that the sight of a ship thrown thirty paces up a sandy beach and ensconced cheerfully among the patient palms of this island IS an amusing sight…but it is also a deathtrap to remain. Certainly there are forces in the jungle that will whelm to our arrival, and pick us off as meals alone or en masse.
Seaworthy but landlocked, the Raptor will remain where she is, as we draw what provisions and supplies we feel we will need, and seal the ship against less intelligent intruders. We can return with greater muscle, or perhaps the high command can restore her to the waters when they make contact (doubtful, as they will not want to reveal their influence or power so soon, I should think, and I have seen enough of Wolf activity to know just how busy the General and his staff usually are).
Thus, we are going to be heading overland, crew and colonists alike, into the wilds of one of the larger islands that once composed Xen’drik. I have a feeling that this will be at least as entertaining as our ocean voyage, and I bid the Raptor a sad farewell for now…I will return for my ship, of that you can be sure!
Supplies supplemented by the eel-like beasts which didn’t like us being driven atop their homes (I wasn’t very patient with them, as I didn’t like the situation much, either), we assemble for a trek through the jungle. Ah, for a teller-of-tales to compose a saga for us…one journey ends, and another begins!
===Aelryinth
just a break point.
==Aelryinth
Episode III – A Hiking We Will Go
Getting nearly two dozen non-coms across a land filled with carnivorous dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasties was not something that he had looked forwards to, until a much simpler solution had presented itself.
Turn them into combatants, of course.
They were frontier people looking to make a new life for themselves, which meant they had a certain level of energy and enthusiasm and get up and go. They would also be living in an area with carnivorous dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasties, and it would be a very good thing if they knew how to take care of themselves.
He didn’t have a lot of time to teach them, but that was fine. If he didn’t teach them, they were going to die, and he made that abundantly clear to them. Actually, the jungle made it abundantly clear to them, when the first Sword Tyrant came crashing out of the jungle twenty paces away from the motley group with their spears, and they fled like terrified sheep…which resulted in two of them getting eaten, another one trampled to mush, and took much too long for Threk and the others to bring the huge monstrosity down because it was running all over willy-nilly after the food that was being nice enough to advertise its location and not fight back.
But at the last he hamstrung it, Eshe filled its mouth with a helping of fiery rays, Rose got it to feed on a couple hapless summoned animals that got in its way instead of the tasty non-coms, and Henri, amazingly, got in the kill shot with a spear he plunged deep into one eye.
He had them bury the dead, after making them cut the unfortunate bastards out of the dino’s stomach. They wailed and dribbled and got covered with blood and guts and gore. Then they started taking him seriously.
He gave them the boarding pikes off the Raptor and made them drill. Those who whined the most he calmly held under a barrel of Tyrant blood until they half-drowned. The flies loved them the most. Protests died away as he administered discipline with an iron fist, having neither time nor patience to coddle them. He couldn’t condition them the way they needed to be conditioned, but breaking them and drilling them he could do.
When the first flock of predatory birds showed up, the only two who died were also those who ran. The ones who collapsed into a thicket of spears lived…and ate the drumsticks of the one they killed. Tyrant hide made for nice armor, too…so they scraped the meat off the dino hide and cut and sewed and stitched and fit as best they could. It was serviceable, not great, but certainly better then nothing.
Master Farlo’s knowledge of what to eat and not eat was not exactly comprehensive, so Rose took over that part, using her spells to determine the identity of things, which Master Farlo eagerly wrote down for posterity…when he wasn’t marching and practicing formation beside the others.
He had a week, he had food, Rose could secure fresh water, one of the passengers was a decent scout who could assist Henri, and Eshe could get airborne as needed.
By the time the third flock of birds came, the whole lot of them collapsed into an unwieldy square that held the things at bay with a hedge of steel. Eshe and missile fire soon brought them down. One of the things even tried to charge them and got itself impaled before killing anything, to the wonder of the settlers. Enthusiasm picked itself up, which he firmly squashed by loud and appreciative calls for another Sword Tyrant to show itself and really give them a challenge.
The telepathic communication of their Pack rings was a godsend, as was the lack of need for food and water. The four of them could well be alert and productive while the settlers swept, which led to a much more secure sentry rotation and the ability to get planning minutia done during the night.
They had to leave most of the cargo behind, it consisting of practical stuff like cloth, nails, tools, lumber and civilized amenities that had little place where they were going. They also had to disguise the Raptor from passing ships…he doubted any would come by, but just in case he had it festooned with rigging and nets to break up the outline, and as many living vines and branches woven into the whole as possible to make it nigh unidentifiable from a distance, unless you knew exactly where it was.
Eshe’s force disks would help with transporting extra water, to be on the safe side, and rations could be supplemented with the meat of things that were trying to eat them. Henri and Rose had already scouted out the preliminary route Master Farlo had laid out for them. They had a good idea of what could and could not be eaten, some rough hide armor for everyone, and the willingness to get the heck out of there and back to someplace fairly civilized. Some of the brawnier men even volunteered to carry shields, a good sign.
Now, to just make it fifty leagues over hostile terrain filled with all manner of nasty carnivores and unknown beasties dating from the time of the Jotuns.
Threk smiled. Life was good.
Henri got along with the non-coms much better then the rest of the party. It was by design, really…he’d grown up traveling, he knew travelers, and he was far better at dealing with people then with monstrosities. In other words, he wasn’t really a Wolf, more of a hound.
He related to them more, too. To the Wolves, it was just another assignment, and a challenging one, made to be overcome with skill, strength, training. For him, it was a journey to another new place, another new land, new wonders to be seen, which closely dovetailed with the new lives the survivors with them hoped to lead there.
Amella and Leshkione, the most skilled of the ‘non-coms’, were basically under his command, and he was the member of the Wolves approached with problems and questions. He could handle them far more diplomatically then could Threk, with his hugely intimidating ramrod posture, tusks and ritual scars…and walking around in heavy armor in this heat. Rose was, of course, not at all in tune with the wants of common people, and Eshe was an intellectual elitist wielding magic, not someone who worked for a living.
Amella was very apprehensive of leaving the water behind…a sea rat all her life, a skilled navigator, she shared a bed with him, a relationship that had developed so easily with their similar skills it was almost inevitable. The two of them had also fallen somewhat uncertainly into a parental role for the ship’s cabin boy, Tavey, who was constantly trying to prove himself, although he got quickly silent whenever the Captain was around. He’d felt the half-orc’s fists too, and even had a scar on the side of his head from his smart mouth while drilling. He was inordinately proud of the fact that he did have a scar after Henri had carefully explained to him that he was being treated just like everyone else, including those much older then him, and being given a respect beyond what he’d earned. So he’d best earn it, or the Captain would be very disappointed…and without saying it, Henri would, as well.
The lad had perked up and was overeager to try anything now…but tempering that really fast, as well as getting better at ducking Captain Threk’s half-hearted fists.
The Pack Rings were godsends for any kind of scouting work, and Henri was able to move around with much more speed and freedom knowing that he had instant communication back to the rest of the team. Lesh was in charge of maintaining his backtrail, a job the half-fey scout accomplished with quiet skill and readiness. This was supremely dangerous territory, for all its beauty…animate plants, carnivores, huge dinosaur herds passing by, outsized vermin of all sorts, and all of them perfectly willing to dispose of small, fragile humans by deliberation or accident.
Threk had decided that blooding his band of hastily-trained would-be settlers would be far more effectively then merely diverting around each and every threat, and every day at least one hostile encounter with some deadly native of the island took place. The ubiquitous ‘terror birds’ seemed to be the most common, taking over a predatory slot normally held by the larger raptor-class dinosaurs, and the cry of ‘Drumsticks!’ soon got the newly forming soldiers gamely leaping to positions as yet another hunting pack of the oversized birds came racing after Lesh or Captain Threk, and happily hurled themselves onto set spears grounded firmly against their charge. The crossbows from the armory started getting quite a workout at times, too…nobody wanted to get close to a monstrous animate vine that looked to be the size of an elephant, and flaming bolts ignited by Eshe’s magic assailed that creature until it was ablaze and the whole jungle writhing around it.
He’d seen dino-wrangling by the Talentans, but he’d never seen a herd of colossal plant eaters as huge as those present on the island march lumbering through the thick forest while the whole company waited along the treeline for them to pass…and picked off a few of the monstrous beetles who decided that brontosaur leavings weren’t quite as tasty as human could be.
They walked through a tumbled and lost city of the Jotuns, festooned with webs, where scuttling forms retreated into the shadows at the sight of openly wielded flame, and multiple eyes glinted at them from the yawning darkness of great buildings older then the races of all Khorvaire. He had no idea of knowing how old the spider-woman was he negotiated passage with, but her spider-form was the size of a steer, and it was certainly better to entertain the old creature with tales of distant lands then tempt the wrath of all the arachnids on all sides. Messing with nature spirits generally was never a wise course. The settlers were particularly jumpy, but Captain Threk’s threat to personally feed anyone who shot at a spider without a direct order had the desired effect of keeping even trigger-happy Kelsi in line with things.
Her directions to an ancient pass under the mountains, a place carved by slaves of the Jotuns in ages past, was dead on, too. Of course, the very idea that such a suitable lair would be either uninhabited by monstrous creatures, or guardians powerful enough to dissuade such beasts, was quite unthinkable.
Especially when, you know, the tracks of literally scores of terror birds led into and out of the place...
“Ground those spears and point them at the sky! Impale them as they come down!” roared Threk, his voice magically enhanced by a flicker-hand of a cantrip, his axe out and flashing bright silver along the edge. He stepped forth, raising axe and shield and howled his challenge in proper bestial fashion, and the primitive, bestial power of that war cry, heard so often these last few days, banished any fears, any thought of disobedience. Boarding pikes snapped skywards as the settlers flowed together, aiming skywards.
Gargoyles, thought Eshe, mentally filling in the reason for the emptiness of the village they’d passed by. Who knew how many, but this was only a hunting party, obviously. She watched the biggest of them veer with his wingmate directly towards the Captain, screaming their own screeching, nerve-skittering cry in return. The squad directly behind him tensed in readiness, poising themselves to pounce if the creatures did the unthinkable and actually dared to land, pleased to actually have something to fight after the nerve-wracking disturbances ever since the company had emerged from the buried Mountain tunnels.
Sure and they’d have stories to tell their kids. They’d seen the huge matriarch of the Terror Bird flocks, the paralyzing horror of ancient Elven mummies, slaved to forever preserve the tunnel and the dead buried there (damnable Elven burial rites), tomb robbing for the keys needed to get out of the accursed necropoli, monstrous centipedes over ten paces long doing battle with Threk and Rose over a bridge held up by age alone; a massive living ooze that would have devoured them all had Eshe and Rose not burned the horrible thing to a foul puddle of stinking goo…and lastly the bull-sized crabs that had made the mistake of showing themselves to hungry, frightened people just looking for something edible. Even Threk had been startled with the enthusiasm the people had fallen upon the three hapless crabs and impaled them…but he enjoyed the feast with them quite proudly.
It was Eshe who had noticed they were being watched, part of the routine scans she did at optimal times…and then something had tripped one of the alarms she’d quietly laid down at a prime observation point of their next campsite. Henri had picked up on it next, but it was Lesh who’d caught a glimpse of a massive, simian-like creature moving through the trees a safe distance away from them, little more then a blur of camouflage magic.
Eshe’s investigations into those sites had revealed the passage of a malevolently evil entity not native to the world, and Rose’s equally quiet questioning of the plant life confirmed the same.
They were being stalked by a fiend. Not a rakshasa, thankfully…Eshe wasn’t sure how she’d have to react to being stalked by one of the truly ancient overlords of the past taking a shine to them…but the level of evil didn’t seem that refined or powerful. Brutal, savage, wild, feral…like the jungle around them, with none of the beauty.
Their worry communicated itself to the settlers without a word being said…soon, whispers of something watching were being passed around.
The first night had been the darkness spells dropped on the camp, instantly dispelled by revealed flames that gave them a glimpse of a startled figure in the trees far above them before it instantly vanished.
Teleportation. Eshe had narrowed her eyes and prepared spells accordingly.
She was fairly certain it was some form of demon, and the simian appearance strongly indicated a bar-Igura of some sort. They had the reputed ability to snatch up victims and teleport away with them, a sickening thought with this many civilians around who would be terribly vulnerable to such a tactic. It would be her job to stop this from happening.
It took two more days for her to actually get a visual lock on the beast, as a magical eye caught it arranging bird carcasses telekinetically just outside human visual range for them to find. She watched it at work, jutting fangs, muscles working in unnatural ways under the mangy hide, eyes bright with hate and ferocity, unaware it was being watched in turn.
Threk almost killed it. A simple illusion to replace his ever-wary presence in the camp, and his almost uncanny stealth had delivered him almost right to the side of the beast. It certainly hadn’t expected a flying, half-berserk Urukhar to come out of nowhere and drive the cold-iron hammer-side of his war axe into the side of the demon’s skull with force enough to split a horse’s skull like an egg.
Preternatural reflexes had saved it, as it lept away in shock and pain, and the second strike smashed off one of the jutting tusks instead of finishing the job. An instant later, it was gone…but it knew that they knew.
Rockslides with human skulls and illusions to unnerve them failed to do anything but. They were mere snipings, and it wasn’t even snatching up the weaker members of the band…nor did it come that near to the camp again when they did settle down along the beach path.
The day before they’d camped in the remnants of a village built in what surely looked like an optimal bay along the shore. No remains of any villagers, and precious little sign of a struggle. The place had been abandoned for several seasons at the least, the canoes useless, the homes decaying and barely usable as shelter…and conspicuously cleaned out of anything useful. Something had come and killed everything…sahaugin from the sea was the first guess.
Gargoyles made such a better explanation. Death from the skies that could ignore mundane weaponry with ease.
Eshe watched the second pair peel off towards the rear of the column where Amella held the people together, and timed her spell as they descended on the line there with four sets of claws spread wide, screaming confidently.
Not the best of time to be hit by a fireball.
The impact of the spell slammed the gargoyles down violently, charred and burning and screaming in pain…and the spears waiting for them didn’t waver. One drove himself fully onto two points with a shriek of surprise, the other tore past them and landed atop grim Joske, who obligingly went down under the creatures claws so that Amella could precisely run the thing through the ear with her gleaming rapier. It was rather surprised as she and dark-eyed Frezilia drove forwards and threw it off the narrow ledge.
The leader of the gargoyles found itself in a screaming match with Threk…and even more shocked when instead of hewing into it with his axe, he rammed the hand-long spike of his waraxe into its abdomen and heaved it upwards, using its own wingbeats to help the process.
Four spears drove into it with great enthusiasm, two of them quite deeply indeed. The creature sqwawked wildly, flailing around, claws raking at his armor and face as it tried to bite him and stab him with its horn. Threk just laughed at the beast as the settlers pressed in, then wrenched his axe out and back with the tremendous strength of his heritage, and brought it all the way around in one wrist-snapping blur of movement.
Skull cloven and with a gleaming spear in its ear, the gargoyle was hurled over the side of the cliff with casual disregard, just after the second one, which had two spears buried deep in its back from whence it had unwisely ignored the settlers on the Captain’s other side.
The settlers cheered their victory, spitting after the screeching things they’d killed so easily. They quieted down as they saw Threk scanning the skies.
“There were enough of those beasts to wipe out that village behind us…a village that should have had its own defenders. Keep your eyes on the skies.”
Heads turned at the sound of an enraged, howling cry, like a great demonic monkey bellowing in pain. Threk’s noticeably did not.
“Mouse bites cat,” he offered to those around him, a spark of satisfaction on his emotionless face. “Monkeys shouldn’t pick at flowers. Flowers have thorns.”
The Kobwashkin twins shook their spears in understanding, grinning hard…they had the weapons enchanted by Eshe’s magic as soon as Henri had relayed the presence of the gargoyles approaching from the south. That Rose was harrying the creature that was toying with them was a definite morale booster.
Still, it was fleeing any confrontation, although it was definitely getting angrier. If it could be taunted into range of her spells, they could lock it into place and Threk would bring a proper end to the thing.
Eight of the unnatural creatures.
Rose raised her flaming hands away from the charred skull of the great four-armed beast that had led them, a truly monstrous mutation reeking of some ancient and corrupt power. Her forearms had sprouted monstrously thick, strong and very, very sharp spikes, along with most of her body, and she had simply lept onto the back of the beast as it sought to rip Captain Threk apart with a blizzard of overwhelmingly strong, powerful attacks.
It hadn’t exactly enjoyed it when her fists burst into flame, she had slammed her arms into it, driving in the burning spikes, wrapped it up with her legs, and embraced its horned skull in a corona of flame.
It had clawed at her, ripped at her, but she had held on as the berserk Captain had torn into it with his axe, and Eshe smashed a pair of fiery rays into it to add to its miseries as she and Henri kept the main force of the party intact and under the cover of a set of sea caves conveniently chosen as the battleground for the battlegroup of gargoyles hunting for them.
They hadn’t expected this monstrous four-armed creature, a gargoyle king called a gargorian, to be leading the pack…a truly terrible foe. If they hadn’t had advance warning and been prepared to take it and its horror down, it could well have killed them all.
Spurred on by the Captain’s screaming fury and Henri’s exhortations, the settlers had performed above their weight, holding at bay the majority of the gargoyles, gathering them into place so Eshe’s magic and a preset magical trap of fire could rip into as many as possible. The leader clearly hadn’t expected Threk to take the fight right to it, nor for the ripping power of the Urukhar’s gleaming axe.
It also hadn’t expected its head to be set on fire and to have nearly a hundred and forty kilos of Forged on its backside, spikes dug firmly in and rending and roasting it as it matched fang and claw to hewing axe. There’d been too much damage to its wings to fly away, and Threk had sheered off one leg just before its eyes charred away and flames began to rage down its throat.
Slowly, the Forged unpeeled herself from the massive corpse, aided by the panting Threk, using the enhanced strength Eshe had granted them to move around the massive carcass.
Great gouges in her ironwood plating were massive evidence of the ripping, frantic struggle the gargorian had undertaken to get free, and sap-like internal fluids leaked with bright green hues from the wounds, including a massive triple row down her face that likely would have ripped a human’s skull wide open.
She could feel the extent of the injuries…the gargorian had nearly torn her head off with its final blow. Carefully, she willed away the flames and spikes she had called into being, and carefully drew to herself healing power…not the positive power Eshe could tap into, nor the transarcanic power of the spells used to repair other Forged, but the more organic, natural powers of Nature itself, clutching the living armor that was skin and shell.
The dark green ironwood plating hummed with new life. Slowly, the rents began to close of their own accord…and, to her surprise, leave behind nascent, thorn-like growths in her plating. As she watched, several of those began to spout leaves…small, tiny, but leaves nonetheless, as thorns extended and melded together into long, slender vines and cords that wrapped slowly and languidly about her.
A flash of golden energy washed over Threk, and she felt Eshe’s magic pulse through the web connecting the Pack, adding some of its healing energy to her own attempts. Thoughts from Henri as he pulled out a wand and was carefully and quickly seeing to any of the injured people with speed and energy.
The Urukhar was in the worst shape, his armor battered and rent by the terrific power of the creature…but his eyes were deep with triumph despite the pain of what she assumed to be at least two broken ribs. He would be taking considerably more healing then merely one spell.
“Save it for yourself,” he ordered, feeling the offer and instantly rejecting it. “I want our spellcasters in prime shape in case that demon comes back. I’ll get some love from that wand Henri is waving around.” His nearly blood-red eyes turned towards the top of the cliff above, and she followed his gaze, feeling the dark menace lurking above there. With a nod, she chanted the second of her healing spells upon herself, heaving herself to her feet.
With a feeling of some great satisfaction, she helped the Urukhar heave the gargoyle king’s corpse over the side of the cliff trail, but not before the Captain took the spiked, jagged crown from the charred head, and calmly deposited it upon her own. Despite herself, Rose felt inordinately proud at the gesture that the credit for the kill was hers…and when it fit perfectly, to the extent of twisting about the floral pattern of the identifying symbol upon her head, she realized that the fact that it had survived the flames that had devoured the brains of the creature was not a coincidence.
Living vines writhed slowly over the surface of her ironwood plating as the gashes continued to mend. Her fists clenched, and new thorns flexed into place, ready to serve with but a thought.
She hadn’t dealt the demon a blow as severe as had Threk, but the surprise of her assault the day before had alarmed it and again spurred it to magical flight. The Captain had left a broken tusk to it as a reminder of his attack…hers had been merely a scratch it seemed able to rapidly heal.
But the jungle was whispering to her, saying to her that something very bad, very unnatural was coming up. It was unlikely they’d travel much farther tonight…she would have to give voice to her warnings. The Captain considered seriously anything and everything the rest of his Pack told him, and she knew Henri had been on edge as well. They’d both felt something increasingly uneasy in the air. When this Cliffside trail finally ended, she had the feeling their journey was not going to get any easier.
=============================================
“They have Forlo and Tavery!”
The desperation in Amella’s voice jerked Threk’s head around, and his nostrils flared with the carrion-eating stench of the ape-demon. His axe still had demon-gore dripping from it as he spun, seeking another one of the bounding creatures, but the mists all about them were eagerly, hungrily silent.
Of course, they’d take out the weakest. He’d counted six…three of them were dead, and Broken Tusk wasn’t among them.
Luring them on? They’d snatched the right ones to egg them onwards.
Eshe, he thought grimly, but the wizardess was already on it. The spells she’d been using were geared to making sure the beasts did not surprise them easily, and now she was uttering a divination spell to clarify things…not that he had any doubt of where they had to go. Since entering the swamp and being trapped in this manifest zone, Rose had been slowly guiding them to the locus of the effect. Without thinking, he moved in that direction even before Eshe pointed.
Henri was moving quickly to save the injured, leaping from one to the next with his wand…the initial assault would have been overwhelming and catastrophic if the settlers had not been so able to move into their squares and ward off the hit and run attacks of the bestial creatures, while Rose’s spiked fists and his axe moved out to take a deadly toll on them, and Eshe’s spells and readied missile fire also did the job.
They’d lost Joklin, the joking miller lad. A passing swipe by Broken Tusk had nearly ripped his head off before he could get into formation. Threk ground his teeth together.
“We find them and we kill them!” he roared out in defiance of their fear, and it took only a breath for the calls for death to come back at him.
Eshe’s disks caught the pair of prisoners handily just above the surface of the pit, taking their weight easily and smoothly gliding away from the dangerous statue.
Threk stood silently over Broken-Tusk, his axe inscribed with a gleaming symbol of divine wrath, the ape-fiend’s skull a crushed ruin. But that wasn’t where his attention was.
The pack watched as the heads on the statue began to jerk, the four serpentine arms to move, first at the tips.
As in all the bad serial novels, the ancient demonic statue was coming to life.
“Lead me!” he roared, and with all the vigor of his barbaric upbringing, he was charging, praying that he got to the statue before it could fully animate.
Something round and green flashed past his shoulder, smashed into the chest of the creature, and promptly ate a sizzling, bubbling hole into the pseudo-stone of its body. Even better, a stone arcing overhead turned into a boulder mid-flight, smashed into the huge statue, and set it rocking backwards as it exploded into fragments against the thing.
Rocking.
With a roar of promise, Threk jumped, putting all hundred and fifty combined kilos of his armor and weight behind his booted feet. He smashed into the thing at a full run, kicked off despite the jarring impact, and had the satisfaction of watching the creature topple backwards as it tried and failed to catch its balance. He bounced backwards, rolling smoothly and back to his feet, and was shocked at how rapidly the thing recovered its feet and its balance, despite being a thing of animated stone.
Not that it helped, as the second of Eshe’s spells drove into the center of its chest again, and this time the hole became more like a crater, cracks beginning to spread across the entire chest as it flexed and stood up using all four tentacles and its legs together.
With an oath, he spun around, just out of reach, building up momentum, and threw his axe at it.
It bit dead center in the middle of the crater, and there was a spark of light at the impact, flaring along every crack and line and crevice in the creature. Both heads reared back with an earsplitting howl, too-pure light flared out of carved sockets and mouths, and Threk ducked for cover instinctively as The Light came out and the golem exploded in a proper ending to the sorry tale of its life.
It was some very long moments before Threk lifted up his head, taking a deep breath, noting instantly the room was somehow darker…ah, the fire pit had gone out. And, and the oppressive, demonic atmosphere was gone.
Rose?, he inquired roughly.
The currents of evil are gone, the Forged replied quickly. The power of the manifest zone is receding quickly.
Good. Without preamble, he got back to his feet, and cast his eyes about until he found his axe, glowing softly with the magic Eshe had laid on it still.
Henri was smoothly unlooping the chains from around Master Forl and Tavery. They both looked a bit singed about the edges, and a little rocked by the experience, but he saw the fighting spirit, the awe coming alive in the boy’s eyes as he was set free…and the dread and fear in the older gnome.
Without any sympathy, he reached down and hauled the scholar upright, glaring deep into his frightened eyes.
“Never, ever let them make you a victim,” he snarled to the gnome. “Remember that you led us to their lair, and now you’ve set everyone free of this place. Do not give them your fear…give them your scorn. You did your job well.”
He spat eloquently on the floor, in the direction of the destroyed statue, and headed for the doorway out. As he passed Tavery, he pressed something into the boy’s chest, who clutched at it automatically from where he swayed on the floating disk.
Broken Tusk’s other tusk.
Gnome scholar and human boy looked at one another, and then Tavery’s eyes lit up with a gleeful triumph, victory trumping fear. With much exaggeration and much less eloquence, he too spat on the ground of this unholy place, and lept off the disk, clutching his prize and falling in quickly at Henri’s side.
The gnome looked about this place that had struck more fear into his heart then he’d ever thought he’d survive, reflected on the terror of the ape-demon, the bloody eyes of the Captain, and a focus of true evil power going up in a nimbus of Light.
And he had led them here.
A sharp, cunning smile, and an impish, dark light flashed behind his eyes, and Master Forl leaned forwards to spit as well, quite officiously. He, however, did not get off the disk, drawing himself up straight and simply turning around to meet Eshe’s knowing stare.
Without another word, they all took their leave.
Rose was the last to depart, and her gesture was silent and swift, waving her arm across the room…and in the darkness, hundreds of flower petals fluttered down, filling the air with the scent of life and nature. The Forged could think of no greater insult to this evil place.
The Swordtooth’s head came down, and Henri was gone.
Just like that.
For a second there was total and complete surprise. Their trek was at an end…they could see the Wall, the divisor that separated the tribes of the southern peninsula from the beasts of the interior of the island. An hour, two, perhaps three, and their journey was over. For just a moment, they had relaxed, they had begun to hope.
And Henri, their guide across the whole of the island, was gone.
The Swordtooth reared up and around with ponderous speed to face the rest of them, roaring at them, a massive titan of the jungle, the biggest carnivore of the land, roaring for them to flee and be picked off and hunted down.
Threk went berserk, his answering howl primal defiance and utmost rage at this betrayal by the fates. He could feel Henri’s panic – the man was being crushed and seared by the behemoth’s stomach, his fear and horror mounting by the second – and he knew they had mere seconds to get him out of there before he was crushed, suffocated or simply dead.
He barely registered the screams and rage of the ones behind him as he charged. A score of gleaming pikes, racing after him as he lowered his axe and headed for the beast.
It was perhaps a little started that anything so small - a whole bunch of anythings so small – would dare to charge it. It opened its mouth to roar again, and lunged at Threk as he came into range.
Threk let the massive jaws tear away his shield, wedging it into the massive teeth and letting it go, nearly tearing his arm out of joint. Ignoring the pain, he laid his second hand to his axe and heaved upwards at the lowered throat, to where he knew the great vein throbbed like a hose, sensing distantly the healing magic pouring through Eshe’s Web of magic, and found his axe biting deep. He continued on as preternatural speed flowed through him also, whipping around with all his power to drive the gleaming edge of his axe into the back of one tree trunk of a leg as the massive head came up, biting down on his steel shield with tremendous power…and finding, probably to its amazement, that the shield didn’t instantly buckle.
And the underside of its jaw and throat made for great targets for the lunging spears. A veritable nest of steel, moving with inhuman speed, flashed upwards for the underside of the jaw, the gaping rent in the neck, and plunged home deeply. Those same hands held on grimply as the head swept back down, and stout wooden shafts splintered and broke and men and women went flying as the Swordtooth swept the area before and under it clear…and roared again as two braced shafts plunged into a great eye, and two others jutted out of the inside of its propped open jaws.
Threk hacked onto that leg, dancing aside from massive talons as the Swordtooth spun, and a stomp that would have flattened the elder Kobwash to pulp was knocked aside just enough. He felt, rather then saw, the tendon go, and as weight came down on that leg, he was already rolling away as the startled Tyrant fell.
He felt Rose hurtle up, and without pause, dive fully between the Tyrant’s jaws, and the somewhat surprised beast swallow her instinctively.
Leshkione, just outside reach of its jaws, waited as its head came up, and released precisely, driving a clothyard shaft deep into its second eye.
Surviving spears drove in at the thing from the top, avoiding the flailing claws and feet as it tried to get up and failed again. Healing magic flashed in the air, mending those who’d been tossed away by the sweeping lunge of head or tail, and a half dozen crossbow bolts sang out, some finding purchase in mouth or throat, many just sticking uselessly in the beast’s thick hide.
Ignoring the kicking legs, Threk bounded right in between them and hewed into the massive belly, opening up a huge gash, raging for the attention of those within, hacking for all he was worth to open up a massive wound into the stomach area and get them free.
The functional leg came up, around, caught him like a toy, and flung him away as easily as he might swat a mosquito. Before it did, however, he saw a black arm, festooned with spikes and slick with gore, erupt out of the wound he’d opened.
Eshe’s bolts of fire plunged into the Tyrant’s mouth once, twice, lighting up the inside of its neck and skull as they detonated, shooting flame out the gaping, blood-spurting wound in its throat. With a coughing roar of disbelieving defiance, the massive beast’s head came smashing down.
Rose ripped her way out with Herculean effort, driving her arm into the body and using the spikes for leverage as she pulled herself free. The acids of the stomach smoked over her but did not damage as she pulled herself out, nor did she lose her grip on the one she’d dove in to save.
A lot of hands were ready to help, but flinched back as the smoking acid seared their flesh, crying out as they saw the seared ruin that was left of Master Henri, the favorite of all of them.
And he was not breathing.
Eshe was there instantly, chanting words more like prayers, hands cradling the head where the acid had completely eaten away the skin, and golden light flared from her fingers as she ignored the searing of her own flesh.
He hit the ground hard, limply…and then he coughed.
Rose did not stop, pulling him sideways and out of range of any last kicks of the Tyrant, and Eshe scuttled sideways easily to keep pace, chanting another spell to heal, and this time golden light flared over his skin, making him gasp and twitch as skin reformed in the wake of it…and something more.
Silver black light answered the golden in a spray of stars and coruscant glory. A scream torn from deep inside Master Henri forced itself out of his throat as some great light from inside him burned its way free, lashing over and about him in ribbons of brilliant hues and brutal claiming of territory.
Eshe paused only a moment, along with Rose, staring in shock, then continued with their spells…one a spell of quick healing, one to vastly accelerate the natural process.
Henri writhed feebly as the flares of light from inside him lashed over him, inscribing, claiming, proclaiming, seizing him for their own. The settlers gawked, and even the two healers backed away as the light continued.
“Hrn.” Eshe blinked and turned around to look at Threk, blinked again as the Urukhar ripped his long knife through the straps of his breastplate, said armor piece spouting three hands-deep holes in it, and tore it away to let it hang freely. Without another word, he pulled a steel flask from the pouch at his waist, and drank it down, never taking his eyes off Henri.
“Stars and silver,” he whispered, as four ribs on his right side visibly snapped back into place, giving them only a grunt for their due. “He’s got a Witchmark, just like Lady Hazé.”
The lights from within had faded, leaving the scribed Mark etched over most of Henri’s upper body, including two telltale ribbons down through his eyes, glowing with the stars and edged in harsh silver. All eyes turned upwards towards the winking trail of Siberys far above, which seemed to echo the stars in his Mark.
“That’s an Orien pattern,” muttered Engus Kawl, a farmer and ranch hand, craning his neck. “I’d recognize the pattern anywheres…but the color -!”
“He’s been claimed by Siberys. Poor bastard.” Threk’s no-nonsense voice left no illusions or fact to chance.
“He’s not…it’s not a Khyber mark?” Amella asked fearfully, worriedly.
“Not a chance in all the Hells you can think of,” scoffed Threk, staring down at Henri with some sympathy. “I’ve seen the Mark on the back of the Lady Hazé…she’s got one just like it, but hers is a Medani Mark. Khyber marks don’t look anything like that shade, nor do even the most powerful Dragonmarks. That’s a Witchmark, all right.”
“What does it mean, Captain?” Engus asked, voicing the concerns of everyone there.
“It means Fate’s got great things in store for him, whether the bastard likes it or not.” He stifled another grunt as Eshe plied a wand against his side…and then carefully against the ear that was dangling free by only a scrap of skin. “Get him to someplace comfortable, Rose. He’s gonna wake up hurting and with his soul bound to Siberys…I’ve never heard the Lady say she enjoyed the experience.” The Forged complied instantly, gently reaching down to lift the scarred, Marked, almost naked man in her arms with ease, and remove him from the trail.
Threk turned on the settlers, looking down at them all, and nearly a score pair of frightened, yet determined eyes looked back at him.
He lifted his axe. “I think you all deserve a trophy of this fight. All true warriors should remember a worthy foe.” And he strode towards the jaws, and the dagger sized teeth waiting there.
Shocked at hearing the merest scrap of praise from the Captain, the settlers paused for just a moment…and as the great black axe rose and fell and he bellowed for Engus to stand forth and receive his prize, they all stepped forwards, fighting to keep the grims off their faces and their pose solemn as, one by one, name by name, he hewed off teeth from the jaws of the slain Tyrant, and gave their due to each and every one of them.
===Aelryinth
The originals are posted over at the Eberron boards on the WoTC site, and the formatting is much better.
They are a continuation of my Age of Worm stories. I post them once a month as the new Dungeons come out and I imagine the Wolves traipsing through the new adventures before them.
===Aelryinth
Interlude on the Savage Tide
“Threk? Is that you?”
His voice was weak and strained…not surprising giving his almost non-stop screaming and shaking from the fevered fits as the Witchmark slowly wound around him and darkened in deep pulses of stars and shadows. His fingers were bleeding and his skin covered with scratch marks, where’d he tried to pull off the Mark that had laid claim to him…and in some cases had gotten his fingers under the Mark, wrenching and yanking on it futilely. The claw-like scars on his throat were particularly nasty.
“I am here, Henri.” The gruff, deep voice of the Urukhar was immensely reassuring, and their guide relaxed somewhat at the response.
“Why can’t I see anything, Threk?” Henri asked, instinctively reaching out on the Packrings, and finding the others, waiting close by…and pleased to see that he’d regained consciousness, by the emotions filtering back to him.
“Because you nearly clawed your eyes out, Master Henri, and it’s taking the spell some little time to fix the damage.” Threk’s voice was non-judgemental and terribly frank.
“I clawed…?” Slowly, the guide reached up to touch his eyelids, feel the scars and the…strange shape of his eyeballs. He snatched his hands away almost instantly, horrified.
“You have been claimed by a Witchmark, like that of the Lady Hazé. Yours, however, seems to reflect an Orien heritage, whereas hers incorporates some of the stylism of Medani.” There was a faint shuffle and creak of finely oiled armor. “How is the pain?”
Henri’s breath hissed out slowly, but his attempt to rise was thwarted by an immovable hand…not that his body didn’t scream in protest.
“You have been unconscious the greater part of a day. Rose comes, bearing you the remnants of the feast the islanders cooked up for all from the body of the Tyrant that swallowed you. You will eat if I have to shove the food down your throat. You have lost weight and blood, and our rings provide us freedom from needing food for energy, not to rebuild what we have lost.”
Henri swallowed slightly, remembering the feeling of being trapped, crushed, burning, dissolving in that impossibly tight, squeezing pressure. His breathing started to come hard, until a ringing cuff across his cheek, more polite distraction then cruel intervention, stopped it.
“Cease dwelling upon it. The beast is dead. Your job is to survive and make sure such a thing does not come to pass again.” The deep, guttural voice of the Urukhar held little sympathy.
Henri breathed deeply and carefully in the silence for a long minute or two, enough time for him to hear a cloth hanging be pulled aside, the familiar creak of wooden skin and flesh, and then an equally quiet retreat and surge of reassurance from the oddly stiff, yet focused mind of the Forged druidess.
Steel skirled on steel as a knife cut. “Sit up,” Threk ordered, suiting order to command by expeditely grabbing the hand of the blinded guide and helping him upright, despite the labored pain such motion cost him. “Drink.” A gourd was pressed into his hand, and he drank, suddenly ravenously thirsty, and the cold water tasted like paradise only his most inner instincts forestalled him from gulping down wildly. Instead, he managed to sip a mouthful at a time, deliriously saving each chilled swallow.
“Eat.” His other hand was placed on the Urukhar’s wrist, who calmly began to spear chunks of meat and fruit and vegetables and feed them to the tired, stricken man.
-What, what does having a Witchmark mean for me?- the man asked, using the rings to communicate around the mouthfuls of food.
It was Eshe who responded to this, from her place outside the hut, where he could hear the distant sounds of drums, and what sounded like dancing and laughter. –It means Siberys has tasked you with some deed that needs being done. Congratulations – if you survive, you are cursed to be great, as Lady Hazé put it.-
He wanted to wilt. – I did not want a Dragonmark.- Even in mental speech, it was a despairing whisper.
- That is rather irrelevant. It appears the Mark wanted you. – Eshe seemed rather amused. – Marks are a gateway to an easy living in Khorvaire, Henri. Why would you deny your Heritage? -
-There are certain…obligations that come with having a Mark. And I both did not want those obligations to be mine, nor to be involved with those who had my life planned out for me…-
-Running from your House?- Threk spoke along the telepathic channel so the others could hear him. – Some sort of violent altercation?-
-That is one way of putting it. Family can be…quite emphatic in getting what it wants, and mistreating those outside its arms.- Henri tried not to wonder why an Urukhar would use a word like ‘altercation’.
There was a general murmur of assent from the others. –Well, from what I remember on the Lady’s Mark, and she’s done extensive research on her own capabilities, you needn’t worry about your House being able to exploit your Mark. Dragonmarks and Witchmarks operate on different levels. For instance, while the Lady has great facility with divinatory magic of all sorts, she does not have any special linkage with dragonshard items attuned to Medani. Her prowess is tied more to the essence of what the Mark represents, and how it interacts with her capabilities as a spellcaster. You are not a wielder of magical energies, for the most part, so it stands that your Mark will act upon your other skills…as a guide, and a warrior, I would assume.- Eshe’s dry, clinical voice was oddly reassuring with it’s impartiality.
-The Mark of Passage deals with movement and moving things and goods – Threk noted, almost to himself. –A warrior who is a master of going places, and getting in and out of them. A dangerous being, who can strike from anywhere, at any time.- Henri could feel the almost glowing red eyes upon him. –This Mark has changed your life, despite anything you might wish or feel to the contrary, Master Henri. Denying its power is both foolishness and will likely be the death of you. Siberys has claimed you, and the power of the Mark you bear will be needed in whatever task or tasks are ahead of you.- His careful feeding of the blinded guide had not slowed, carefully strong and patient. –It is something we will have to work on with you. Are you aware of the broader gifts that wielding a Dragonmark allow a person of your House?-
-I know the powers of those who have strong Marks, I’ve seen them used my whole life,- he whispered back. –And there are those who develop the powers of their Marks in odd ways, or to be powerful. The Blades of Orien are heroes within the House for what they can do…-
-Such gifts are among the least of things that a Witchmark can do for you, if you choose to develop it.- Eshe’s voice was firm. –The Lady’s skill with magic was the focus of her Mark. We shall have to work with you to develop the focus of yours.-
Henri felt a quiet upwelling in his heart, a deep stirring he had not felt in a long time, and stopped the heavy hand coming to his mouth as he caught his breath. – I do not wish to be a burden, nor thankless for what you are offering. I will repay you in kind. –
-You will dive into the jaws of a great beast to recover ME? – Rose asked in voice of wind over thorns, clearly amused. – I will be putting off payment for some time, if at all possible, I am afraid. –
Henri almost choked on the meat of a sword tyrant at the image. – We are all weak if one of us is weak, Master Henri. It is to our benefit that you stay strong, and get stronger. – Threk resumed his task silently.
-As to our tactical situation,- he continued on, as if it were only natural to be feeding a blind man while reviewing such things, - the natives are helpful and quite impressed that we killed the howling demon, the winged stone terrors, and a Sword Tyrant on top of all that. They’ve agreed to escort us through their territory and to the colony which was our goal, located off an island a few days travel to the south. You will need your strength, your eyes, and to come to at least a basic understanding of your new gifts in that time…I’d rather not have us showing up at the doorstep of our employer with someone who has a Witchmark they can’t use.-
-I’ll start trying out simple things as soon as I’ve regained my strength. Did we lose anyone to the Tyrant?- he asked, trying to shove away the mental image of that awful stomach.
-Just you, but Eshe brought you back. I think swallowing you and Rose, and beating me around, was quite a distraction for it.- Threk’s dry synopsis made Henri smile despite himself…the Urukhar had no penchant for tale-telling or grandiose boasting.
For all that, he did have an idea of how to reward a warrior. When Henri finally managed to down the last of what must have been a heaping platter of food, he found a wine bottle pressed into his hand, one that must have been lurking at the bottom of Eshe’s pack. And when the Urukhar rose in a strangely quiet creak of his oiled mail and departed the room, it was only a matter of minutes before someone else came stealing into the room, and when Amella’s slender arms wrapped protectively around him, Henri found that he wasn’t so tired, after all.
In comparison to the travel through the wilds of the jungle, the trip to the colony was uneventful and tame. They saw no dinosaurs bigger then wild dogs, and the natives gave them no trouble after seeing the teeth each of them wore prominently…with the Pack wearing two! The pace was easy, yet steady, the trails clearer and well-traveled, and much safer. After the stresses of the jungle journey, it was almost idyllic.
Henri’s recovery was remarkably swift, aided along by the magic of Eshe and Rose. It took two days for his eyes to regrow completely, but he gamely stumbled along with the rest of the people, Amella serving as his eyes. At night, when the settlers rested, he stayed awake with Eshe, and together they worked on piecing together the powers of his Witchmark.
Using the rings as a telepathic platform allowed her to input her own visualization of the area into his mind. Magic was used on several levels, to find out what he was sensitive to and could perceive even without being able to see.
It was quickly deduced that he was now extremely sensitive to any form of dimension-altering effect around him, whether that was messing with space or time. He was able to unmistakeably orient on Eshe if she started moving in and out of dimensions and changing position, and started exhibiting an uncanny ability to fix his exact location in relation to any point he knew, once he used the spell Lady Hazé had taught him to get a fix on where he actually was.
With deep concentration, he found himself able to slide between points in space, much as the ancient powers of his Mark allowed others of his lineage to do, and with practice, he could move further and more accurately. He could also move other objects around, switching positions or calling them to him, an ability Threk was eager to get him to exploit for combat flexibility.
When the dark blur that was his sight became a light blur, and finally resolved into colors, Amella’s face was the first thing he saw in fine focus as Eshe removed her hand, and the resulting kiss raised whooping cheers from all the settlers and their guides. The fact that his eyes were now almost pitch black instead of their former muddy brown wasn’t taken as a bad sign, although the delicate whorls of the mark that cut right through them was quite disconcerting to him when he first saw it.
That night, he watched the stars and drew on the power of his Mark, and Eshe watched his eyes go celeste. He gasped as he looked about, not understanding what he was truly seeing…patterns and waves without color or hue in the visible spectrum, existing side by side and within one another, yet completely exclusive, slowly moving and shifting as to great, unseen tides.
-You are seeing the Dance of Worlds. – Eshe didn’t keep the envy out of her voice. – It is said that the movement of the many planes about Eberron are tied to the stars, and one who is skilled in reading how they intersect and overlap can become very powerful. You have indeed a great gift, Henri, though it be subtle and will take you time to learn its worth. – Henri looked about, feeling his spatial awareness leaping in all directions, looking for signs of those unseen boundaries, sensing it most strongly about the purse at Eshe’s waist, able to picture and discern the tiny pocket dimension expanded inside the leather. It was eerie to see the two objects being the same, yet totally different, witnessing them on alternate layers of reality. – Learn to use this ability, for it can in many ways pierce what magic would conceal. For instance, a great dragon in human form should occupy a great deal of area…you should be able to perceive the fact that this human child is, in actuality, an immense creature. Likewise, the ties of otherworldly beasts to their homeworlds should be immediately apparent to you…it would behoove you to learn all you can of such things, to better aid those you fight alongside.-
Henri sighed and let his Sight return to normal. “It appears I have a great deal to learn,” he murmured wistfully.
“You are a clever man…I have no doubt you will claim mastery of your Mark the same way it has claimed mastery of your Fate.” Her gray eyes were steady and sure, and he could feel her mind working, judging how to make his gifts work with her, for her, alongside her own talents. He resolved not to disappoint her assessment, if not her own desires for power. Moreover, he did not want to disappoint Threk, who was also working with him on his swordwork, and had been a source of solid strength for everyone in the party to lean on. With a couple more scars to add to his repertoire, the Urukhar looked more ferocious then ever, and the settlers responded to his orders with something almost approaching military efficiency.
A great cheer went up when they finally saw once again the open ocean in the distance, although they were cresting the first of some rolling, descending hills at the time, and it took the rest of the day to make it down to the village that lay across the waters from the colony. Negotiating passage on the outrigger-bound long war canoes of the islanders was not difficult, impressed as they were by the sight of outlanders in full armor and/or wearing Tyrant teeth, and it was with great anticipation that the group settled into some empty huts for the night, and arose early the next morning to make for the colony.
Threk’s warnings about great beasts in the waters did not fall on deaf ears, however, and tales translated by the natives backed him up. However, the colony was only a few leagues across the water, and hopes were high and the settlers animated as they looked forwards to finally making it to their new home. Master Farlo almost, but not quite, managed to forget his new plant connection that Rose had been toting for him all along in his excitement. His wails as the canoes prepared to push off were quickly assuaged by the appearance of the Forged druid carrying the overweighted pack and securely stashing it in their canoe.
“Fire!”
Threk stood in the bow of the canoe, his broad nostrils flaring at the telltale plume of smoke rising over the palms ahead. First one, then another…his big hand dropped to the axe at his waist as a second plume began to rise beside the first. The cry was taken up by the other outriggers, spread carefully across the waters, hands pointing and voices crying out in alarm.
-They are coming from the location of the colony,- Eshe translated promptly, her mind acquiring that particular steely sense of a spellcaster shifting their thoughts to prepare for combat spellcasting.
Threk grit his teeth, and waved the momentarily paused boats to resume their pace…this time at an increased rate. Rose provided the tempo…or rather, Master Farlo did, taking a pair of daggers and beginning to beat them against the steel-hard wood of her skull loudly and skillfully. The non-rowers took up the rhythm vocally, and with startling speed, the canoes suddenly began to almost race across the waves.
Threk was in the lead canoe as it rounded the edge of the bay upon which the colony was built, and thus was the first to see the ships at anchor there, crimson sails lifted up in bloody homage to the Dark Gods, and the snarl that burst forth from his lips was more animal then man.
“Grab your spears!” he ordered in a thunderous voice, laden with doom and bloodthirst. “By all the gods, we did not march through that jungle, slay all that would stop us, and reach this final step to be denied by the likes of the Crimson Fleet!”
“Hoist your spears and prepare for battle! We shall show the bastards what crimson truly is!”
There was only the briefest of shouts, spears lifted once to show readiness, crossbows being dug out as Threk pointed towards where the canoes were to beach themselves.
-Will the natives fight with us?- he asked, more a professional courtesy then an expectation of their willingness to die for outlanders.
Eshe conferred briefly with the senior of the boat she was upon. – He says that they are no match for the savages who fly the sails of blood, they have not brought their war gear or arms. He wishes us well…he probably wants to hurry home to his village and warn them of the attack, in case the Crimson turn against his people.-
-Tell him we understand him and thank him mightily for his generosity. Once we defeat these bastards, I’ll make sure to help his people with their defenses so they won’t need to fear this kind of attack, and instead, that the Crimson will fear his people!- The elder’s dark face broke into a wide smile at those heartening words, and he bobbed his head in understanding.
With a crunch of wood on dark sand, Threk’s canoe hit the sands of the beach, and he lept off of it with a dozen others to haul it forwards on to the sands, the more easily to offload the stashed gear, an action repeated by the other four outriggers one by one. With equal speed, the canoes were pushed back out into the waters, leaving the settlers with their packs strewn across the beach.
“Leave the gear!” roared the Urukhar, as Eshe strapped on his armor with professional speed, and the few others who had it did likewise. “It will only slow us down, and carrying it closer will do no good if you are dead!”
His axe rose. Spears lifted in quick readiness, and grim faces stared back at him, starting to feel the fury that was making the scars stand out brightly on his face.
“We came to find your new home. Now, it seems we must save it. Prepare to show the bastards crimson!” Spears pumped once, twice, but there was no sound, a lesson hard learned in the jungle.
He turned and without another word set up a punishing pace that would bring them up on the colony from the north. Streaming silently after him, images of fire and blood and the screams of the dying in their hearts that would soon be filling their ears, the would-be settlers, now would-be saviors, of the besieged colony streamed silently after him.
===Aelryinth