The Heart of Snow: A Reign of Winter Journal


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Be Careful What You Wish For

Spoiler:
“So, straight back to the hut?” I asked the others once Jadrenka was gone. I wanted to get on with the mission and get back as quickly as possible. My dreams of late had left me a little worried about Greta, so I wanted to get back and check on her. To do that, I had to finish this. I really should have had her seek out the Rangers and have them smuggle her somewhere safe.

“I’d like to stop back at that centaur village,” Burin said. “We should let them know that Vsevolod is dead.” It was on the way, and he had a point. So I couldn’t exactly argue.

We followed what can be loosely termed a road – more of a worn track – for a couple hours before we spotted something behind a bush off to one side. “Is that a sword?” Terry asked, indicating a bit of metal glinting in the sunlight. It appeared to be sticking out over the top of the bush, as if someone was holding it at the ready.

“It’s a falchion, I think,” Burin said.

“And that appears to be the top few inches of the head of the creature holding it,” Gregor remarked. “Is a gnoll, maybe?”

“What would a gnoll be doing here?” I asked. “Don’t they normally live in warmer climates?”

“Maybe we should ask,” Burin suggested. “Hello!” he called out.

The gnoll twitched visibly, but continued pretending it hadn’t been seen. Gregor shook his head and suddenly teleported, hitting the “hidden” gnoll from behind with a knockout blow. Or at least, I think that’s what he was doing. I couldn’t see him through the bush and the gnoll. “Don’t worry, I don’t see you,” I heard him say to the gnoll.

“Oh, good,” I heard the gnoll say back. I looked over to say something to Terry about the stupidity of the gnoll, but discovered she had gone over to a nearby tree and was now taking a nap, cradling Bekkin in her arms. It was almost adorable.

Burin shrugged and said, “I guess we’re fighting.” He then trudged forward towards the bush.

I heard more fighting from the other side, as Gregor seemed to be doing his best to knock out the gnoll. “Hey! You lied!” the gnoll roared, then swung his sword. Gregor grunted in pain. I unleashed a volley of force bolts, trying to help without hitting so hard as to kill the creature.

Burin continued his path, straight forward, and walked right into the bush. I can only imagine the look on the gnoll’s face when a dwarven hand shot out from the bush, its touch wracking his body with bitter cold. A few moments later, the gnoll was down, unconscious.

“That was a bracing fight!” Gregor crowed as I calmly pulled out the healing wand to tend to his wounds. “We should keep him for training!”

“We really don’t have time to take care of a gnoll,” I said. “Besides, don’t you already have a pet?”

“A pet? What pet?”

“Barnaby?”

The color suddenly drained from his face. “Oh no!” He quickly tore open his bag and retrieved the cage he had stuffed within. It was apparent that Barnaby the Falcon had asphyxiated due to being in the bag too long without an influx of fresh air.

I wanted to say something to comfort him, but I couldn’t find the words. Instead, Burin spoke. “Well, at least he’s well preserved. Maybe we can eat him later.”

Gregor looked thoughtful. “I have never tasted falcon before. Perhaps, this is okay.” He still seemed a bit upset, but I got the feeling he would be okay.

“What do you think an anti-paladin of Lamashtu would be doing all the way out here?” Burin asked, showing me the unholy symbol the gnoll was carrying.

“No idea,” I answered. I hoped he wasn’t here for me. Daddy had really pissed off the Mother of Monsters, and she holds a grudge.

“If we are not keeping him, we should take his sword and armor, then leave him here with wooden replacements,” Gregor said. “I bet he goes at least three days before he notices difference.”

The thought amused me a little, and Terry was taking a nap. “I’ll set up Cortana. Let me see that holy symbol while we wait for the boot up.”

I defaced the unholy symbol, giving the three-eyed jackal some mascara, blush and a moustache. I tried to do it with just a knife at first, but I’m no artist, so I enlisted Cortana’s aid as soon as she was booted up.

The gnoll’s armor was a near perfect replica made of stout oak painted the same color as the original using a metallic paint, as was the sword. The only difference in either of them was that we’d had Cortana write the Gnollish equivalent of “Kick Me” on his back.

In truth, we probably should have killed him – it did seem like he was trying to ambush us, after all – but this was funnier, so we went with it. I was happy for the distraction. And if Lamashtu was annoyed with him for making her look bad, then she might strip him of his powers, so he’d be nearly harmless.

It was nearly dusk when we reached the centaur village – the direct track was a lot quicker for returning than the detour we’d taken on the way in – and the centaurs greeted us warmly. Save a few kids and suddenly everyone thinks you’re a hero, apparently. In fact, inquiring about them was the first thing Terry did when we arrived. Turns out they were all doing just fine, which was good to hear.

The centaurs insisted we stay with them for the night and head out in the morning, hospitality we were happy to accept. Plus it meant that we could party with the chieftain, who pulled out his private reserve to toast us. “Tell us, heroes, of your journey into Artrosa!” Korak Kaag roared, raising his mug as other centaurs cheered.

We told the tale, taking advantage of the fact that Terry had gone to bed early to share the hilarious details she might have been too embarrassed to hear us repeat. At the end, Burin was finishing the story. “And then the little girl shot both the svathurim and Vsevolod, killing both with a single volley.”

Gregor suddenly brought his hand to his face. “I should have skinned the svathurim!” he gasped. I laughed and drank a gulp from my mug, the welcome warmth of strong liquor flowing through my body.

“Vsevolod is dead, truly?” Korak Kaag asked.

“Absolutely,” Burin said, drawing something from his bag. “These are his hooves. Sorry, but his head got crushed by tentacles,” the dwarf apologized.

“My bad! Sorry about that,” I said, drawing laughter from the centaurs. I held up my mug, motioning for a refill. One of the centaurs obliged.

I had another strange dream that night about the three-legged wolf and the dragon, only this time, I decided to stay and fight, and died for my trouble. When she reappeared, I talked to Nebbie about it. She told me that it was probably nothing but anxiety, but if I ever encountered a dragon and a three-legged wolf, I should probably run.

“Fair enough,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. I had a headache, likely the result of the moonshine we had drunk the night before. Thankfully, I had Cortana. A few minutes later, I downed a couple quick-dissolving Excedrin and a couple glasses of water. A few minutes after that, I was starting to feel better.

Well enough to face the midmorning sun, at least. It would probably be at least a few hours before I felt truly better. At least I didn’t need to eat, since I was pretty sure that wasn’t happening unless I could find somewhere with fried croquettes to soak up any remaining alcohol in my stomach first.

I guess I could have used the nanite gun. I’m pretty sure it has a powerful enough setting to cure a hangover. I just didn’t feel like I could justify wasting half a nanite canister on something I’ve learned to deal with in the past. After all, I once used a fake ID to sneak into a biker bar, where I proceeded to drink a two hundred and fifty pound member of a certain famous biker gang under the table. If that hangover didn’t kill me, a little moonshine wasn’t going to do it either.

My parents pretended not to know what I’d done, though Mama still woke me early for calisthenics and running the next morning. And it’s not like I could wear the leather jacket I’d won anywhere. I mean, it was sized for a two hundred and fifty pound man. And the sleeves were a bit short for me, so I looked goofy. But I still have it somewhere as a trophy.

We hit the road, Gregor confident that the marks he’d made on the trees during our initial trip would guide us back. I was dubious and would have liked a guide, but thankfully I was wrong. At no point did it feel like we were lost. And I think the centaurs were wary of leading us because they assumed one of them would have to carry Terry. So I don’t think they wanted to go, even if they appreciated our efforts. So it was all probably for the best.

We were perhaps two, maybe three miles away from the hut when our dwarven vanguard suddenly cried out in surprise. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I ran into something,” Burin answered.

“There’s nothing there,” Terry said, not really looking while she dealt with Bekkin, who had finally grown annoyed with being carried around like a toy.

“No, look, there’s blood floating in the air,” Gregor said as Burin grabbed a bandage to tend to his wound.

“In several places, at that,” I noted.

Burin – whose speed at wrapping his wounds suggests experience – and I both began checking for magic. “Oh, that’s not good,” Burin said.

“Get back here this instant!” I heard Terry shout.

“I know what you mean,” I said, ignoring the girl. “It’s like someone hardened bits of the ethereal plane. Based on the spell effect, how far do you think this field of shards extends?” I had my suspicions, but I wanted his input first.

“Maybe one or two hundred feet in total length, though there’s always the possibility that it bends or curves at any point.” That was my expectation as well, though I hadn’t considered that it might be curved.

“Uh, guys, something’s wrong,” Terry called over to us. There was genuine concern in her voice.

I turned and saw the girl staring, mouth agape, at Bekkin, who was now floating about five feet in the air. Almost as if someone invisible was holding him by the back of the neck… “TERRY, GET BACK!” I told her.

“Why? It’s just Bekkin,” she argued. She looked like she was about to say more, but then suddenly Bekkin squealed in pain. It started out as a strong sound, but faded quickly, as if something was draining the life from him. As he did so, I actually could see the very life draining from the pig. He looked like he was being desiccated over the course of a few seconds. “BEKKIN!” Terry cried out.

The shriveled corpse of the pig flew through the air, landing at Terry’s feet. “Terry Guiser… You’ve been treating that body poorly. I expected more of a father.” At the sound of the voice, Terry was suddenly struck speechless. Afraid wasn’t even the right word. She looked like she was a loud noise away from peeing herself.

Suddenly, a man appeared standing next to where Bekkin had been floating. The best way to describe him would be to call him a “harmless-looking Korean or Chinese grandfather in a black coat and fedora”. He even had a crude crutch, adding to the harmless effect, and he was covered in bandages over numerous parts of his body. But as harmless as he looked, every hair on the back of my neck stood up. My every instinct told me to treat him as I would a live cobra.

He looked at me, and struck me with some kind of spell. There were no magic words or motions, just a sudden wave of magic energy. And then I felt, for lack of a better way to describe it, the strength of my personality simply diminish. Had I been a sorceress, I would have been severely weakened in my ability to cast, possibly even unable to cast all but the most basic of spells. I suspect that was precisely what he was going for.

The man looked at Gregor. “I smell Sergei’s black and white morality on you, boy.”

Gregor clenched his fists. “How do you know Sergei?” His tone was dangerous.

“I feel bad for the man. He was so stuck in his ways. You see, I preferred to eat my fill, while he subsisted on mere scraps.” He looked at Burin. “You know all about that, don’t you, dwarf? Oh yes, Segrit has told me all about you. You were a decent vessel for the demon, but you were too afraid to use its power.”

“There are four of us and one of you,” Burin said angrily.

“I see only you, dwarf,” the man said. “I see your soul laid bare. Now, the woman there, she is much more of an enigma. Like trying to peer into the darkest of voids. I can tell that she tries to be good, but it is against her nature.” His eyes locked with mine. “You really should free the beast within. Don’t run from yourself.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Burin said. “He’s the one hiding something from himself.”

“Why side with such a broken little man?” the stranger asked.

“Of course I’m little,” Burin said. “I’m a dwarf.”

“SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!” Terry screeched, her eyes wild, as she shot the man with bullets of pure magical flame. The man drew the bullets into his mouth, slurping up the streaks of flame like spaghetti.

“Is this best course?” Gregor asked. “Should we not retreat? He seems strong.” Nonetheless, he teleported in and struck the old man from behind, trying to knock him out, but a magical barrier protected him.

“That was impressive,” the old man said. “You almost dented my shield. You have potential. What do you say? Abandon these fools, come work for me. I promise you, we’ll find out who killed Sergei together, and I’ll enjoy watching you tear him apart.”

“You,” Gregor stammered. “You can do this?”

“When you stand atop a mountain, it is easy to see everything transpiring beneath you.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Burin said. “We’re in a forest, and I’m sure it’s pretty hard to see into the forest from a mountain above it.” The dwarf cast a spell and crossed the distance. He grabbed the old man, his touch now bitingly cold.

“That actually hurt!” the old man said. “I’m impressed!”

“Then you’re going to love this,” I said, unleashing a fireball right on him.

“Surprising! I do believe it’s time to let the minions have a bit of fun.” He whistled.

From behind me, I heard a voice. “OI! Them’s the ones what hurt Bill and killed Steve! Get em!” I was then hit from behind by a couple glancing blows from some crossbow bolts while others missed entirely.

“Are you sure? You really reckon that’s them?”

“Why? We was told they was the ones, so them’s the ones!”

“I dunno. I just figured they’d be bigger, is all.” I turned and saw a quintet of Irriseni guardsmen hurriedly reloading their crossbows, but I wasn’t at all prepared for what was beyond them.

“GRETA!” I shouted. My lover was lying in the snow just past the guardsmen. She was covered in dried blood and bruises. But most shockingly, her right arm was missing. The wound was ragged, and just at the shoulder. Her arm hadn’t been sliced off, or even sawed off. No, whoever had done this had ripped her arm clean out of its socket, tearing flesh and connective tissue along with it.

“We found your friend to be a great help, though we had to persuade her a bit, of course,” the old man said, and suddenly I recognized his voice. He had been in my dream, the one where I’d witnessed Greta being tortured. “Tell me, children, have you ever heard the story of Terrance Guiser? He was a man that challenged a dragon. The dragon had supported him, gave him work. The dragon even came to respect Terrance, perhaps you could even say that the dragon liked the young man.

“But then he turned on me. Shot me in the heart, you see. Now, I expect assassins constantly. In my work you have to. There’s always the chance your rivals or enemies will try to have you killed. But for some reason, an old man’s sentimentality, perhaps, I didn’t see Terrance coming. He surprised me, and for that, I, the great Typhon Lee, the mighty dragon himself, nearly died.

“For his troubles, I went to his farm. I flayed his wife. Her screams soothe my sleep, as I hear her begging for mercy as I rip each tiny strand of skin from the muscle underneath, using only my mind. Then, shortly before she died, I lit their farmhouse on fire, their young son still inside. But his daughter, oh, to her I did so much more. I trapped her soul in an abyss, where she can watch the man who should have saved her live…”

“I SAID SHUT UP!” Terry screeched, shooting again. This time, her bullets hit, but did only glancing blows.

“Oh, I guess someone doesn’t want you to know the whole story,” the old man said with a laugh. “Then I guess you’ll just die not knowing.”

He stomped hard and the ground cracked, causing magma to seep up from below and bathing him in hellish light. The light became brighter, and more tangible as it enveloped him. It shimmered as it continued to coalesce, and he became a powerful looking etheric Chinese-style dragon.

Suddenly, another small Asian-looking man appeared. He looked familiar, then I remembered, I had seen him in a drawing on my phone, a portrait of Old Man, the divine herald of the god Irori! He is said to train students who have shown particular discipline in exchange for undetermined service to his god.

At that moment, it hit me. Gregor’s “God of Martial Arts” wasn’t just real, but was actually a powerful being in service to a god!

The Old Man charged the dragon, and with deftness well beyond his apparent age, he grappled the great creature. “GO!” he commanded, looking at Gregor. “Get the girl and run!”

“But how will I get stronger if I do not fight?” Gregor argued.

“You do not get stronger if you are dead! Now go!”

Typhon thrashed and unleashed a breath of magical force, striking all of us save Gregor, who was on his far side still. “Yes, run! But leave Guiser here for me!”

Burin struck Typhon with another magical touch. “Burin, there’s no time! I’m gonna need your help carrying Greta!” I shouted, unleashing another fireball, but this time at the guards between me and the injured wolf-woman.

As the fireball sailed through the air and expanded, I heard one of the guards speak. “Oh. That’s how they killed Steve.” And then, with a burst of flame, all of the guards were dead.

Behind me, I heard a grunt and chanced a glance, where I saw Burin flying through the air and slamming into Terry. Gregor teleported again, scooping up Terry, who looked defeated and offered no resistance. "Bekkin…” I heard her say.

Burin rushed towards me and I hit him with a spell to help him run faster, then moved to Greta’s side. He grew larger and scooped her up, and we bounded around the edge of the field of etheric shards, or at least where we suspected it ended, and began a dead run towards the hut.

“THIS ISN’T OVER, GUISER!” I heard Typhon Lee roar. “I will have you, and whatever family you have!”

“We’re not family,” Burin said. “Or are we. Wait, are we related, little girl?”

Terry didn’t answer.

As we neared the hut, it began to stand as it eyed Greta. I glared at it and the hut sat back down, offering no resistance as we all rushed inside. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I muttered under my breath, right before I entered. In the distance, I heard the roar of a dragon reverberate through the forest and decided that if I needed to have a talk with the hut, later would be better.

Inside, we made a mad dash to the cauldron and threw the keys inside. Once more, we felt the hut lurch as it began the process of teleporting to its new location, though where that was, we couldn’t say.

“You should have left me,” Terry said, finally breaking her silence. “He wouldn’t have chased you if you had left me. I wanted nothing more than a chance to fight him, to kill him once and for all. Then I got my wish, and he was still too powerful for me. You should have left me to die.”

Gregor lightly thumped her head. “Shut up, stupid. You can’t get stronger when you’re dead. And when God of Martial Arts says to get girl and go, you get girl and go. So I couldn’t leave you.”

“If the old man who helped us was who I think he was,” Burin said, “then we were way out of our league against this Typhon fellow. For someone as powerful as the Herald of Irori to take him seriously, Typhon must be incredibly powerful.”

“Who is Irori?” Gregor asked.

“The god of martial arts,” Burin said. “You know, the one you worship.”

“Bah. I do not worship. I train.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, despite my worry.


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Interlude: Bittersweet Reunions

Spoiler:
A few moments after the hut began its teleportation, Burin pulled me aside. “I don’t know how to bring this up, but we need to tend to your friend. Her wound appears to be festering. And I suspect that’s not the only one. I’ve put her in your room for now.”

I nodded, unsure as to whether I could say anything without freaking out. If Greta’s wound had become infected, it was very possible she could die. We had to do something.

I went into my room alone and took a look, and I agreed with Burin’s assessment. The wound oozed pus and there were others – ripped out fingernails on her other hand, lash marks from where she had been whipped and what appeared to be several patches where the skin had been flayed off – in several places on her body. It didn’t appear that she had been sexually abused, but that was only perhaps because they hadn’t run out of other ideas yet. At least, that was the feeling I got.

My parents had insisted that I learn first aid before I came to Golarion, and I was grateful for that. But the truth was that this was beyond my ability. “I’m not sure what to do,” I said. “I know we need to clean the wounds, probably with strong alcohol, then wrap them in clean bandages. And then we treat the infection. But beyond that, I’m not sure what to do.” I would have killed for a healing cleric at that moment. Or even a couple scrolls to treat severe wounds and disease.

“I think we need to treat the arm,” Burin said. “The jagged wound will cause it to fester again, even if we treat it. But I must admit it’s beyond my skill. And it should be done before we apply healing magic, or we may only cause her to begin bleeding when we treat her. I’ve seen it happen.”

“We need a doctor, or some powerful healing magic. I just don’t know if we’ll have access to either when we arrive, wherever it is we’re going.” I felt like I was going to break down. Should we just clean and dress the wounds, then apply healing magic and hope that someone on the other end of the trip could help her?

“What about the little girl?” Burin asked.

“Terry? What about Terry?”

“She once mentioned to me that she had some practice treating combat wounds. Maybe she can deal with this? At least enough to get us to where we can apply healing magic, I mean. I’m not sure you’ll be able to get her to come help, though. She seems pretty upset.”

“Oh she’s coming to help,” I said icily. “Or I WILL give her something to be upset about.”

“Okay. I’ll start cleaning the smaller wounds with some of this moonshine Chief Kaag gave me while you get her.”

“Thanks,” I said, then hurried off to find Terry.

Terry was sitting at a desk in the library, whining about how unfair the world was. Gregor was nearby, obviously keeping an eye on her, but leaving her to work through it on her own. He was clearly at a loss as to how to deal with her.

“Terry,” I said.

“What? Just leave me alone.”

“Burin says you have experience treating wounds.”

“What? Oh, yeah, I guess.”

“Come with me. Greta needs your help.”

She let her head fall onto the table with an audible thunk. “Why even bother? It’s not gonna matter in the end. Nothing matters in the end. No matter what we do, Typhon will find us again and we’re all going to die. Better to let her die now.” She was looking me dead in the eye when she said it, and she truly seemed to mean it. She really believed that would be a kindness, to just let Greta die.

That was it. All my fear turned into white hot rage. I don’t even remember doing it, but next thing I knew, my hand stung from having slapped Terry across the face with all of my strength. The room was silent, aside from a strangled sound from Gregor. I then spun on my heel and stormed out.

“Where’s Terry?” Burin asked when I returned.

“She’s too busy feeling sorry for herself to give a damn about other people. We’re on our own.” At least I had Cortana. She had a medical database and could easily manufacture much of what we needed. So I set her to work manufacturing scalpels, gauze and everything else I thought I would need.

Finally, I had her load up a how to document on how to perform an amputation on the arm up to the shoulder. Yes, she had one of those. You’d be surprised what kind of information you can find in an information database prepared by a slightly over-cautious wizard.

I did everything it said, from disinfecting my tools to washing my hands and putting on gloves. I had everything laid out, easy to reach. I’d even applied several shots of local anesthetic – after I realized that our medical databases had no data on what amount of general anesthesia was appropriate for a winter wolf of her size and weight because even Daddy didn’t realize we’d need that kind of info – to the affected areas so she wouldn’t feel anything while we worked. All that was left was to actually start.

But my hands were shaking too bad to do it. I just knew I was going to drop the knife, or leave some forceps inside the wound when I closed it. Or accidentally staple my hand to her skin.

“Stop,” a voice said behind me, as I began making the first incision.

I turned. “Terry?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“Yeah, I’m here. And good thing, too. The way your hands are shaking, you’re going to accidentally cut off something vital. Like your own hand. I’ll get this.”

“You need to wash up, first,” Burin said. Terry gave him a look. “That’s what the box says to do. So you’re doing it.”

Terry looked like she was going to argue, then thought better of it. “Alright. If the box says wash up, I guess I wash up.”

So, with great relief, I stepped back and let Terry work. Which meant I had nothing to do but worry and give minor assistance when it was called for. It took well over an hour, and at one point we had to give Greta a transfusion of artificial blood. We didn’t have time to worry about whether it was compatible, but Cortana did note that it had been successfully used in both humans and dogs before, so it seemed likely that it was safe. And since the alternative was watching her die, it was the only viable choice available.

I also used up an entire healing wand during the procedure, just keeping her alive. Even then, it was touch and go for a bit. But in the end, she was alive, and it looked like she would stay that way, as long as she could beat the infection. We’d given her a massive – but appropriate, according to Cortana – dose of broad spectrum antibiotics via an IV, but it was still going to be up to her, at least in part.

The lesser wounds were a lot less of an issue, though she required some stitching and medical staples after a proper cleaning. In truth, they were more or less an afterthought, considering just how bad the damage to her arm had been. But Terry took care of them with the same level of focus. I think she was just glad to have something to take her mind off of the encounter with Typhon.

When it was over, I thanked the others, who left me to keep an eye on Greta. I heard Gregor’s voice outside telling Terry she’d done a good job and nodded my agreement, even though no one could see me do so. I would thank her later.

I used my magic to gently clean Greta and our surroundings. Then I sat down in a chair next to the bed and held her hand. I remember brushing a loose hair from her battered and bruised face, then everything got a little blurry.

I think I cried myself to sleep.

I found myself in the Dreamlands, and it was clear that we were doing another one of those weird dreams where it’s tied to one of the strange books I’d read, but I just didn’t have it in me. I just walked off, and the weird farmers called after me like they were surprised I could do that. It shocked them even more when I took off into the sky over the ocean.

I thought I saw something strange swimming in the water, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to go somewhere I could be alone.

Or mostly alone. Nebula was with me, flying at my side. After a bit, she told me to turn, saying she sensed something and that it was important that I go that way. I didn’t have it in me to argue. Between Greta’s injuries and the sheer force of Typhon’s mind when he’d hit me with that spell, I felt defeated. How could we possibly stand against something like that, no matter how important it was that we do so if he came again?

The ocean gave way to plains, which in turn gave way to hills, which then became a desert. Not the kind with the massive sand dunes, but like Arizona, where my grandparents live. All rocks and dirt and cactus. And it was hot, which fit the environment rather well.

And the weird thing was that as I traveled into the desert, I heard music. It was faint at first. But as I continued, it became louder. There were instruments, but also a woman’s voice. She wasn’t singing words, but carrying the tune, her voice an instrument all its own. And the music sounded familiar. I knew I’d heard it before. But where?

And then I remembered. It was from some old western movie. But how could it be here? And why? I was desperate to find the answer. I poured on the speed, flying ever faster, until at last, as the music reached its crescendo, I crested a hill and saw him.

He stood there, dressed in a black duster, a wide brimmed cowboy hat keeping the sun out of his eyes. He had a bandolier, and a pair of pistols hanging from his belt, the glint of the steel visible even at this distance. That music with that look, in this place, meant it could only be one person.

“Daddy!” I cried, as I flew to him and threw my arms around my father’s neck.

He looked surprised, a bemused smile framed by his neatly trimmed goatee. But it took him only a moment before he wrapped his strong arms around me. “Hey there, pumpkin! Surprised to see you here,” he said. He looked over my face. “Something’s wrong. Come, let’s have a seat over here on this rock and you can tell me all about it. We have some time before high noon yet.”

“High noon? What’s at high noon?”

He grinned, giving me a look like it had been a silly question. “The shootout, of course.” He paused. “On that note, if they show up early, I want you to go stand in that weird discolored spot over there.”

I looked where he was pointing, and there was actually a spot where the rocks weren’t the same color as the surrounding ground. “Okay, but why?”

“It’s a fold in the dreamstuff. I made it myself in case I needed to hide. You’ll be able to see out, but they won’t be able to see you inside.” You can do that? Huh. Apparently where I had played around in the Dreamlands, he’d studied it in case he might need to know something later.

I actually used to think this man was lazy. I thought he spent all his time playing video games, watching TV or reading, with the occasional bout of work interspersed therein when he had a flash of inspiration. But when I’d learned the secret of who he really was, I discovered that he spent at least ten to twelve hours a day working and still made time to spend with his family. It made me feel so lazy by comparison, but he liked to say that I put as much effort into enjoying myself as he did working, and that there wasn’t really anything wrong with that.

I nodded my understanding. “Who are you fighting?”

“The ships that are attacking us are apparently run by networks of organic brains. Apparently that’s why they’re attacking us. They want our brains to use as processors.”

“That sounds like something out of some bad sci-fi. I’d feel awful if I wrote a premise that bad.”

“I know, right? But hand to God, it’s the truth. From what we’ve managed to glean, their creators feared artificial intelligence, so they created these cyborg computers as an alternative. Then the computers decided they needed more processing power and turned on their creators. Seems like they’ve been a menace to the galaxy ever since.”

“And they’re in the Dreamlands?”

“I dragged them here when they tried to attack me psychically. I’d already prepared a battlefield to give me the advantage if it came to something like this.”

I looked around. “I don’t see anything that looks prepared.”

He grinned. “You’re not supposed to. Now, tell me all about what’s been going on with you. I received a report that you were in Irrisen on a quest to break all sorts of laws, that you and your companions had assassinated a powerful official and then committed Grand Theft Chicken Hut. Any other crimes I should let the lawyer I retained for you know about?”

I giggled at the way he had phrased it. “What’s the word for killing a priest? And a bunch of giants?”

“I think it’s just called murder in the former case. Lenn would call the latter ‘a good day’s work’.”

I’d met Lenn, one of my parents’ old traveling companions, back in Magnimar, where he ran the Adventurer’s Guild. He made pro-basketball players look small. It still amazes me that someone that big hates giants as much as he does.

“Well, I’ll be sure to give him a full recounting when I get back to Magnimar.”

“Where are you now?”

“In the hut. No idea where it’s currently taking us, though last time it went to Iobaria. We’re following Baba Yaga’s trail, since she might be the only one who can stop her daughter, Elvanna, from covering the world in eternal winter.”

“I’m sorry you have to do that, pumpkin. I should be there to deal with Elvanna personally. She’d be unable to complete her plan after being ripped to shreds by gunfire.”

I shook my head. “You’re busy. Sometimes others have to step in and help. It’s just my turn is all.” I sighed. “It’s just… we kinda got our butts handed to us. I think we’ll be fine shaking off the loss, but it has hurt morale.” I snorted derisively. “No, that’s not it. I’m pissed. We had to run! There were four of us, and even Irori’s Herald showed up to help, and we still had to run! We should have been able to tear Typhon Lee’s smug head off!”

The horrified look on my father’s face sent a shiver down my spine. “Did you just say ‘Typhon Lee’?”

“Yes… why? What’s wrong?”

“That’s going to take a moment to… crap. They’re here. Get to the hiding spot and don’t come out no matter how bad it looks. Trust me, I have everything under control. We’ll finish this conversation in a moment.”

I ran over to the spot he’d told me about. When I stepped inside, everything outside faded a bit, and the color became washed out. But he was right, I could still see everything. And what I saw was creatures from nightmares – masses of teeth and claws and muscle unlike anything I’ve seen before – flying through the sky at my father.

But what I heard was a triumphant theme begin playing. And then I heard Daddy’s voice as it boomed over the fields. “Pardners, you’ve been bird dogging my town for far too long. It’s time to show you just what kind of sheriff you’re messing with. IT’S HIGH NOON!”

He whipped out his guns and began firing, but instead of bullets, massive beams of light easily twenty times the diameter of the barrel shot out, tearing the monsters from the sky. But even as fast as he was taking them out, more kept coming.

Then two of the cactuses tore themselves out of the ground and grew to fifty feet tall. “NEEDLE SPRAY!” they roared in unison, unleashing shotgun blasts of foot long needles into the swarm.

Then a cow’s skull rose into the air as shadows enveloped it. It settled into the rough shape of a man with a cow’s skull for a head. “Need a hand?” it asked, then reached out, and thorny vines shot out from its hands, yanking two monsters from the sky and slamming them into the ground with massive force.

More and more creatures appeared to help. None of them were real, not in the normal sense. As far as I could tell, they were imagination made manifest. I could do it a little, but nothing on anywhere near this scale. I suspected that he’d been watching Godmother do it and had worked it out on his own, since she didn’t like to teach much about that kind of thing.

But even then, his creations were taking as good as they were giving. One by one, they fell. In the end it was just Daddy versus one massive creature that looked different than the rest. More like a brain, actually.

“You put up a good fight, I must admit,” the creature said as Daddy dodged an attack of its psionic tendrils. “But it’s over. Today, Earth’s greatest warrior falls, and your people will become a part of us, now and forever. You shouldn’t have fought. It would have been less painful if you had submitted. You never had a chance to beat us, even here.”

“Blah, blah, ‘resistance is futile’ and all that. But you’re wrong. I’m not Earth’s greatest warrior. That title belongs to either my wife or my sister, and both of them are still out there fighting to protect my body from your little minions. Hell, I’m not a warrior at all, truth be told.”

“Oh, I’ll bite, then. What are you, exactly?”

Suddenly, a bunch of words appeared in the air around Daddy and the music which had changed at the beginning of the conversation, hit a crescendo. I think I could only see the words and hear the music because I was in the dream fold, which altered the light and sound, so the enemy didn’t notice them. At the very least, the enemy didn’t react to it.

Next to each word was a floating button. They looked like old Playstation buttons. He could press ‘X’ for ‘Gun’, Square for ‘Persona’ and several other options. But he reached out and slapped the Triangle button, whose corresponding word was ‘Juiz’.

“I’m an engineer,” Daddy quipped as the monster began shaking furiously.

“NO! THIS CANNOT BE!”

“You’ll never see it coming!” Daddy sang out as the monster writhed and roared. “You’ll see that my mind is too fast for eyes! You’re done in! By the time that it has hit, your last surprise!” He continued, doing a victory dance as the form of the monster collapsed in on itself, imploding into near nothingness before plopping to the ground with a wet sound.

Then he kicked it off into the distance, where a sentient cactus picked it up and ate it.

He grinned at me, and I ran over to him. “What was that?!”

“Good question. Juiz, what did you do?”

A voice spoke out of nowhere. “My investigation of the Harvester ship led me to discover that they use a form of gravity control to maneuver their vessels. I – to use the vernacular you’ve taught me – turned their gravity generators up to eleven.”

I was missing something. “How?”

Daddy laughed. “Apparently it never occurred to them that I might be wearing a telepathic interface connected to an AI’s blue box processor when they attacked me. Juiz rode the psychic link they’d created while attacking me into their network and looked for ways to bring down the ship. I’d hoped we could take it intact, but I trust her judgment that this was the best course. Juiz, what’s the situation outside?”

“Fighting is fierce, but I predict that there is a ninety-nine percent chance that your wife and sister will succeed unscathed.”

“What’s the percentage drop if I contact Aurora so she can say hello to Lyriana?”

“Processing. Effect on outcome marginal. Making connection now.”

I heard a voice. “Kyle, you should have seen it! The whole thing collapsed in a few moments and crashed to the ground. It made a massive sinkhole! All that from something the size of a car.”

“Size of object most closely correlates to a Nineteen Ninety Seven Ford Aerostar,” Juiz offered helpfully.

“Damn, now I really wish we had taken it intact. Oh well. Honey, there’s someone here who wants to talk to you.”

“Oh? Samantha show up or something?” Her voice was a bit strained, like she was talking while fighting.

“Not exactly,” Daddy said, nodding at me.

“Hi, Mama,” I said.

“Lyriana! Baby, what are you doing there?”

“I was just dreaming when the cat I adopted – or maybe who adopted me – said there was something over here I should see, and there Daddy was.”

“It’s good to hear your voice, baby,” she said.

“Yours too,” I replied.

“How is everything?”

“Some good, some bad. Overall, though, I think we’re winning,” I said, despite still not feeling it.

“Good. Never give up. Found anyone special?”

I suddenly found my face hot from blushing. “Maybe,” I said.

“I look forward to meeting them. Hey, I’ve gotta go. There’s one of those twenty foot tall mutant things of theirs heading this way, and if I don’t go, your aunt Kira will kill it all by herself. Love you, baby,” she said.

“Love you too, Mama. Can’t wait to see you again.”

“Just as soon as we’ve finished this war,” she promised.

“I’ll talk to you in a bit,” Daddy told her. “Lyr needs a bit of advice.”

“Don’t take too long or you’ll miss all the fun.”

“I won’t, dear.” He closed the link and turned back to me. “Okay, so tell me exactly how it is that you ran afoul of Typhon Lee.”

I nodded. “He seems to be working with Queen Elvanna, though I think he might have come after us anyway. He seems really upset with one of my companions, a girl named Terry. I think her last name’s Guiser, if that helps”

“Terry Guiser? Wait, that doesn’t make sense. Terry Guiser is a man.”

“No, I’m pretty sure she’s a little girl. Hell, our dwarven wizard, Burin, even calls her ‘little girl’ all the time.”

“Did you just say Burin? A Burin of Clan Frostfist?”

That surprised me. “Yes, I think that’s his clan’s name. Why?”

“You’re partied up with a girl claiming to be Terry Guiser and one of the demon prisons known as Burin… what’s next, a secret duke of Cheliax?”

“No, I don’t think Gregor’s a duke. In fact, he grew up as a monk studying under someone named Sergei.”

His eyes went wide. “One of Sergei’s disciples?! Pumpkin, you really know how to pick a party.”

“You know Sergei?”

“Not personally, but he did a few favors for the Rangers in the last decade. He’s a good man.”

“He’s dead,” I said. “Gregor is the last of his order, and says that they were killed by what he calls, ‘the man who would not die’.”

“‘The man who would not die’, eh? What did they do, run afoul of Rasputin or something?” He laughed bitterly at his own joke. “Kidding, of course. Whoever it was probably had some kind of magical protection or regeneration. If this enemy shows up again, you’ll need to figure out what you can do to bypass or negate his protections. That’s your job as a wizard.”

“Right. So what about Typhon Lee? How do I deal with his protections?”

“Typhon’s a very powerful spellcaster, and more than that, he’s a psychic caster. You may have noticed that he didn’t use any words or motions when casting?”

“Yes, I thought that was weird.”

“He doesn’t need them. He casts entirely with his mind. That’s his weak point. He needs to maintain focus and composure. Make him angry enough, or better yet, afraid, and he’ll have trouble controlling as much power. You may even be able to cut him off from his strongest tier of spells. Aside from that, treat him as the most dangerous foe in the room. Hit him, and hit him HARD, with everything you have. Don’t try to attack his mind. Attack his body, and don’t give him a chance to dodge or react.”

I nodded. “Anything else?”

“He’s smart. As a spellcaster, he’ll see you as the most potentially dangerous foe. He’s going to try to take you out of the fight somehow. Do what you can to shield your mind.” That made sense. Whatever he had done had weakened me, likely to try to prevent spellcasting. No reason he wouldn’t try again, but maybe this time attacking my intellect. “But don’t count on anything focused on protecting against alignment to help you. He doesn’t seem to have one.”

“That makes no sense. Everyone has an alignment.” It was one of the immutable rules of the universe. Your choices shape you just as you shape your choices.

“I don’t know how, all I know is that he’s found a way to transcend it.”

“And what about Terry? She seems to know him.”

“I’m still not convinced that’s the Terry I think it is, but now that I think about it, Terry was said to have a daughter who’d be about thirteen now if she survived when Typhon murdered Terry’s family. Maybe she did and is now using her father’s name? I’m having trouble remembering her name, but I think it might have been Emily.”

“I’ve heard that name before. Terry was talking with a dwarf named Pops and it came up.”

“That’s probably it, then. Be careful with her. If she really is Emily, this has to be hard on her. And she can’t be in the best state of mind.”

“I guess I’ll have to apologize for slapping her,” I said.

“What?”

“Long story.” I decided to change the subject. “So, how do you know so much about Typhon, again?”

“I spent about a decade trying to decide if I would need to do something about him and his syndicate. Actually, truth of the matter was that I’d finally decided that he needed killing right about the time it was reported that he had been killed by one of his own hitmen.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I had it planned out and everything. He’d have been dead before he knew I’d even started attacking. The only thing slowing me down was that I wanted to transport over a couple Night Witches in case he somehow managed to survive my initial attack and tried to escape using that dragon power of his. As London taught us, dragons aren’t a match for modern air superiority.”

“So you can beat him in a fight?” That made me feel a lot better.

“If I get the drop on him and planned the whole thing? Absolutely. Even in a “fair” matchup, with my normal daily complement of ‘just in case’ combat spells, he’d have to kill or incapacitate me in the first six or so seconds or I’d still have over a three to one advantage, based on everything we know for sure and many of my worst case assumptions.”

“That is pretty good.” It still meant Typhon was an insanely dangerous threat, since there were entire countries who Daddy wouldn’t give that high a chance of winning against him. But it definitely made me feel like things were gonna be okay.

“It really is. So don’t seek a fight with him. Be ready if it comes, and if it doesn’t, well, I’ll let you watch as I rip him apart on a molecular level for hurting my baby girl.” There was absolute rage in his voice I’ve never heard before and his teeth were bared in a display of aggression. Then he drew back and smiled. “Until then, I’ll stop by and have the Rangers start making so much noise in Irrisen that he will be too busy to follow you, assuming he really is working with Queen Elvanna. And if that doesn’t work, then Xin’Shalast will go to war with Irrisen. And if that isn’t enough, the Rangers will dismantle his organization one bombing at a time, IRA style, though perhaps with a bit more precision and mind to civilian casualties.”

“You’d do that?”

“Absolutely. Your mother would never forgive me if I didn’t. So don’t you worry too much about Typhon Lee. Prepare just in case, of course. But I suspect he’ll be too busy to chase you for a good while.”

I hugged him. My parents were probably insane, but they were mine, and they were just the best. But there was one more question I had to ask. “Just how is the war going?”

He sighed. “Better than we’d feared, worse than we’d hoped. Juiz’s latest estimate puts overall casualties at about four billion by the end of the war, after our victory today. Two of the three major Harvester ships in the US have been destroyed, so America will likely get off rather light. Areas with dense populations but less developed militaries or plagued by civil unrest in the previous decades aren’t going to do well. Europe and Africa are taking the brunt of it, though mainland Asia isn’t faring well either. China and India are holding their own as best they can, but there are so many people in each nation that it’s impossible for their casualties not to be in the hundreds of millions.

“Israel and Iran pulled out the nukes early, and while they’re incapable of damaging larger Harvester vessels, they can do enough damage to the smaller ones that they’re likely safe until a larger vessel is done with the more population dense regions and can head that way. And when we crippled the mothership in space, they seemed to have decided to hold back some of their larger ships as defenses, so some countries I expected to be hit haven’t been yet.”

“You’ve destroyed two ships?”

“Two of the large ones, yes. Though I had nothing to do with the other one. Someone managed to create an insidious little device and smuggle it aboard one of their vessels. It caused a massive chain reaction in the ship’s power core which absolutely destroyed not only the ship and the city beneath it, but has rendered everything in a hundred mile radius uninhabitable due to the radioactive waste it shot off. Albuquerque was never a nice city, but damn, it didn’t deserve that. Nor did the million or so refugees who had sought safety there.”

“Oh my god!” I gasped.

“The worst part,” he said, snorting derisively, “is that he might have been right to do so. And I think someone may have helped him. I have reports that one of the people seen sneaking onto the ship was a drow.”

“Where would he have found a drow on Earth?”

“I know, right? So, when the government arrested him, I had the mastermind remanded to my custody. If he knows something we don’t, or even if someone,” he looked around, giving me the impression that he suspected Godmother’s involvement, “pushed him into it for reasons we can’t know, then I can’t exactly fault him. So, for now, I’ve got him locked up somewhere secure as a ‘technical consultant’. I’ll have to figure out what to do with him after the war.”

“You have a lot on your plate,” I said, amazed at how he could keep up with it all.

“Always. But I always have time for my little girl. You’ll have to introduce me to that ‘someone special’ sometime.”

“Her name’s Greta, and we’re sort of married. Well, at least, that’s what my Whitethrone fake ID says.”

He laughed, for once it was genuine and filled with amusement. “Guess that means I’m going to win the bet.”

What?! “Bet?”

“Your mother was sure that you’d find a way to come home pregnant despite being on highly advanced birth control.” She what?! “I think she was just hoping for a grandchild, though.” He hugged me again. “Alright, pumpkin, I really should get going. Your mother and I love you very much, and I promise we’ll see you again just as soon as we can.”

“Love you, too,” I said. And then he was gone.


Interlude: Respect and Betrayal

Spoiler:
I was roused from my sleep by a loud noise. I looked around in the dark, and Greta was still sleeping. She looked more comfortable now, though I must admit that I was sore from how I had slept. I got up and went to the door to my bedroom, opening it carefully and peeking out. Gregor was standing there, wild eyed. It looked like he had been about to knock.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Bring the wand. Terry! And Burin!” He wasn’t making sense, but if we needed the wand, that meant someone was hurt. I grabbed not only the normal slow healing one, but the more powerful wand we’d found some time back.

Burin was standing in the common room, trying to support himself as blood dripped from wounds that seemed to have no source. I moved to help him. “No. Help the little girl.”

I pressed the weaker wand into his hand. “Here. You can use this as well as I. I’ll help Terry with the other one.”

“I’ll be fine. Go!”

I hurried in after Gregor and found a mess. Terry had a massive bullet wound to the side of her head. It looked like an exit wound, but I could see no entry wound. And the wall was covered in blood. My hands shaking, I activated the wand and touched it to her. The wound began to mend, much to Gregor’s visible relief.

“So, not dead after all?” A voice said. I turned and found Zorka, the kikimora who lived in the hut, standing next to me.

“Did you have something to do with this?!” Gregor demanded, looking ready to strike if he didn’t like her answer.

“Heavens no,” Zorka said. “Just disappointed that she would make such a mess and for what? Nothing! And I bet you expect poor Zorka to clean it. Everyone assumes that Zorka will do everything.”

I took a deep breath. “I’ll clean it,” I said. “Please, if there’s something you can tell us about what happened, we need to know.” I hit Terry with another charge from the wand as I spoke.

She shrugged. “Not much to tell. Girl put the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger. Couldn’t even do that right. Useless, that one. You should let her die.”

Gregor advanced on her, but I stepped in. “Zorka, now’s not the time. Please, let us deal with this. I promise once more that I will clean it up.”

“Fine,” the kikimora said, and disappeared once more.

From the doorway, Burin asked, “Is she going to be okay?” His wounds were mending, albeit slowly. He was one tough dwarf.

“I think so,” I said. “But I don’t think she would have made it if not for the connection to you.”

“Glad to be useful,” Burin said, forcing himself to laugh. He began coughing. “That’s not good,” he said, indicating blood he’d coughed all over his hand. “I think I need to sit down.”

I got up and tapped him with the wand. “Gregor, get him a chair.”

“Don’t waste those on me,” Burin protested. “Keep helping the little girl.”

“Helping you helps her,” I said. “Don’t argue.” I had no idea what I was doing, but I couldn’t stand to see him in that kind of pain. Of course, I wanted to help Terry too, but she seemed to be out of the danger zone, so I wanted to help him too.

Once Burin was resting comfortably – he was still wounded, but we’d done what we could to help him for the moment – I turned back to Terry. After a few more taps of the powerful wand, I switched to the slower but cheaper method. We didn’t know if we’d find ourselves in a situation where we’d need the burst healing some time later, so we were playing it safe. It also gave Gregor time to secure Terry’s weapons – and her hands – while I worked, so there was that.

The saving grace was that it was a fresh, clean wound, so we didn’t need a surgeon like we had with Greta. I was still giving her a massive dose of antibiotics when we were done, just to be safe, but I doubted she’d need them.

It took a few more minutes, but eventually Terry groaned. “Ow…” she said. She opened her eyes, seeing Burin first. “Not even in death can I escape you? Really?” she whined.

“Oh, you’re not dead, little girl,” Burin said. “Though you tried pretty hard. I must admit, it really hurt a lot.”

She turned to Gregor, whose face was filled with disappointment. “I’m guessing you tied me up?”

“We cannot risk you trying that again. You cannot get stronger if you are dead, stupid.”

She turned to me. “And I’m guessing you’re the one who saved me, with that blasted wand?”

I took a breath. “Yes, Emily, I couldn’t let you die,” I said, my tone neutral.

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What did you call me?”

“Emily? That’s your name, isn’t it? Your real name, I mean.”

“How do you know…?”

“Turns out someone I know knows you, or of you, at least.”

“Do you feel like you’re missing an entire part of this conversation?” I heard Burin ask Gregor.

“I am thinking it is best not to ask,” Gregor answered. “Sergei said once that one should never try to understand words between women, for down that path lies madness.”

“Sergei was a wise man,” Burin replied.

Terry ignored them. “So, what did they tell you, if you know so much?”

“That your father used to work for Typhon, but betrayed him and tried to kill him. That, as revenge, Typhon had killed your father, mother and younger brother. They thought you had been killed, but between what Typhon said and gaps in the intel, it was possible you had escaped somehow. Or perhaps he had let you live in order to further punish your father.”

“An interesting theory,” the girl said. “And surprisingly well informed, but there’s one problem. A little detail your source missed.”

“Oh?”

“I’M NOT EMILY. Typhon tore my daughter’s soul out of her body and consigned it to the abyss, then tore my soul out of my body and forced me to live this cursed existence, knowing I’m only alive at the cost of my own child!”

I was shocked into silence. I really hadn’t expected that. I mean, on an academic level, I knew that kind of magic was possible, but to hear it used so cruelly… it boggled the mind.

Gregor broke the silence. “And you tried to kill yourself, why?” There was a dangerous edge to his tone.

“You saw Typhon! Even with your ‘God of Martial Arts’ helping us, we could only run! It’s worthless trying to fight him! And he’s going to come for us! Better to be dead than to let him find us!”

“And would it be better for your daughter to be dead, with no one working to save her, than for you to suffer for the chance to save her?” His voice was soft, but there was the full force of a semi-truck behind those words.

And you could see the effect on Terry’s face. “You don’t understand. You were an orphan. You have no right to judge me.”

“Maybe, but Sergei would have done better. Even without being a father to any of us, he never gave up, fighting until his last breath to stop the one who was there to kill us.”

“And what came of it? He still failed in the end! He still died, futilely.” He knew what he said was wrong the moment the words came from his lips, but Terry couldn’t take it back. Anger, fear and pride wouldn’t let him.

Gregor stood up. “You should apologize to Burin. Your stupidity could have killed him.” Then he strode out of the room.

“It’s not that big a deal,” Burin said. “I’ve barely got any demon left in me, so killing me wouldn’t exactly doom the world or anything. People die all the time.” He got to his feet. “I am a bit upset that you lied to us about being a little girl, though. I thought we trusted each other.” He looked genuinely hurt as he hobbled from the room.

“And you?” Terry asked me. “What kind of guilt you planning to sling at me?”

“No guilt. But the truth is that I wish you had said something. If you truly love your daughter as much as all that, I think it wouldn’t be that hard to bring her back from the dead if you don’t mind that you might die in her place. No harder than freeing you from Burin, at the least.”

I wasn’t being completely honest. I wasn’t entirely sure what all would be involved. But I had some theories and damn it, I needed his and Burin’s help if we were going to save the world from Elvanna. So if I had to understate what would be necessary, then that’s what I was going to do.

“I need to know details. How will you do it? How can you save my girl?”

Well crap. I wish I were as good at making things up as Daddy. He would have spun a massive technical explanation that would have left Terry’s head spinning. But all I had was my theories. “Since that’s her actual body, all we need to do is break the bond Typhon created between your soul and her body, and then resurrect her. There’s a spell which I think is fifth tier magic that should allow me to push your soul out of her body temporarily. Then, while you’re out of it, I just need to redirect your soul somewhere else and form a new bond. Ideally, into a new copy of your old body, but we could do it with any fresh corpse, I think. That’s going to take seventh tier magic at least.”

“And what tier can you cast now?”

“I’ve managed to reach fifth, I think. I can feel the power, but I haven’t used it yet.”

“And then we just resurrect her, as simple as all that?”

“Hopefully we’ll find a scroll or a helpful cleric. We may also need to simultaneously raise Burin from the dead. I can do that with a seventh tier spell, but the full resurrection I think Emily needs will require more than I can do without a scroll or maybe a staff, if we’re lucky enough to find one.”

“Are you sure this will work?”

I wanted to lie, and say that it was a complete guarantee, but I couldn’t. “No. Not entirely. I mean it entirely when I say that I believe it will. But I don’t know that anyone has tested this kind of thing before. So I’m running on speculation, here. It has solid magical foundation. But to say that I’m completely certain would be a lie.”

He thought about it for a minute. “Okay. What have I got to lose at this point?”

“Not much, considering my father is planning to murder Typhon Lee as soon as he has the time to do it properly.” I got up and began magically cleaning the blood from the walls.

That surprised him. “What, really? How do you know that? You just barely learned who Typhon is.”

“I managed to speak to my father. How do you think I learned Emily’s name?”

“How do I know you’re not just telling me what I want to hear?” It was eerie seeing that look of suspicion on the girl’s face and knowing it was being made by a grown man.

“Would it help if I told you that he was planning to do it before, and only stopped because he heard that you’d already done it?”

Terry groaned. “Yeah, knowing that I somehow managed to save Typhon’s life by trying to kill him makes that more believable. Do you think he can really do it?”

“I have absolutely no doubt. So all we have to do is avoid Typhon until he gets a chance. And apparently his agents will be causing enough trouble in Irrisen that Typhon will have to help, assuming he really owes Elvanna for saving his life.”

“That makes me feel better after Typhon beat us without using half of his strength. Heck, he didn’t even bring his bodyguards.”

“How do you mean, not using half of his strength?”

“The dragon is usually bigger than that.” Terry shook his head. “MUCH bigger.”

That confused me. “If he’s so strong, then why would he need bodyguards?” After all, Daddy rarely had any bodyguards around him.

“I’m not sure he needs them. But he’s paranoid. So his twin grandchildren protect him. They have the same spirit bonded powers he does, though they take a different form since they’re different spirits.”

“Tell me about them. I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about him, but I’d rather know than not.” As my parents say, better to know and not need it than need it and not know it.

“The elder brother – by minutes or whatever – is bonded to the spirit of a black unicorn. He’s like a shock trooper, charging in and wading through Typhon’s foes. The younger sister is bonded to the spirit of a bloody crow, and serves both as Typhon’s eyes and protector while her brother is fighting his foes. And while the brother is filled with bloodlust, the sister is an absolute psychopath. I once watched her beat a man to death with her shield for merely interrupting Typhon.”

“Wow,” I said. “Well, hopefully we won’t have to deal with them. Our job is to find Baba Yaga. We’ll let my parents worry about Typhon.” I sincerely hoped that Daddy could distract Typhon without putting the war back home in jeopardy. Because I really didn’t want to risk running into Typhon at full strength with his full retinue.

“Okay. So we continue on. Good talk. Now you can go ahead and untie me.”

“Nope,” I said, as I started making my way to the door.

“Lyriana, I have to pee.”

“You’ll just have to hold it until I get around to sending Burin in with a bucket.”

“You’re gonna make me pee in front of the dwarf?! You can’t do that!”

“You should have thought of that before you blasted a hole through your daughter’s skull because you were feeling sad.”

“That’s not fair!”

I smirked. “Life’s not fair. But this time, you earned this one. Deal with it like a man.”

“No! Don’t leave me! Now my nose itches!”

I stopped at the door, turned and walked over. Reaching out, I scratched the tip of his nose. “That’s for helping save Greta.”

“I still have to pee.”

“I’m sure Burin will be up and on his feet unassisted within an hour or so.”

“Come back!” Terry yelled after me as I shut the door to his room behind me.

Burin and Gregor were sitting in the common room. Gregor still looked pissed off, but Burin just looked concerned. “Is everything alright?” the dwarf asked.

“He’ll be fine,” I said. “Let him panic for about ten minutes and then take him a bucket to pee in. We might want to leave him tied up until we arrive, but I’ll leave that up to you two.”

“What did you say to him?” Burin asked.

“I told him that we might be able to save his daughter.”

“Can we?” the dwarf seemed dubious. I explained my theory to him. “Yeah, that might work. I’ll try to think of anything else I can add to it.”

“Please do. Now, if you two don’t mind, I’m going to go check on Greta and get some more sleep.” Before I left, I turned to Gregor, “If he gets hungry, as I seem to recall, he doesn’t like fiddleheads.”

Gregor looked at me thoughtfully. “I will see if Zorka can help me make a soup of those.” Good. If I couldn’t channel Gregor’s anger into something constructive, at least it could be something petty.

I returned to my room to find a blond woman standing over Greta’s bed. I would have panicked, but I recognized the clothes she was wearing. “Godmother? What are you doing here?”

The woman known to most only as Samantha turned and smiled at me. “You picked a good one there. She still doesn’t know where she is, but all she can think about is getting to you so she can warn you before Typhon Lee comes for you.”

I hugged my godmother. “That still doesn’t explain why you’re here,” I said.

“I brought you a gift, of sorts. I mean, it’s entirely a gift, but since I spent your money on it, it’s not exactly a gift, I guess?”

She what? “You spent my money on it?”

“Yeah, I had to convince your machine to turn your balance into ingots, which I traded to this little civilization that lives on a planet in a trinary star system inside this beautiful green nebula. Coincidentally, I think I broke all of the security blocks your father put in to prevent you from accessing prototypes and other objects that break something called ‘The Geneva Convention’, whatever that is.”

Oh, that didn’t bode well. But I’m sure we could be trusted with access to the ability to commit war crimes. Probably.

I decided I should avoid mentioning any of that to the others.

“So, since you spent the money I was saving up to improve my magic headband to make my spells a bit stronger, what did you get me?”

She smiled like a cat that had gotten into the cream. “Oh, you’ll like this way more than a headband, trust me.” She handed me a box adorned with a pretty pink bow.

I opened the box, and what was inside took my breath away. Or would have, if I was still breathing. You know what I mean.

It was in several pieces. The first was a sleeveless leotard made of some kind of black fabric that was unlike anything I’d ever seen. It looked like it may have been made from darkness itself, and was cut high and low in all the sexiest places. It also came with stockings of a similar construction, which looked like they would go up to just above my knee when stretched out. But that wasn’t the amazing part.

There was also a dress and gloves made of the most awe inspiring fabric I’d ever seen. It was transparent in places, translucent in others, and light seemed to flow through it, almost like a thousands of tiny stars were drifting within. The dress was just the right size, and looked like it would come down to just about the middle of my thigh. The gloves had their inner lining adorned with pieces of the same black cloth as the leotard, which would create a rather interesting effect when on my hands.

“What is this stuff?” I asked, appreciatively.

“The black cloth is made by a secret process known only to two civilizations in the entire galaxy in which strands of dark matter are turned into a fabric. The other material is spun starlight, and is only known to the people of that one planet I mentioned earlier. At least in this galaxy. I’m sure I could find others who know how to make it if I started looking in other galaxies.” She grinned. “Go ahead, try it on!”

I changed quickly, absolutely desperate to see how I looked in these clothes. And let me tell you, I looked AMAZING. Everything from the fabric to the cut of the clothes flattered every bit of my appearance.

But the really cool part was that when I put it all on, I could feel a greater connection to the power in my blood. Cortana knew how to make a robe that could do that, but it wasn’t exactly good looking, so it was low on my list of priorities. And more than that, while I was wearing it, I could see changes in the cloth, as certain “stars” within would occasionally pulsate with greater vigor, which was definitely not something I could expect from those goofy robes.

I also noticed something else interesting. “Was that Orion, just now?” I asked.

Godmother smiled. “So long as you’re wearing it, the stars you see will often mirror those of your home planet. Don't be surprised if you see other constellations as well.”

“Sweet!” I said, hugging my godmother impulsively.

I took another look in the mirror. Daddy was going to blow a gasket trying to figure out how this stuff was made. Mama was gonna blow a gasket when she saw how much skin I was – and yet simultaneously wasn’t – showing.

Then I realized something. “Hey, my hair doesn’t match anymore. I’m gonna have to change it again.”

She laughed. “Your natural hair color would probably look pretty good with it.”

I gave her an accusing look. “You just did this because you like my natural hair color.”

“It’s not my fault that your parents both have blondes in their family histories.”

“And you’re saying that the magic you gifted me with didn’t influence which genes I got?”

“I’m not saying anything.”

I laughed. “That’s what I thought.” Then I had an idea. “Ooh! I could have black hair with numerous blonde stars throughout my hair!” What good were cybernetic hair implants if I never did anything crazy with them? “Now I just need to recolor my boots.”

“I took care of those already,” Godmother said.

I didn’t like her tone. “What did you do?”

“I made them better,” she said, producing my magic boots. They were now constructed of the same fabrics as my clothing, primarily black trimmed with starlight. But more shockingly, they now had three inch stiletto heels.

“What’s with the heels?” I asked, trying not to sound annoyed.

“I’ve noticed that girls on your world seem more confident when they’re wearing heels like this, and you were a bit upset. So I’m helping.”

As much of a leap as it was, I couldn’t fault that logic. And it’s not like I didn’t have experience wearing heels like that, so they probably wouldn’t be a problem. It’s just, I’ve always liked guys who were taller than me, which eliminates a lot of men, considering my height. But I was married now – sort of, and she would still be taller than me – so I guess it didn’t matter.

And I would look pretty awesome in those. So I just laughed. “Thanks,” I said, genuinely feeling it.

“Hey,” Godmother said, suddenly serious. “Those things the idiot with the dragon said, just ignore them. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He could sense the power of the void and assumed that made you evil. Stupid, prejudiced mortals. Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s evil.” She snorted. “I complain about mortals, but the idiots from other planes are even worse. At least some mortals have open minds.”

“He was just trying to upset me,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “I had no plan on listening to anything he said.”

“Good.”

It was my turn to be serious. “Is there anything you can do to help Greta?” I asked.

She gave me an apologetic smile. “Sorry, but I think I’m pushing it bringing you those clothes. I think it’s only because I spent your own money on them that I’m able to keep on this side of not inviting open interference from some deity.”

I understood. There was a good reason that most gods didn’t simply openly interfere – the risk that others would jump in as well, possibly leading to open confrontation. And open confrontation between gods wasn’t exactly a good thing for those caught in the middle. Apparently whole worlds had been destroyed in the process before. That’s why they played the game by subtly pushing others where they needed them through signs and portents, with the occasional miracle here or there.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“It’s not all bad. I can tell you that you did a good job. She’s going to be okay, though she won’t wake up for a couple days. Probably not until you’re on your way back to the hut during the next stop, if all goes well. Give her some of those liquid nutrients or whatever you call them a couple times a day until you leave, and then bribe the caretaker to keep an eye on her, and she should be fine.”

That was an incredible relief. “Thank you,” I whispered, a tear welling in my left eye.

“Of course. Oh, and don’t take her with you at the stop after that either. She needs to rest and will probably die if she goes. She has a better chance of surviving anything after that, but in truth, I wouldn’t recommend it, if you can come up with a way to convince her not to go.”

“Got it,” I said. Greta wouldn’t like it, from what I knew of her. But I would find a way to convince her. I just got her back. I wasn’t losing her again.

“Oh, and you aren’t going to hurt her by lying down with her. She’ll appreciate waking to find your scent on her.” My confusion must have shown, because she continued. “She’s a wolf, remember? She’ll definitely be able to smell your scent if you spend your next couple nights laying down with her.”

That made sense. “I was planning to leave her a letter. Should I wipe some of my sweat on it?”

“Mix a few drops of the sweat from your hair into your perfume and spray it lightly. That would probably be bit more traditional.”

Right. That made sense. Suddenly I heard a noise from the common room. “What’s that?” I asked.

Godmother shrugged. “I have no idea,” she said, though her amused smile told me that was a lie.

Well, I would play along. I stepped out into the common room to find Gregor hiding behind a couch. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“The dwarf has gone crazy!” he whisper-shouted at me.

Burin popped out from behind the overturned table, cackling wildly as he took aim and fired. Several large yellow bullets flew past where Gregor was hiding, just missing me. “Oh, sorry! I didn’t know you were there.”

“Burin?” I asked.

“Yes?”

“Where did you get a Nerf gun?”

“I went to use the box and this appeared when I turned it on, with a note saying that it was a toy.”

Ah. Godmother’s idea of a joke. “Alright, then. Try to avoid breaking anything. And don’t forget to take Terry to the bathroom.”

“Oh, right! I almost forgot!”

“I thought you might have.”

Gregor had an evil look on his face. “Wait. Can the box make more of these toys? I think it is time we taught Terry to dodge.”

I grabbed my phone and connected to Cortana. “Be a dear and show Gregor your assortment of Nerf guns,” I said. “Oh, and until further notice, lock the account labeled as ‘Terry’. It now requires parental permissions from me, Gregor or Burin.”

“Understood,” Cortana replied.

I put away the phone. “You boys have fun.”

Godmother was gone when I returned, so I stripped down to the leotard and climbed into bed with Greta. I’d forgotten that she was almost entirely nude under the covers.

That made it a little difficult to get to sleep, I must admit.

Can't believe I forgot to upload this last week. Got the first entry for Frozen Stars ready, but the other players need to read over it to make sure I didn't miss anything.


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The Witch’s Garden

Spoiler:
Giving my companions Nerf guns was a mistake. Playing with them was how they alleviated their boredom. For several days. We eventually had to institute a rule that no one could use them during meal times after the incident with the hot soup on Burin’s lap. Not that it bothered the dwarf all that much, but still, I didn’t want anyone splashing anything over my new clothing.

Speaking of which, it probably says something about either me or my companions that no one even commented on my new clothes. I was a little put out by that, to be honest. Well, at least I’m sure Greta would say something.

After a couple days of travel, we were sitting down for another meal. I didn’t eat, but it’s supposed to build camaraderie to sit down together for meals, and we certainly needed more of that. So that’s what we were doing.

All of the really dangerous weapons secure, Terry had once more been allowed his freedom. “I don’t see why I can’t have my gun back,” he was whining.

“Then perhaps the bullet damaged your eyesight,” Gregor answered. Ouch. Burn. Terry stuck out his tongue at Gregor.

You know, I’d bet psychologists back home would be fascinated by Terry’s situation. Despite being about the same age as my parents, he still had a number of the mannerisms of a teenager. Was he always like that? Or was it a function of his body? Should I be recording all of this to make some doctoral student’s day?

“At least give me one of those toy guns, then.” Gregor rolled his eyes and handed him one. “Hey, there aren’t any bullets! Give me bullets!”

Gregor pulled out his own gun and shot Terry. A dart stuck to Emily’s forehead. “There, you have one bullet now.” To my left, I heard Burin snort as he held back his laughter.

Annoyed, Terry decided to switch subjects. “So, your ‘God of Martial Arts’… he came out of nowhere. Why is that the first time he helped us? There were a number of times when we probably could have used his help, but he was nowhere to be seen.”

Gregor looked at him like he was stupid. “You assume he’s always there. Sometimes he comes to train, other times, he is elsewhere. And even if there, if he thinks we are ready, he will not help. We will not get stronger if he does it for us.”

“So we could get in over our heads on purpose and he’d help?”

“No. Stupidity on our own part would be a lesson we need to learn from. And if we die, then we weren’t worth helping anyway.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Terry said. “He’s probably already dead. No one comes out of a fight with Typhon alive, unless you run away quickly enough. And that only prolongs your suffering.”

“How can he be dead?” Gregor asked. “He is god.”

“Well…” Burin said. “He’s not actually a god. He’s a god’s herald. But he’s still probably strong enough to have held Typhon back long enough for us to flee and make it out alive.”

The others ignored him. “It’s almost too bad we didn’t die,” Terry said. “At least Emily would be free now. It’s just this body anchoring her.”

“I do not believe that is how that works,” Gregor said. “I think you’re just trying to justify ending your own pain.”

“Bah. What do you know? Besides, wouldn’t you do the same if you thought Sergei was trapped like Emily is, if you thought doing so could save him?”

“Perhaps, if there were no other way. But you didn’t try any other ways. There are two spell casters here, yet you never even asked one of them if perhaps she could be saved with magic.” Gregor had a point.

“I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk telling anyone,” Terry said softly.

“It seems to me, that if you can’t trust us, how can we trust you?” I asked.

“Huh.” I could see from his expression that I had managed to make Terry think about that one.

“Also, speaking of trust,” Burin said. “You did try to kill us both. Emphasis on ‘try’.”

Before Terry could answer, the hut shuddered slightly, indicating that we’d stopped. The door from our quarters to the greater hut, which had remained closed during our latest journey, swung open, revealing a garden of some kind on the other side.

“Back to work, it seems,” Burin said gruffly as he hopped down from the chair. “I’m gonna grab my stuff. Head out in five minutes?”

“Sounds good,” I said. “Shut the door until we’re ready.”

A few minutes later, as we prepared to head out, Gregor held out Terry’s gun. “Try not to shoot yourself this time,” he told him.

Terry began sarcastically scratching the bottom of his chin with the barrel of the gun. Burin snatched it from his hand. “Hey! That’s mine!” Terry protested.

“You can have it back if there’s danger,” Burin said, slinging the weapon over his shoulder.

We stepped through the door and found ourselves in a gazebo in the middle of a massive field. There was a field off to our left, and three forests on the other side. In front was a forest of some kind of normal, leafy trees. To the right was some kind of tropical jungle. And to the rear – after we stepped around the door – we could see a forest of pine or aspen trees.

“Shall we check the field first?” Gregor suggested. No one had any objections, so that’s the way we went. And it was mostly boring. The herbs within were used in various witchcraft rituals, but it’s not like they had any use for them.

We found several dangerous plants – relatively, they weren’t really all that dangerous to us, but you wouldn’t want to let your kids near them – in enclosures, but we were smart enough not to bother them. No sense in bothering them if they couldn’t bother us.

After that, we went to the area of the aspen trees. There was a path leading into the forest, though it was a bit ominous and foreboding. So Gregor immediately began marking our path by carving marks into trees.

A ways down the path, we realized that the path behind us had begun disappearing, as if the trees had closed in behind us. “Well, that’s not troubling at all,” I said to Nebula.

“We can just fly over it if it becomes an issue,” the cat said to me. It was true. I had learned a spell that allowed me to fly for about half a day with a single casting, so that was now a permanent thing for me. Which meant I’d just need to cast lesser flight spells on my three allies if we needed to fly out of here.

Eventually, we came to a clearing of some kind, with a massive tree in the center. “Bet you want to shoot this one, don’t you,” Gregor teased Terry. Terry gave him some side eye and said nothing.

“Is that what I think it is?” Burin asked me.

I looked again. “Assuming you think that’s a treant, then yes, I think so,” I answered.

“Thought so,” the dwarf said with nod. “Hello!” he called out cheerily.

The treant ignored us, muttering in Sylvan. “It’s obviously evil,” Terry said.

“What’s it saying?” I asked Nebula.

At the same moment, I heard Gregor say to Burin, “Let me try.” Before Nebula could answer me, Gregor called out, “Friend! We were hoping for a few moments of your time! Perhaps we can come to an agreement that would be beneficial to both of us, yes?” Only, he said it in Russian.

I had been teaching him, bit by bit. He’d gotten quite a bit better since last time he’d tried using it, when yelling at those giants back in Iobaria. I actually understood him this time.

Unfortunately, that might have been the exact wrong thing to do. “You work for her!” the treant screeched in Sylvan, which Nebula translated. “Yes! You must, you speak her tongue! So you will die for her crimes!”

As I cast a defensive spell, Terry quickly dashed over to Burin to retrieve her gun, which the dwarf relinquished reluctantly. He even made a gesture that let Terry know that the dwarf would be watching him.

All in all, the fight was pretty one-sided. We absolutely murdered the treant with fire. And once it was over, the path reappeared, almost as if the trees know knew better than to screw with us.

“I’m starting to suspect that Baba Yaga isn’t a good person,” Burin said.

I face-palmed, but said nothing.

As we approached the tropical jungle, we spotted what appeared to be the roof of some kind of building beyond the trees, so we began making our way that way. We’d gone no more than thirty feet before we were ambushed by some moonflowers.

How to describe moonflowers? Well, they’re as tall as trees, and they eat people as part of their breeding cycle. Like some kind of giant, evil flytrap. Unfortunately for them, they were not immune to fire, which we had in spades. We also had a spade, but Burin opted to use his axe, which also proved pretty effective.

Only Gregor’s attacks seemed less than perfectly effective, but where one hit wasn’t quite so useful, several in succession to a single spot did the trick.

Inside the plants’ pods, we found the gear of a couple individuals that the plants had devoured – likely as part of their genesis – which we took to feed to the box later. No sense in letting it go to waste.

We didn’t make it far past the moonflowers before Burin spotted something strange on the ground. It was some kind of liquid, in droplets that led in the direction of the building we were going to. “It almost looks like blood,” Burin said, which was true, aside from the color being wrong. He dipped a finger in one of the drops and sniffed it, then tasted it before anyone could stop him.

“What are you doing?!” I asked.

“Tastes sweet, like whispers in the back of my brain.”

“What?” Gregor asked.

“What?” Burin replied, seeming to have completely forgotten what he’d said.

“Uh, never mind,” Gregor said.

We followed the trail of what we assumed was blood to the building we had been heading towards anyway. There was a decent puddle of it at the door, as if the bleeding person had stopped to pick the lock. At least, that’s what we assumed when we found that the lock was open already.

Inside, we found a dead end hallway with a door on each side. We decided to follow the trail of blood and took the door to our left. Inside was a terribly dusty storeroom filled with old furniture and other unused objects. We also found a figure in red robes searching through the piles of junk.

“Hello!” Burin said in greeting.

The figure stood up and looked at us. “Greetings. I am…”

He didn’t get to finish, as Terry interrupted him. “Hey, you look like one of those things from that book that really messed up my head.”

“That was a gun,” Burin quipped.

“Bullet,” Gregor corrected.

Terry ignored them. “You remember the book, right Lyriana? The one we found in the ruins with the bandits back when we first started?”

Oh, right. I also remembered the dream I’d had. “Have you seen the Yellow Sign?” I asked in that strange language I’d learned from my dreams.

The figure made a sound like a gasp and immediately drew his weapon and began shrieking. “Maybe do the thing like you did to the old witch in the clocktower?” Terry suggested to Gregor.

“It’d be easier to interrogate him if he’s not dead. Or freaking out,” Burin agreed.

Gregor cracked his knuckles. “Right.” He teleported over and smacked the figure in the back of the head, knocking it out cold. It collapsed to the floor with a loud thunk. Damn, I kinda wished I’d been in the room to see him do that to that evil witch.

“What did you say to him?” Burin asked me as Terry and Gregor tied up our new prisoner.

“Just something I’d heard at a party once,” I said.
“Well, that was quite an overreaction on his – MOON BEAST!” Burin said suddenly as he charged the doorway.

I turned and looked to see the dwarf fighting a giant frog-like creature with a huge mouth and numerous tentacles where its eyes should have been. Yeah, that was a moon beast, alright. Godmother had warned me about them. They live on the dark side of a strange moon in the Dreamlands, but occasionally venture out into other realms in search of slaves or sacrifices to their dark gods. She’d told me that in time I would have nothing to fear from them, but for now, to treat them as highly dangerous should I encounter one.

Terry shot the creature in the face and Gregor flung his hat, the bladed rim cutting the beast deeply before bouncing off and returning to the fighter’s hand. It was a cool trick.

The moon beast, um, schlorped?, Burin with its mucus covered tentacles, but in the end was no real match for us, and died quickly, before the other figure had even had a chance to wake, which Gregor said would take less than a minute.

We searched the bound figure for any hints to their purpose here and found a pouch of gems. Inside one was a figure that appeared to be shouting and waving, trying to get our attention. “What’s that?” Terry asked, showing it to me.

Suddenly, the bound person awoke and began screeching and sobbing at me. I don’t know why. But it was annoying. “What the hell is your problem?” I asked, throwing back his hood. “Holy crap. You’re from Leng.” My parents had fought a group of denizens of Leng who had tried to use Karzoug to awaken a Great Old One. They were, obviously, bad news.

Annoyed by the incoherent babbling, Gregor knocked it out again.

“Okay, so let’s not get into that now,” Terry said. “Whatever that was. What’s up with this guy?” he held up the ruby.

“That’s a spell that allows one to trap a soul or an outsider in a gem. It’s similar to what I’ll have to do to decouple your soul from Emily’s body, actually, though the version I’m gonna use is a lot more temporary.”

“I don’t think I want to be stuck in a ruby.”

“It’ll be for a minute at most,” I said. “Don’t be a baby.”

“Should we get him out of the gem?” Burin asked.

I looked closer. “If he’s what I think he is, then yeah, it’s probably safe. What do you think?”

“Yeah, looks like a mercane,” the dwarf agreed. “We should let him out.”

“How?” Terry asked.

“Smash the gem,” Burin told him.

Terry tossed the gem into the air, arcing it over Gregor, then shot it. The ruby shattered and the mercane slammed to the ground with a thud, nearly landing on Gregor, who just barely managed to dodge out of the way. I think Terry did that on purpose, to be honest.

“Hello, my good friends!” the mercane said with a boisterous laugh as he stood. He towered over even me. In fact, he was probably about as big as an ogre, though the blue skin, strange number of eyes and reduced number of fingers easily differentiated the two species.

“Friends? We don’t know you. We barely met you,” Terry said.

“Yes, well, while you might not consider me a friend, which is something I hope to change in time, you freed me from the gem. So you are all friends to me.” Well, it made sense. I could certainly understand the logic.

“My name is Burin,” our dwarf companion offered. “What should we call you?”

“Oh, I am forgetting my manners,” the mercane said. “I am known as Zilvazaraat. I am a trader, dealing in all sorts of magical goods. While I don’t have much of my stock with me, I can get just about anything you need, should you have the coin.” He reached into the folds of his robes and produced a small raven statue. “Take this. You can use it to send me a message. Anything you need, you just simply tell me. If I do not have it, I can find one who does, though it may take a few days.”

“I’m not sure we need that, since we have a magic box that can craft just about anything we need if we feed it resources,” Burin said.

“Oh-ho!” the mercane laughed. “Well, then for things I have trouble finding from my other sources, maybe I trade with you, yes?”

“There is one thing the box can’t do,” Terry said. “Can you get scrolls?”

“Scrolls? Yes, I know a great place that carries many scrolls. What spell are you looking for?”

“Lyriana,” Terry said. “What spell do you need to bring back Emily?”

“My father calls it ‘Resurrection’,” I said. “It’s a spell capable of raising someone from the dead decades after they’ve died, but requires the body be present.”

“Oh-ho! I know that spell! Yes, I believe I can get such a scroll, but due to the cost, I will need the money up front. The fiends who captured me took most of the money on me.”

“How much?” Terry asked.

The mercane flicked his wrist and an abacus appeared in his hand. “I believe I can get it for about twelve thousand, two hundred and seventy five gold pieces.”

“Damn,” Terry said. “I’m about a thousand short.” Then I saw on his face the formation of a thought. “Hey, this guy tied up over here was one of your captors. How much will you give us for him?”

“NO SLAVES,” Burin said emphatically.

“I wasn’t thinking a slave,” Terry said, obviously lying. “But there has to be a bounty or reward for turning him over to justice. So he’d be a prisoner, right?”

“Oh-ho!” Zilvazaraat said, obviously catching Terry’s meaning. “Yes, I believe there would be a bounty for his return to the authorities.”

“Oh, that’s different then,” Burin said. “As long as he gets reformed and set free.”

“Of course, friend. He will work off his debt to society, then be set on a path of his own choosing.”

I suspected it probably wasn’t true, but in the end, it seemed likely that we would need to kill the Denizen rather than risk him running around. Better the chance that he’d face justice rather than act as executioners, I guess. I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t think of a better alternative at the moment. And I didn’t have any money to offer to help Terry revive Emily at the moment anyway, thanks to Godmother. So I said nothing.

“Will you be able to deliver the scroll to me?” Terry asked. “We’re probably going to be away from this place for a few days.”

“If you are going to be moving around, you will be hard to find. So I will come here. If you are not here, where might I leave it for you?”

“There is a gazebo in the center of the field with a door inside. Just take it there,” Terry said. “Watch out for the duck lady, she’s mean.”

“I shall take that into consideration. I shall be off immediately, if no one else has further requests?”

The others shook their heads. “I’m all tapped out,” I said. “My godmother stole all of my money and spent it to buy me new clothes.”

“I would very much like to meet your godmother,” Zilvazaraat said. “If those are the clothes she bought, I could make a fortune selling their like through the planes.”

“I’ll let her know,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll be able to find you if she needs to. No matter where you go, you have to dream sometime.” It was both a friendly gesture and a veiled threat that if he screwed Terry out of his money, there might be consequences.

Gregor, who had looked distracted during the entire conversation, spoke up, “We should continue. There is much of this hut to search if we are to find more information about the witch’s location.”

We left the storage shed – after being sure there was nothing worth taking – and headed to the last little forest. Within, it wasn’t too long before we came to a clearing where a cat sat on a stump. It greeted us sleepily. “Have you seen my mistress? I think she’s dead, but something is keeping her tied to this place.”

A witch’s familiar, most likely. “Who is your mistress, strange cat?” Gregor asked. “Do you know what happened to her?”

The cat flicked her ears at him. “I am Syvet. My mistress was called Yelizaveta, and she was Baba Yaga’s daughter.” Wait, wasn’t she the last ruler of Irrisen? How long had the cat been here?! “I snuck away to look for a fat mouse or some chirping bird. Then, suddenly, I felt my connection to her torn. Which means she’s dead. But I don’t know how or why. I do think Baba Yaga did it.”

I looked at Burin, “Don’t say it,” I whispered. The dwarf gave me a wink.

“And you think her soul is trapped here?” Terry asked, trapped souls being an interest of Terry’s after all.

“I suspect it. I don’t know for sure, but I have a strong feeling.”

“Wait, if your mistress was Yelizaveta, then doesn’t that mean she died of old age?” Burin asked.

“No, it was more violent than that.”

Suddenly, Terry shot at the cat, which immediately responded by trying to hex Terry. Burin reacted by trying to take the gun away from him. But I had a feeling that Terry had spotted something I’d missed, maybe that all of us had missed. I quickly scanned the area and realized that the cat wasn’t what it appeared to be.

Rather than waste time calling it out, I launched an immediate fireball at the terrible plant possessing the cat’s corpse. Gregor charged in immediately. Burin, realizing that something had to be amiss, stopped trying to take the gun from Terry and followed the fighter.

As the cat died, its voice spoke one last time. “Thank you,” it whispered, its soul now free to pass on.

There wasn’t much more in the little forest, so we continued looking around the massive demiplane that comprised this iteration of the hut. Eventually, we found a small hut with a cauldron. No sooner had we entered than three shadowy ravens appeared.

“Baba Yaga has gone on, off to see her only son. But a trail she left behind, if the breadcrumbs you can find!” they cawed in unison, as they threw objects from the shelves at us. Then they disappeared.

The first tossed a stuffed two headed eagle as well as an iron spur and a drinking horn. The second dropped a bearskin rug and placed a small hand mirror and elephant tusk on it. The third didn’t throw anything, but was the loudest in its shouts.

“What do these mean?” Gregor asked.

“Heck if I know,” Terry answered.

“They’re probably clues to the next set of keys,” Burin said.

“I’m sure they’ll make sense once we do a little reconnaissance,” I agreed. “Let’s just make a note of them. But for now, let’s check out that door over there.”

“Wait, there’s some kind of loot over here,” Terry said. He was holding up a set of clothing. “I’m not sure, but I think it might be magical.”

“Let me see,” I said. I checked the clothes out with magic, and sure enough the set was magical. “It seems to protect against cold, even more than my magic boots, but it also seems to have another effect. I think it’ll protect your eyes from the glare of light reflecting off of the snow, and should even allow you to see through fog and blizzards.”

“Oh, I’m wearing this,” Terry said. “But I think I’m gonna dye it first, since it looks a little shabby. The box can do that, right?”

“Yes.”

“Now let us check out the door,” Gregor said, obviously ready to get moving.

The only other door from the hut opened, leading us outside. It was cold, though I was still pretty comfortable thanks to my magic boots. But the first thing I noticed was the sky. “Something… the stars aren’t right,” I said, the first to break the silence.

“Look at that!” Terry said, pointing to a bright light in the heavens. That couldn’t be… no it had to be. That was the sun. Only, it was much smaller than it should have been.

“Guys, I don’t think we’re on Golarion anymore,” Burin said.


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First Contact

Spoiler:
We took a few moments to get over our surprise. We shouldn’t have been surprised, of course, or at least I shouldn’t have been. After all, Baba Yaga had been to Earth, and by all accounts came from there. And if she could travel there, why not elsewhere in the galaxy?

Burin and Gregor studied the stars for a bit. “I think we are not so far from home,” Gregor said.

“I think he’s right,” Burin said, pointing. “There, I think that’s Castrovel. And that one might be Akiton. There’s another one, but I don’t recognize it.”

“It might be Golarion,” I said.

“That’s a good point. So the question becomes, where exactly are we?”

“Does it really matter?” Terry asked. “We’re here to do a job and get moving. We should focus on that.” He apparently lacked a sense of awe and wonder. Just how old was he, really?

Gregor nodded. “He has a point. I will look around for any tracks or trails that might lead us to someone who can help us with these clues given to us.”

“That will take a while. I’ll check out Baba Yaga’s library for any information,” Terry said.

“Fair enough. We probably need to rest up before setting out,” I said. In truth, I mostly just wanted to leave a message for Greta, but it would be fine to do a little researching before heading out. “Will you be okay out here by yourself?” I asked Gregor.

“I’m going to stay and look at the stars some more,” Burin said. “So just holler if you need me,” he told the fighter.

“Then it is settled. To work,” Gregor said.

I headed inside and had Cortana make me one of those small holographic message discs that had become all the rage a couple Christmases back. Then I sat down to record my message.

“Love, sorry for leaving you here by yourself. I have it on good authority that you’ll be fine, and I’ve bribed the kikimora who lives here to keep an eye on you until you wake up. Please, be kind to Zorka. She can be a bit abrasive, but she’s a lot nicer if you treat her with some basic respect.

“Also, please don’t leave the hut. It won’t attack you if you’re with me, I think, but I can’t say for sure you’ll be safe if you step outside now. I just got you back. I don’t want to lose you again. I promise, that if we’re not running from something terrifying this time, I’ll bring you outside for a stroll once we’re back. We’re on another world, Greta! How cool is that?

“If you need to stretch your legs, the hut has a garden inside. There are several dangerous things in the garden, but they seem mostly locked up in pens. Don’t let them out, and you’ll be fine. I doubt there’s much else of worry that we haven’t already killed, but again, please be careful.

“Oh! And if a merchant stops by with a scroll, thank him for us. We ordered it from him before leaving. He looks a bit strange, but he seems friendly enough. He’s a mercane, so I think we can trust him to be what he says.

“I have so much to tell you about everything that’s happened. For instance, did you know that the young girl I’m traveling with is actually a man trapped in a girl’s body?! Weird, right?

“I’m sorry for everything you had to endure. I can’t help but think it might have been my fault, that maybe you’d have been better off if you’d never met me. If you’re angry with me, I understand. And if you want to break up with me, I won’t hold it against you. I hope you won’t, of course. I’m pretty sure I love you. But I will understand.

Please take care, my love.”

I shut off the disc and set it on the table next to the bed with a note for Greta to hit the button. Then I went to check on Terry. I found him getting frustrated at his inability to find anything. “Fourteen recipes for something called borscht, and not a single reference to this world,” he complained.

“I’ll help for a bit,” I offered. He accepted, and we continued looking until Gregor and Burin returned.

“I am thinking that an army passed through here a few days ago,” Gregor said.

“An army? Are you sure?” Terry asked.

“Not entirely, but it matches with what an army might look like. Prints from pack beasts and at least a hundred individuals, but the boots looked to be of standard design, like those soldiers wear.”

“I think I’d feel safer if we could take the hut with us,” Terry said.

“Is it safe to bring it with us?” I asked. “Won’t it just announce to everyone that we work for Baba Yaga?”

“I am not believing that is an issue,” Gregor said. “As soon as we see someone, Burin will immediately tell them, ‘We’re hunting witches for Baba Yaga!’ and they will probably know.”

“Hey! That’s a really good impression of me,” Burin said.

“I have been practicing.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Maybe taking the hut will be the best option, after all.”

“Can we drive the hut?” Terry asked. “Or do we just convince it to follow us?”

“I think I can pilot it,” I said. Well, at least, I was pretty sure I could figure it out. “If we can get Zorka to show us where the controls are, anyway.”

“I’ll ask her,” Terry said. “Zorka! Can we talk?” he called out before anyone could stop him.

“What do you want?” the kikimora asked when she appeared.

“We’d like to take the hut closer to our objective. Can you please show us where to control it from?”

“I heard what you said. There’s an army that you’re following. You mean to put the hut in danger?”

“After what we saw with the giants, the hut has more than proven that it’s capable of taking care of itself,” Terry answered. “Please, if we want to get to Baba Yaga quickly, taking the hut will save time.”

“You make a good point. I will think it over.”

“Thank you, Zorka,” I said, interrupting Terry before he could try to rush her. “We’re not leaving until morning anyway, so take your time to consider it.”

In the morning, Zorka agreed to let us try piloting the hut at least part of the way. So we went up to the loft of the vestibule and she placed a bowl of water with an egg floating on it on the small table. “This is it?” Terry asked. “What, no steering wheel like a ship? Not even reins like with a horse?”

“If you are worthy to do it, this is all you need,” the kikimora cackled.

“Well, I’m out,” Terry said.

“I am also unsure of my ability to use such a thing,” Gregor said.

“Hypothetically, what happens if I break the egg?” Burin asked.

“No one has ever done so,” Zorka said.

“Then I don’t think I want to risk it.”

That left me, or Nebula, and since Nebby doesn’t have thumbs, it was probably up to me. I looked at it, and it started to remind me of something I’d seen before. It was something Daddy had that in his collection of old computer parts. I think he called it a trackball. He tried to show me how to use it, but I never got very good at it. I was too used to touchscreen interfaces.

Well, it was worth a shot. I gently touched the egg and rotated it with two fingers. And nothing happened. “It’s okay, we can just walk,” Burin said.

No, I wasn’t letting this stupid hut beat me. But why wasn’t it working? I recalled having similar trouble once, getting frustrated because another input device Daddy owned wasn’t working. Turned out it needed batteries, since it was made to use old style alkaline batteries, and not the much longer lasting O’Halloran batteries.

So, maybe it was unpowered? I chanted, opening a magical pathway into the egg, releasing far less energy than even a cantrip might. Then I turned the egg again, and the hut stood and began walking forward.

Now, knowing how to drive and actually being able to do so are entirely different skills. So I didn’t do terribly well, and the hut meandered a bit aimlessly from time to time as I lost control. But in the end, I was getting the hang of it right about the time we reached the ravine.

“Can the hut jump?” I asked Zorka.

She shrugged. “I’ve never seen it do so.”

I was a bit relieved. I’d have had to admit I had no idea how to do it if it was possible. “Alright, well, end of the line, then.” I pulled back on the egg, slowing us to a stop about thirty yards out from the ravine. “We walk from here. Someone wake up Terry from his nap.”

We checked the wide ravine, maybe forty feet across. “I can maybe make the jump,” Gregor said. “Maybe.”

“Magic might be our only way across,” Burin said. “Though I’d hate for us to waste so much so early in the day. What if we need it?”

“We have plenty of rope,” Terry said. “Why not cast one spell and have that person fly across and tie off the rope over there?”

There was merit to that. “I’ve already cast an all-day flight spell on myself,” I said, hovering off of the ground to show them. “I could do it.”

“Let us do that, then,” Gregor said. A few minutes later, I had the rope set up on my end, and they’d tied it off on theirs. “Is it secure?” Gregor called out.

“Yeah, I think so!” I said. The fighter then ran the entire way across at full speed. “Show off,” I said, flying back over. “I’ll fly right behind you,” I told Terry. “If you fall, I’ll cast a spell to let you fly.”

“Right,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”

Terry slipped once, but caught himself and managed to get back to his feet and make it across. Next was Burin, who also slipped, just barely managing to catch himself. He then did the rest of the trip by inching along the rope like a worm. Which took forever.

“Maybe we should have made harnesses?” Gregor asked. I felt silly for not thinking of it. So I said nothing, opting instead to fly back and untie the rope so we wouldn’t have to leave it behind. Then we set out once more.

It was mostly uneventful for a few hours, though I did see some kind of small animal that looked sort of like a bunny, only not really a bunny. It wasn’t until what seemed like midafternoon that we ran across anything truly interesting.

And a dragon flying through the sky is definitely interesting.

“Should we attack?” I asked.

“Wait!” Terry said. “Someone’s riding it.” Well that wasn’t something you saw every day.

“I’ll get their attention!” Burin said, lighting a torch. He then waved it at the rider, almost looking like he was trying to get the rider to leave instead of beckoning her in.

The dragon hovered and the rider aimed her bow at us, then shouted something in a language I didn’t recognize. “What did she say?” I asked Nebula.

“She’s commanding us to halt and sheathe our weapons,” the cat answered. Terry slung his gun over his shoulder and Gregor put his hands in his pockets like a smartass.

Burin kept waving his torch. We gave him a look. “What? It’s a torch, not a weapon.”

Terry rolled his eyes and pulled out his water skin. He then tried to splash Burin and douse the torch, but missed and hit Gregor instead, soaking the fighter. “Thanks for that,” Gregor said sarcastically.

Nebula called out to the rider in the alien tongue. “What did you say?” I asked.

“That the dwarf is an idiot, but harmless.”

“I’m not armless,” Burin protested, mishearing. “I have two arms. It’s not nice to lie.”

Terry pinched the bridge of his nose. “She said ‘harmless’, not ‘armless’, you idiot.”

The dragon landed about a hundred yards away and the rider made a show of putting down her bow. “Send someone to speak with me halfway,” Nebula translated her shout.

“I’ll go,” Burin said. “Better it be me over there if she decides to attack us.”

“I’ll go too,” Terry said. “To keep an eye on him.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Give me your phone,” I told Burin. He offered it, and I took it and connected it to mine so I could hear what they were saying, and speak up if I needed to. I then clipped it to the front of his armor.

As they walked over, we listened as Terry tried to coach Burin on what not to say. “… and most importantly, DO NOT TELL THEM WE’RE WITCH KILLERS WORKING FOR BABA YAGA!” he finished.

“Well, I certainly won’t volunteer the information, but I don’t think I should lie if they ask us,” the dwarf answered. Nebula, riding on his shoulder, shot me a pained look.

“Why did we let them go, again?” Gregor asked me.

“Because Burin volunteered and it’s better to get it out of his system while there’s only one enemy to tick off?” I asked in return.

“Fair enough.”

“Who are you?” the woman, some kind of furred creature with long ears, asked.

“We’re on a scouting mission,” Burin answered.

That immediately raised a red flag for the woman. “For who? What army do you serve?”

“We just got here from another world,” Terry said, leaving off the actual answer.

“So it’s to be an invasion?! As if the forces of Warlord Yrax weren’t bad enough,” the woman answered. “You don’t appear to be elves, so you can’t be from Castrovel. So who are you, and what army do you serve?”

“We came from Irrisen on Golarion,” Burin said, missing the woman’s distress. “By the way, this is a torch, not a weapon.” He waved the torch, causing the dragon to tense up.

“We may have to do something,” Gregor said.

“On it,” I answered. I hit the talk button on my phone. “Miss, I’m sorry, we seem to be having a misunderstanding. We’re not on a scouting mission. The word he meant was ‘quest’. We’re on a quest, seeking two magical items that will allow us to rescue our benefactor, whose fate is currently uncertain. We mean no harm to you or your people.”

She breathed a sigh of relief as Nebula translated what I said. “Truly?” she asked. “Then you do not work with the vile dragon Yrax, whose forces currently besiege my home?”

“No,” I said. “We really did just arrive here. For that matter, we’re not even sure where here is. Could you please tell us the name of this world?”

“Triaxus,” she answered. Triaxus? I’d heard of the place, but I couldn’t remember where in the solar system it was. “Come, there is no need for this distance any longer. I do not believe you are my enemy.” She also called the dragon over.

“Where’s Triaxus?” Terry asked.

Gregor drew a crude map of the solar system in the dirt. “Here, I think. Seventh planet from the sun.” He then showed the woman where Golarion was, since she was curious.

We introduced ourselves, learning that the woman’s name was Bescaylie, and the dragon – actually, a dragonkin, which was similar, but not quite the same – was her bonded partner – in the non-romantic sense – and was called Efrixes. She was one of the native people of this world, their race known as Triaxians, and she was what was known as a winterborn, a denizen who would spend her whole life living in the decades-long winter of Triaxus.

“Perhaps, if your people are in trouble, we could help?” Burin asked Bescaylie. Terry kicked him in the shin. “What? If we help them, then maybe they can help us find the things we’re looking for. We’re a lot better at killing than searching.”

He had a point, and it wasn’t like we knew enough about the place to be able to make a wise search. Even a map would really help out at this point. “I’m in,” I said.

The road was fairly long. On the way, Terry and Bescaylie talked about being raised to fight, and seemed to bond a bit. I wondered how Bescaylie would react when she realized the apparent girl was actually an adult man. Wasn’t really my business, to be honest.

It was late afternoon when we reached Bescaylie’s people, who were holed up in a fortress called Spurhorn. Yeah, that caught our attention immediately. When she revealed the name, we’d asked if she knew anything about a two headed eagle. Apparently her commander had one as a pet. When we told her that we might need the eagle, she told us that she was sure that her commander would likely be willing to trade it for our help, if we proved capable.

The fortress was located on a cliff, surrounded on one side and most of two others by a deep chasm. The remaining area was a steep climb up dangerous, rocky terrain. It was nearly perfect for defense. It wouldn’t have surprised me that they held off the siege for years, if you had told me so.

Even so, the army surrounding them was nearly ten thousand strong, and comprised of powerful looking forces. Gregor immediately knelt down and began drawing up a map of the area. “I am thinking this is doable,” he said.

Burin nodded. “It’s only about two thousand each. You two can handle a couple thousand between you, right, Bescaylie?”

“Surely you jest,” she said.

“So you can’t? Well, that’s unfortunate.” He looked serious, and so did Gregor.

“Then, another plan,” Gregor said. He laid it out and we agreed that it was probably the best course of action. The gist being that we’d create a distraction and fly into the fort, where we could coordinate with the defenders.

Late that night, Gregor and Terry put on grey cloaks and snuck their way into the enemy camp as we watched. They were nearly discovered several times, but narrowly managed to avoid detection each time. Of course, it was probably only by luck that they managed, because at some point, it was clear that they were taking unnecessary risks in some kind of goofy competition with each other.

They made their way to the army’s pack animals, and tied torches to the tusks and tails of several of the poor creatures. Burin had especially liked the torches, having somehow become convinced that the people of this world were terrified of torches. Then they lit the torches and sent the animals running straight up through the army. Gregor tossed a thunderstone into the nearest set of tents, to increase the confusion.

Then it was my turn. As they quickly made their way back to us, I began casting flight spells, first on Burin, then on Terry, then Gregor. Finally, I hit all of us with a spell to increase our movement speed, and we were off.

We flew around to the side of the fortress over the chasm, having determined that there were fewer patrols there. Distracted by the commotion, we easily made it past the first patrol, and zipped past the second too fast for it to keep up. The third, however, was a Triaxian sorcerer on the back of a dragonkin.

Burin slammed straight into the sorcerer and sent him flying off of his mount into the chasm below. He didn’t have a chance, having already taken a blow to the shoulder from Terry’s gun. The dragonkin retaliated by breathing fire at us as Bescaylie charged at it. The breath was mostly bearable.

But it hurt Nebula so much that her projection blinked out of existence. Now, that really pissed me off. I knew she’d be fine and come back tomorrow, but I wasn’t thinking about that at the moment. He’d hurt my poor Nebby, and he was going to PAY.

I unleashed the most powerful fireball I’ve ever conjured and engulfed the dragon in a blast of ice-cold flame. It tumbled from the sky after its fallen rider.

“Keep moving!” Gregor said. “They’re right behind us!”

A frost drake managed to catch up, so Gregor punched it in the wing, sending it tumbling about fifty feet. It righted itself before striking the ground, but it was no longer close enough to threaten us.

Bescaylie called out something as we approached – I no longer had Nebby to translate for me – and the numerous crossbowmen on the walls let us fly in, reserving their volley for another drake that had come too close in its desire to catch us.

We were surrounded by guards. They were wary, and a bit agitated, but they didn’t seem to be hostile. It was only then, in the commotion, that I heard something unexpected. “Did you hear that, lass?” Burin asked me.

“Yes,” I replied. I had indeed heard someone speaking a language I recognized.

“Don’t worry,” Burin said calmly in the language of dragons. In hindsight, it’s not surprising they spoke it here. “We won’t bring out any torches.”

I sighed. “Please don’t worry about him,” I said, also in the language of dragons. “The dwarf sometimes just says weird things.”

Gregor leaned in and whispered, “Torches, right?”

“Yeah.”

Bescaylie led us to the commander’s office, high in the keep overlooking the fortress. There, she took us before the leader of her people – apparently called the Dragon Legion – Commander Pharamol. He was an impressive looking Triaxian with white fur and a clear military bearing. I guess some things transcend planets.

“What are these strange creatures you bring before me, Bescaylie?” he asked.

“I encountered them out in the mountains. They seem to be a witch, a warrior, a simpleton and a child. From what they showed on the way in, they’re competent enough.”

“I see,” he said. “And tell me, I’ve never seen creatures such as you. Where are you from?” he asked us.

“We come from Golarion,” I said.

“We’re looking for keys,” Burin added.

“Keys?”

“They claim they need a two-headed eagle,” Bescaylie offered. “I was hoping that you’d be willing to trade if they could help us break the siege.”

He stroked his chin. “I see. If they can deliver, then I am certainly willing to part with my pet. But can you deliver?” he asked us directly. “Can you defeat the enemies surrounding us?”

“Not alone, probably,” Burin said. “But we are pretty good at violence. Just point us in the direction of the most valuable targets, and we’ll do what we can to turn the tide.”

As Burin was speaking, I translated what was said to Gregor and Terry. “Tell him that he has nothing to fear with the machine of death on his side,” Terry said.

“I look forward to finding something interesting to fight,” Gregor added.

I passed on what they said. Commander Pharamol laughed. “Good! I like enthusiasm. The council will, of course, make the final decision, but I believe you can be of help to us. For now, perhaps your people have ways to make war we haven’t considered. I will assign a detachment to you to show you around the fortress, and, of course, to keep an eye on you. See if you have any ideas on how to shore up our defenses. I will let you know when the officers out on patrol return so you can meet with the council.”

“The council?” I asked.

“Eight of Spurhorn’s highest ranking officers. You’ll need everyone’s support for our people to trust you. I suspect that you’ll have no trouble earning it, but earn it you must.”

“Understood,” I said. “I’m sure you have a lot to do, so we’ll try to keep out of your hair until you need us.” As soon as we walked out of the door, I turned to Burin, “Keep an eye on Terry,” I said, still in the language of dragons.

“Understood,” the dwarf answered.

We took a look around, and the others had plenty of ideas. “We could secure the gates with barrels of pitch and boiling oil,” Gregor suggested.

“Remember that explosion in that shaft after we jumped down at the redcaps?” Burin asked. “What if we did something like that?”

“If they’re in the air,” Terry said. “We’re gonna need guns. And maybe some bombs we launch with the catapults against the ground forces. Can the box make a bunch of them?”

I thought about it. “As long as they have the resources, I think Cortana can make a couple dozen guns and still have time to make bombs, and whatever we need for the other two plans. So, shall we bring our ideas to the commander and get started?”

The others nodded. It was going to be a long day and we were going to be busy. Which was probably good, since I was a married woman and I needed something to keep me from getting too distracted by all the big, muscular soldiers around me.

Note: While I'm here, I should mention that we've started our Carrion Crown campaign if anyone's interested. Alternating between the two.


No game this week because one player's boss is a jerk and kept him late on our game day. Hopefully next weekend we'll continue with RoW.

Until then, I'm working on statting up some fun encounters for later in this book and into next book. Specifically, adding Mythic Tiers to a couple specific encounters to make them interesting. The party will gain their first mythic tier sometime in this book(assuming the mythic creature I've got planned for them doesn't kill them, of course). Won't say when, since at least one of my players follows along here.

Part of me really wants to link the stat block for this first one, but it's kind of a surprise(and anyone who reads it might catch on to the nature of the surprise quite quickly). :P

Maybe after the encounter.


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Whoo! Finally managed to get caught up! Feel like I'm finally starting to return to life, slowly . . . .

Last handful of sessions:
Too bad Samantha/Godmother spent all that money on clothes -- could have saved it up for a Regeneration Scroll for Greta . . . .

Edit: Also, glad to see confirmed my suspicion that the Hut has bathroom facilities. You see, for the last several days -- actually ever since seeing a certain fairly recently released movie -- I have had a certain terrible pun in mind about possible Reign of Winter modifications . . . .


UnArcaneElection wrote:
** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:
Let's just say that Greta didn't ask for what I have planned for her.

Alright, my bad pun out of the way, I assumed the hut had to have some kind of facilities, even if that meant just a hole to dump chamber pots into. Probably with one of those annihilation orbs in it.


Placing a sphere of annihilation as a trash-n-waste disposal system is something of a 'trope' as it were. Place it at least 45 feet distant from all 'input' surfaces and it should stay put depending upon the necessary size of the access 'port'.


Looks like we have another week with no game because someone refuses to threaten to shank their boss in the kidneys if they don't get Saturday off. :/

On the plus side, I'm almost done statting up the most hilariously powerful enemy I've ever created for use if we survive and take the campaign full mythic.

Spoiler:
The new Black Rider, if you're curious. 2H weapon fighter with 8 champion tiers capable of dishing out 4d12 + 180 on a standard action. With 395 hp. And it's not going to be the only enemy in the fight. >:)


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Good news, everyone! *adjusts glasses*

Ahem. Anyway, we found a way to make the game time work. I only got 5 hours of sleep to manage it, but we made it work. Probably doing the same thing this upcoming weekend(which should be some CC).

So, without further ado, this week's journal.

The Siege of Spurhorn

Spoiler:
The universe loves toying with me sometimes. I was doing my best to ignore all the fit – if furry – bodies around me, and then they invited us to visit the group baths, the one luxury Spurhorn had, fed by underground hot springs.. Well, “When in Rome” and all that. Of course I was going to the baths.

We just had to figure out what to do with Terry. I guess it wasn’t too much of a big deal, since while the baths had two separate pools for men and women, it’s not like there was any sight divider. But still, it was a little weird.

In the end, Terry begged off of coming with us, saying he didn’t feel comfortable being naked in a room full of strangers while wearing his daughter’s body. Can’t say I blamed him. He and one of our handlers went off to the guest quarters while the rest of us continued on. I think he was trying to get the Triaxian to teach him more words in the language of dragons. He’d picked up a bit here and there from Burin and me, but he definitely needed practice before he’d be able string together coherent sentences.

The baths used the Japanese style, where you cleansed yourself first, then got in. Naturally, I used magic to clean myself and skipped right to the nice hot soak, after getting the okay from our handlers, who were still following us everywhere.

There was a group of young women just staring at me, or at least, trying to pretend they weren’t staring at me. “I know I look good,” I said to Bescaylie, “but if they’re gonna stare, the least they could do is come say hello. I don’t bite. Not hard, and not unless they ask nicely, anyway.”

“I’ll go talk to them,” she said.

A few moments later, the young women – fairly new recruits, apparently – came over. “Hello girls,” I said. “How are you doing?”

“A-Are you summerborn?” one of the girls asked shyly.

“What? Oh, right, the seasons thing. No, I’m not summerborn.”

“Then what happened to your fur?” another girl asked.

“I don’t have any. Just the hair on my head, my eyebrows and my eyelashes.” It drove the girls in my school crazy when they learned that I didn’t have to shave my legs. Most of them were complete b*~&&es anyway, so I took a little joy in holding that over their heads.

“Don’t you get cold?” a third asked.

“Not really,” I told her. “Though, I’m not normal as a representative of my people in that regard.” Now it was time to satisfy my own curiosity. “Tell me more about the seasons here. I’ve learned a little bit, but is it really true that the winters here last through multiple generations?”

“Oh, yes,” the second young woman said. “Aside from the dragons, I doubt you’d be able to find anyone who remembers even the transitional period, much less last summer.”

“I see. And are all the dragons your enemies?” Naturally, the dragonkin seemed to take both sides, but I wasn’t talking about them.

“There are a few dragons remaining on our side. Back in the age of heroes, there were more, but most of them have long since died.”

I nodded. “On the world where I come from, there are no dragons. They’ve been dead for hundreds of years at least, aside from one lone survivor who woke from hibernation and forced us to kill him.”

“No dragons?” the first girl asked. “Your world must be a paradise for you and your dragonkin.”

I gave a wry smile. “No dragonkin either. And sadly, it’s not exactly a paradise right now. People from another world have invaded and are attacking us. The worst part is that when it started, I was visiting my mother’s home world – the world my companions come from – and got stranded there.”

“Then how did you get here?” the second girl asked.

“We’re tracking down an ancient witch who might be able to stop her daughter from enslaving the world of Golarion. And the witch’s magic hut brought us here.”

The girls listened to my story with rapt attention. Meanwhile, I noticed a strange old Triaxian over in the men’s baths talking with Burin excitedly. From the look on the dwarf’s face, he seemed confused by what the old man was saying.

Next, the girls had to know all about my tattoo. I stood up to let them get a good look, smirking as I noticed several of the men were looking as well, though perhaps a bit higher. After we got dressed, I’d have to get my collapsible hula hoop out and give them a show.

Speaking of shows, Gregor was putting on a show of his own. Apparently one of the young soldiers had challenged him to some kind of physical combat. They seemed to be grappling, trying to make the other bend to their knees. It was obvious that Gregor had the upper hand.

“Sorry about my friend over there,” I said to the women around me.

“Oh, that?” one of them answered after taking a look. “Don’t worry about it. The men do that all the time.”

Fair enough. As long as he wasn’t about to get us into trouble. I don’t know why, but I liked these people. I would hate for them to be mad at us.

After the bath, I got dressed and showed my stuff with the hula hoop, and the girls were all eager to give it a try. So much so that I had to have Cortana make us several basic plastic hula hoops just so everyone could get a try. I would like to note appreciatively that Triaxian girls jiggle in all the right places just like human women do.

Several men tried as well, though they didn’t jiggle, so practically not worth noting at all.

When we got back to our rooms, we found Terry chatting with the Triaxian handler. He’d made a lot of progress in learning the language, and now seemed comfortable holding a conversation, if it did stutter at times as he sought for the right word or tried to understand a word he didn’t understand.

After our handlers left, Terry began working on something. “What’s that?” I asked.

He held up the feathers he’d taken from the crows and some strips of silk string. “I’m working on a necklace for Emily.” Aww.

In the morning, we were brought before the council we’d been told about. The council was held in what appeared to be some kind of courtroom-like chamber. Ten officers, including Commander Pharamol and his partner, the gold dragonkin Amarenth, sat behind a semi-circular desk upon a raised dais. We entered past rows of benches, taking a seat at a table in the center of the room. Bescaylie and Efrixes joined us.

“Pharamol tells us that you wish to help us,” said Herjan, the black dragonkin two seats to Pharamol’s right. “That seems convenient. Why should we believe you?” Nebula translated as he spoke.

I nodded. “I can understand that you might be unwilling to trust us. You don’t know us. And it would be very convenient for us to show up and offer help when you need it most. But the truth is that we didn’t come here seeking to help you. We’re here to obtain a two-headed eagle. In exchange for it, we’re willing to help you fight off your foes for a reasonable time, and maybe even help you break the siege if we can. But if you can’t trust us, then name another price, and we’ll make the trade and leave. That said, from what we’ve seen outside, we suspect that you could really use all the help you can get, and thus, the offer still stands.”

Burin stood. “Right. We’ve met many good people here since we arrived. Besides, you might need us if the enemy brings torches.”

Apparently, someone had briefed the council on Burin, and they let the torch comment pass without a response. “I’m convinced of your intention,” said the oldest Triaxian present, a balding man whose name I learned was Thronull. I also learned that he was in charge of the crossbowmen. “But tell me, can you back up your words with action? Can you prove that your words are more than mere words?”

Gregor stood up and spoke in a mixture of Taldan and Triaxian – apparently Terry wasn’t the only one who had been practicing languages the previous night. “We have already given you a display, when Terry and I snuck into your enemy’s encampment, where we tied fluffy-fluffy to your foes’ pack animals and created mass chaos in their ranks,” Nebula said as she translated him word for word.

“Fluffy-fluffy?” I heard several of the council members whisper in confusion. Gregor might need to work a bit harder. It wasn’t the only wrong word he used, but it was certainly the silliest.

“That isn’t working,” Terry whispered to him. “Try showing them your collection.”

The fighter’s eyes lit up in comprehension. “I apologize,” Gregor said, “if some of what I said was strange. I am new to your language. If that was not enough to convince you of our strength, then let me show you these. I have taken them from the foes we have slain.”

Gregor reached into his bag and began drawing out the numerous skins he’d taken throughout our adventure, tossing them in a pile. It started small, and grew continuously, from animals to trolls to frost giants, until finally ending with the hide of Logrivich, the white dragon from the clock tower. About halfway through, Terry pulled out his hamster-fur cloak and tossed it on the pile.

The skin of the dragon caused the room to erupt in commotion. Eventually, Pharamol managed to restore order. “Is that the skin of a dragon?” the dragon rider Zusk, bond-mate of Herjan asked.

“Yes,” Gregor answered. “He was young, but we were not nearly as strong then as we are now. If you want people who can kill enemies led by dragons, then I say to you that we have demonstrably killed dragons before.”

Before anyone could say anything else, the great doors to the chamber burst open and in came the old man Burin had been talking to in the baths. “I’ve found it!” he exclaimed, his voice filled with excitement. In his hands were several books and a large scroll case.

“Found what?” Pharamol asked.

The old Triaxian set the books down on our table with a loud thud. “The records of the Dragonfoe,” he said triumphantly as he opened the scroll case.

“We all know the story,” the blue dragonkin Nevra said. “But what does it have to do with our business here?”

“Who is this ‘Dragonfoe’?” Terry asked Bescaylie with a whisper.

The old man overheard him and answered instead. “The Dragonfoe is one of our greatest heroes,” he said. “During the age when the dragons appeared, he and his companions also appeared. They were creatures from another world, much like you. They came here hunting a great dragon, who they said came here from their world. They eventually caught him and slew him upon a great mountain, though in truth, which mountain it was has been lost to history.”

“Interesting,” I said. “So others have come here before to aid you against the dragons?”

“Yes. And the Dragonfoe did not stop just at the dragon he sought to end. He and his companions slew a dozen other dragons to aid our people. I dare say that without them, we may never have been able to contain the dragons in the first place.”

“He sounds like a good person,” Burin commented. “It’s too bad we never heard about his exploits back home on Golarion.”

“You may know him better than you think,” the old man said, unfurling the painting that had been within the scroll case. He laid it down on the table, for all to see.

We were stunned to silence for several moments as we gawked at the sight. “Uh, Burin,” Gregor finally said, breaking the silence, “is there perhaps something you wish to tell us?”

Burin studied the painting carefully. “That’s… yes, they’re all there! That’s the first Burin! Those are his companions! This must have been drawn after they slew the old dragon, when Burin was cursed by the –“ I kicked him under the table. No need to mention the demon at this point. “Right. Well, after he was cursed. They said that the mountain where he slew the dragon was far, far away, but I’d always assumed they just didn’t want us to go find it. I never imagined that it was on another world!” We then lost all possibility of holding his attention as he continued staring raptly at the portrait.

“Well,” said the older female Triaxian on the council. “I can think of no clearer portent than this. Turning them away would not be in our best interests, I’m afraid.”

“Right,” Pharamol said. “If the descendant of the Dragonfoe himself wishes to aid us, then I do not believe we can refuse. Any objections?” There were none. “So be it. We welcome your help, all of you. If you can fight nearly as well as your ancestor, then there may be hope for the Skyfire Mandate.”

After chatting with the council for a bit, we set to work implementing our various plans, but not in the scale we’d hoped. Spurhorn simply didn’t have the resources. Burin had envisioned dozens of powder bombs, but we ended up with three. Gregor had planned on multiple vats of boiling oil and pitch, but we managed to scrape together one. Both would be nasty surprises for the enemy, but they would likely give the sieging army a bloody nose, not turn the tide in a meaningful way.

The same was true with the guns Terry wanted. He had hoped for at least six of the heavy machine guns that Cortana could make, the ones Daddy calls ‘Tremolos’. But what he got was two of the lighter guns, the ‘Crescendos’. At least we were able to make enough ammunition for them, as well as molds so that the defenders of Spurhorn would be able to continue using them even after we were gone, thanks to the magic batteries that powered them.

We went to bed early that day, which was good, since we were awoken in the early morning with the warning that scouts suspected that the enemies were preparing an assault and would likely strike in a couple hours. After Burin and I prepared our spells, we all headed to meet with the commander.

“I need you to make a final check on your guns,” Pharamol told us. “After you’re done there, I’ll try to have another job for you. But if you see anywhere that you think needs reinforcement, please use your best judgment.”

“You can count on us,” Burin answered.

“This will be a good fight,” Gregor said, in functional if not elegant Triaxian. “Many of your enemies will die today.”

“Hopefully not too many of our friends,” Pharamol answered.

As we approached the rampart where the guns were stationed, we heard them fire a few times before being cut off. Worried, we rushed up the stairs to the landing below. And we were right to worry.

A frost drake had taken up position atop the tower that overlooked the stairs. From where we were, we could see the frozen solid form of one of the defenders. “I’m going up to the guns!” Burin said, rushing up the stairs.

“The drake is mine!” Gregor roared as he charged and then disappeared, reappearing up on the tower. “Have at you!” he shouted as he punched the dragon in the snout.

Terry took off after Burin, and I flew up into the air to peek at what was going on. What I saw wasn’t good. Every defender was either dead or frozen solid – which most likely also meant dead, but we had a potential chance to save them – and a pair of invading barbarians was trying to destroy the machine guns.

“They’re attacking the guns!” I shouted to Terry and Burin.

Burin engaged the closest foe and Terry shot at the further one. I unleashed some force bolts to aid Burin, since I knew that the “Machine of Death” would make quick work of his foe. But the opening volley hadn’t been enough.

The barbarian charged Terry and was just about to strike when Gregor whipped the bladed hat from his head, spun around and flung it. In the same motion, he delivered a pair of powerful kicks to the dragon, snapping its neck and sending it plummeting off the tower to the landing below. The hat slashed the barbarian’s neck and bounced off. Gregor caught it as he landed from the kick in a three-point landing.

Show off.

“There are more coming!” Burin called out. He was right. There were several more drakes flying through the sky. “Terry, get to the machine gun! I can handle this guy.”

“Right!” Terry answered, rushing over.

Gregor teleported over to Burin, helping him finish off his foe. “Help Terry out,” Gregor said to the dwarf.

Burin nodded and took hold of the gun. He aimed carefully and gave the trigger a squeeze just as Terry reached the other gun and did the same. As they unleashed hot lead into the sky, Terry crowed with glee. “I HAVE GOT TO GET ONE OF THESE!”

Drake after drake fell from the sky. I counted fifteen in all before the rest retreated out of range. Once that was over, we quickly tied to help those poor souls who had been frozen. Of the entire platoon stationed up there, only two men survived, and they were in no condition to fight.

“We’ll be fine here,” Gregor said to me. “Let Pharamol know this position needs reinforcement.”

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I told him, flying off. True to my word, I returned a few minutes later. True to Gregor’s, the position held. And true to Pharamol’s, nine soldiers arrived fortify the position less than ten minutes later.

We continued like that for over an hour, moving around and helping to reinforce areas where the enemy was mustering in force. At one point, Burin actually managed to scare off a frost drake by throwing a torch at it, to my surprise and to all of our amusement.

Shortly before dawn, we received word that we were urgently needed at the front wall. So we headed there as quickly as possible. And they hadn’t been kidding. We really were needed.

A pair of massive hydras was pushing an even more massive siege tower up the wall. If that thing reached the fortress, it could very well have spelled game over. As we took in the sight, we were hit by the icy breath from a pair of frost drakes that was escorting the tower.

“Burin! Let’s take the tower,” Gregor said as he leapt off of the wall and activated his magic boots, causing him to transform into a frost giant as he hit the ground.

“Right!” the dwarf agreed, before leaping after him and enlarging as well.

The tower was covered in wet hides, so Terry and I focused on the drakes, Terry with flaming bullets and me with beams of fire. A fireball would have been overkill, and there was no telling whether we’d have time to rest and recover spells for days, so I had to conserve my magic for when it was really needed.

“We have to knock it over!” Burin shouted.

“On it!” Gregor answered, leaping into the sky and slamming into the upper part of the tower with his shoulder. His impact caused the wood to creak and splinter, and the entire tower began tilting back towards the hydras. But it had reached equilibrium. The hydras would be able to right it if no one acted quickly. “Burin!” Gregor shouted. “DIG!”

Burin laughed with dark delight as he tossed aside his axe and pulled his shovel from the sheath on his back. He charged forward and used the shovel as a lever, tilting the tower further, beyond the hydras’ ability to correct.

The tower crushed one of the hydras outright, but the other wasn’t out of the woods yet. You see, they were chained to the tower, and when it began sliding down the steep slope, it began dragging the terrified hydra and the corpse of its companion with it.

Terry took pity on the living hydra and put it out of its misery with a volley of gunfire. He then hit the underside of the sliding tower with a few fire bullets, causing it to begin smoldering. It didn’t seem like it would catch fire, but the smoke would probably be helpful in causing a bit of disarray, assuming hundreds of soldiers fleeing in panic from the sliding tower didn’t cause enough disarray on its own.

We got everyone back inside the walls and continued fighting off and on for several more hours before anything interesting happened. We were heading to the keep to talk with Pharamol when we spotted a red enemy dragonkin flying above the keep’s garden. So we rushed in to go deal with it.

We reached the gate to the garden, and Terry opened the gate and shot at the dragonkin. Then Gregor rushed in and Burin after. Finally, I followed, stopping in my tracks when I heard Burin shout for us to be careful.

Peeking inside, I saw that a number of Spurhorn defenders appeared to have been turned to stone. Either that or someone had really poor taste in statues and had commissioned several statues of Triaxians recoiling in fear. I scanned quickly and spotted a pair of half-dragon, half-basilisks – known as dracolisks – at the far side of the room.

Standing next to one of them was Gregor, turned to stone mid-punch.

I fought the urge to panic, remembering that we could cure the condition by spreading the blood of a fallen basilisk on its victim. So I just needed to kill them before they could get close enough to turn me to stone.

I also realized that being stone would protect Gregor and the others from fire, at least to a decent degree. So I didn’t have to worry about control. I just had to worry about power. So I unleashed the strongest fireball I’ve ever created.

The dracolisks never stood a chance.

Meanwhile, Terry was dealing with the dragonkin. “You should run while you have the chance!” he shouted to our enemy. “If you don’t we’ll be forced to burn you to a crisp!”

“You’ll burn me?” the dragonkin said with a laugh. It swooped down and hit Terry and the nearby Burin with its flaming breath.

“Can’t say I didn’t try,” Terry said, ignoring the flame. He shot several rounds directly into the skull of the dragonkin, who crashed to the ground. He walked over and kicked it. “Who’s laughing now, tough guy?” he asked.

“I don’t hear you laughing, though,” Burin said.

“Now’s not the time for this routine,” I interjected, cutting off Terry’s retort. “We need to spread some of the blood from the dracolisks on Gregor and the other statues.”

“Machine of death,” Terry said anyway, sticking his tongue out at Burin. But they quickly got to work helping me with the others.

In a few minutes, everyone was back to normal, aside from a few up on the walls that had been killed by the dragon’s breath, anyway. Once things were secure once more, we headed up to meet with Pharamol. Gregor was obviously trying not to think about what it was like being turned to stone.

Pharamol told us that it was clear that the enemy’s attacks were just probing measures, trying to wear us out. He expected a greater push soon, and told us he needed us ready. So we did as he said and took a bit of time to rest and grab a bit to eat.

As we were heading back to the walls, near mid-afternoon, a large wave came, likely a precursor to the final push. There was fighting everywhere. We rushed to help, but on the way, we spotted an allied silver dragonkin fighting a trio of enemy dragonkin in the skies above.

Before we could do anything, the enemy gold dragonkin hit him with its flame breath and the enemy blue slammed into him, driving him to the ground. “We have to help!” Burin said. We all agreed, so we quickly rounded the corner of the building to get to him.

The three enemy dragonkin had taken up positions around the silver, and the blue was drawing his glaive, preparing to strike the finishing blow. Terry lined up his shot and fired several rounds, hitting center mass with ferocity. Gregor and Burin charged the other dragonkin and began engaging them.

The blue, realizing the extent of its wounds, tried to escape, but Terry blew it out of the sky. Meanwhile, Gregor was flanked by the remaining two dragonkin, but it was obvious that he and Burin had it under control, so Terry and I rushed to aid the fallen silver dragonkin.

Terry beat me over there since I was forced to dodge the blast of fire the gold launched at Burin. He drew out the nanite gun and quickly injected the fallen silver. The silver began stirring. “That’s right!” Terry said. “This is no time for dying, soldier!”

“Are they gone?” the silver asked as I landed next to them.

I turned and watched as Burin buried his axe in the gold’s chest while Gregor kicked it in the head, snapping its neck. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m pretty sure that’s the end of them.” I pulled out my wand and continued healing the silver’s wounds.

“You have my thanks,” the silver said. “Both of you. Without your aid, I surely would have died.”

“Thank Terry,” I said. “He was the one who killed the blue and rushed to your aid fastest.”

“Thank you, Terry,” the silver said. “I am known as Shatha, and I am in your debt.”

“Don’t mention it,” Terry said, actually looking embarrassed as we helped pull Shatha to his feet.

As he reached his feet, Shatha made a choking sound. “What is he doing?” he asked.

I turned and spotted Gregor skinning the gold. “Sorry,” I said. “He does that.”

“It is most disturbing.”

“If you think that’s disturbing, you should try spending time with the dwarf,” Terry said.

“I believe I shall avoid it,” Shatha said. “I thank you again. I must return to combat. I got separated from my unit. They may need me.”

“Right,” I said. “We need to get back to the fight, ourselves. Take care, Shatha.”

“You as well.” Then he flew into the air.

We waited a couple moments for Gregor to finish claiming his prize, then began making our way to the wall once more. We were almost there when a dragonkin and its rider stopped us. “Please hurry, Pharamol wants you at the gate.”

“What’s wrong?” Burin asked.

“We’re not sure. Something strange is happening in the enemy camp.”

We rushed to the gate, where we found Pharamol up atop the wall. “What’s going on?” Gregor asked.

“I am uncertain. They were massing for a final push, then that massive fog bank appeared out of nowhere,” he pointed to the center of the camp, which was indeed shrouded in mist. “And suddenly the charge stopped. I can’t tell what’s going on.”

Before we could speculate, black lightning arced out of the fog and then back inside. Several tendrils continued this pattern, until the fog looked like an angry storm cloud.

“I don’t like the looks of that,” Burin said.

“It does not bode well,” Gregor agreed.

“Terry, can you see inside?” I asked.

“How would I be able to see insi- OH! Right.” He drew up his hood and his eyes began to glow blue. He stared for a moment, the enchantment allowing him to pierce the fog. “Holy shit!” he exclaimed.

“What?” I asked. But I wasn’t at all prepared for the words that came out of his mouth next.

“I- I think that’s Segrit!”


Poldaran wrote:

Good news, everyone! *adjusts glasses*

Ahem. Anyway, we found a way to make the game time work. I only got 5 hours of sleep to manage it, but we made it work. Probably doing the same thing this upcoming weekend(which should be some CC).

So, without further ado, this week's journal.

The Siege of Spurhorn
** spoiler omitted **...

About that 5 hours of sleep . . .

Outsiders (Traits section) wrote:

{. . .}

Outsiders breathe, but do not need to eat or sleep (although they can do so if they wish). {. . .}

We need that feature . . . I know I do.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
UnArcaneElection wrote:
Poldaran wrote:

Good news, everyone! *adjusts glasses*

Ahem. Anyway, we found a way to make the game time work. I only got 5 hours of sleep to manage it, but we made it work. Probably doing the same thing this upcoming weekend(which should be some CC).

So, without further ado, this week's journal.

The Siege of Spurhorn
** spoiler omitted **...

About that 5 hours of sleep . . .

Outsiders (Traits section) wrote:

{. . .}

Outsiders breathe, but do not need to eat or sleep (although they can do so if they wish). {. . .}
We need that feature . . . I know I do.

I'd be happy with a ring of sustenance and only needing 2 hours a night.


^Even that would be a huge help.

And it's even (at least officially) cheap, if you can get it at all.


UnArcaneElection wrote:

^Even that would be a huge help.

And it's even (at least officially) cheap, if you can get it at all.

Really need it today. Apparently today is a 3.5 hours of sleep day. Happens when I try to go to bed too early. At least I can catch 2 hours more after the game.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Inner Demon

Spoiler:
“Wait, are you sure?” I asked Terry.

“Pretty sure, yeah,” he said.

“What is she doing?” Burin asked. His jaw was clenched, anger in his eyes.

“She’s, um, eating that black lightning.”

“Like noodles?” Gregor asked helpfully.

“Pretty much,” Terry admitted.

There was a burst of flame within the fog, and it began to disperse. As it did, the scene it revealed was surreal. The plateau was where the enemy general had her command post. She was dead, as were a Triaxian and a gold dragonkin – likely the source of the flame, if I had to guess.

Standing over the corpse of the enemy general – a beautiful white dragonkin – was Segrit. She was, as Terry described, absorbing black tendrils of crackling shadow, though she wasn’t so much eating them as breathing them in, like condensed smoke.

There were three others with her. I recognized Vasily immediately. He was still wearing his robe from before. Next to him was one of those stupid guardsmen. Bill, I think his name was. And next to him was that elven woman I could have sworn we’d killed in our last encounter with Segrit.

“Malesinder is dead!” Pharamol said. “This is amazing! Are those your friends?” We’d been talking in Taldan. Of course he didn’t know what we’d said.

“Not exactly,” I replied.

“Then what…” He didn’t get to finish the question. As Segrit finished absorbing what had to be the demon fragment from the dead general, a shockwave of shadow exploded outward from her. It spread for miles.

As the shockwave passed, it had some kind of effect on dragons and dragonkin. Their eyes turned black, and they began to strike out with frantic rage at anything near them. From our perspective, it was just fine as this began happening within the ranks of the enemy army. But then it began affecting our own people.

We had only a moment of notice before Amarenth lashed out at the closest person, Terry. Gregor acted immediately, deflecting the blow and then knocking the dragonkin out with a single swift kick to the temple. Pharamol, panicking, drew his weapon. “She’ll be fine!” I shouted, pulling his arm down. “But we won’t, not if we don’t bring down Segrit before her rage can infect anyone else!” Okay, so I was guessing, but it was the only reasonable explanation I could come up with at the moment.

“It’s time for that b@%*@ to die,” Burin said as he cut his palm and froze his axe to his hand with the blood. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so angry.

“Getting there might be a problem,” Terry said.

“I can do it,” I said. “But I’m already pretty low on spells. If I get us there, I may not be able to get us back, and we’ll be trapped at the center of an enemy army.”

“We can help!” came the call of the nearly blind Triaxian Jarilne, who I recognized from the council meeting. She was the leader of Spurhorn’s spell casters, the Ice Seers. Next to her was a pair of her lieutenants.

“Magical flight coming up!” the lieutenant on her left said.

“And I’ll boost your speed!” the lieutenant on the right added.

“Please hurry,” Pharamol said. “The longer you take, the more likely it is that we’ll be forced to kill our friends, or they’ll end up killing us.”

“Do not worry,” Gregor said. “I have been looking forward to killing Vasily for a very long time.”

“We do owe them for last time,” Terry agreed.

We came in hot, landing about fifty feet from our foes, who were busy watching the chaos unfold around them. As we landed, the elven woman spotted us. “Oi! Didn’t expect to see you all here! Hey, Bill! Look who it is! Fate is kind and a bit cruel it seems. Funny, innit?” That was most certainly not the voice I remembered her having before.

The guardsman dressed in black leather turned, but before he could speak, Terry interrupted. “Hey, didn’t we kill you once already, Steve?”

“I got better,” the elven woman answered. “Bigger, too,” she said, emphasizing her breasts.

Terry ignored her. “And you,” he said, turning to the goth guardsman. “What are you trying to be, exactly?”

“Bill, of course,” the man answered, his expression clearly showing his annoyance at the question.

“As much as I’m enjoying this chatter,” Segrit said menacingly, “I must interrupt. Thank you for coming all this way. It saves me the trouble of hunting you down. Convenient.” She pointed a clawed hand at Burin.

“Time to die, b&$@@,” Burin said, smacking his buckler with his axe. Segrit said no more, instead charging. Burin unleashed a ray of negative energy, draining away a bit of her lifeforce mid charge before she hit him with a solid but non-fatal blow from her horns. As she charged, Terry fired at her, scoring a decent hit of his own, but not slowing her charge.

Vasily, who had been silent up until this point, charged, shouting, “Show me your blood!” at Gregor as he swung his strange wavy dagger. He hit the fighter with a glancing blow. Gregor retaliated with a flurry of blows, only one connecting solidly. “Heh. I thought you’d be stronger by now,” Vasily taunted.

Hovering about ten feet above and a bit behind my companions, I was the perfect target for the vengeance-minded guardsman. “This is for STEVE!” he shouted, drawing his bow and unleashing an arrow. Pain shot through my body as an arrow embedded itself in my stomach.

“Thanks buddy!” the elven woman who I refuse to call Steve hollered.

“Anytime, mate!” Bill hollered back.

More than pain, I felt anger. I felt a keen annoyance at having to deal with those two once more. And more than that, I was pissed at having been shot. But the anger didn’t burn white hot. Instead, it was icy cold and filled with an empty hunger, like the void of space itself. “BEGONE.” I said to Bill. And then he wasn’t there anymore.

For a moment, I thought I saw him appear floating in the starry expanse, struggling to breathe in the cold vacuum. And I felt a smug satisfaction as I carefully landed. “Healing potion!” I told Nebula as I began pulling out the arrow. Yeah, I know that’s a bad idea medically, but I was in a hurry and I had healing potions. I’d be fine.

Gregor and Vasily exchanged blows, and at one point, Vasily looked to have the upper hand, but then lines of light surged through Gregor as his nanite infection empowered him and healed many of his wounds. Vasily, shocked by the sudden change, choked in dismay as Gregor renewed his assault.

I heard the elven woman chanting a healing spell from within the fog near where they were fighting, but in the end, Gregor triumphed. Vasily coughed, blood pouring from his mouth. “Sergei would be proud,” I heard him whisper as he collapsed to the floor.

“Too bad,” Gregor said as he brought his foot down on Vasily’s throat to finish him off. “Almost.” Vasily died with a soft, wet crunch.

Burin and Segrit continued fighting. As he fought, he became more draconic in appearance, growing both claws and fangs. Her spiked body made it difficult for him to hit her with either attack, so he still primarily used his axe, but still managed to bite her at least once. “You’re not looking so good, are ye, lass?” Burin taunted his foe.

Segrit answered by screeching incoherently.

Terry, rather than shooting Segrit, fired into the fog. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“Shooting the healer before he escapes!” Terry answered.

Oh hell no. I wasn’t letting that one escape again. I swallowed the healing potion Nebbie poured into my mouth and cast an immense fireball into the fog. It exploded, instantly evaporating the mist and revealing the smoking, twitching corpse of the elven woman.

The blast also hit Segrit in the back, knocking her down and finishing her off. “Damn!” Terry shouted.

“Make absolutely sure that thing is dead,” I said, pointing at the elven corpse as I drew my healing wand and tapped Burin before heading over to heal Gregor.

“On it!” Terry said.

Before I could reach Gregor, the air shuddered and a shivering Bill reappeared where he’d been before I’d banished him. His eyes were covered in ice from where the cold had begun crystallizing the water in his tears. He looked in horror at the corpses of his comrades. The last thing he saw before Gregor charged him and knocked him out was Terry putting a bullet in the skull of his once more dead friend.

“Don’t worry, I still love you,” Gregor said as his fist slammed into the man’s head. “I want to keep him,” Gregor said, sounding drunk as he looked at the unconscious guardsman. “I will name him Barnaby Two.”

“Are you okay?” Terry asked.

Gregor waved his hand dismissively. “I am fine, small child man.”

“Grab the nanite gun,” I told Terry. “Use setting two. I think he’s suffered minor brain damage from the emergency nanite activation.” I have no idea if that was even a thing that was possible, but it sounded like I knew what I was talking about.

Daddy would have been proud.

As we talked, Segrit lay there, quietly bleeding out. As she took her last gasp of breath, her corpse sat upright and the shadowy tendrils burst forth, pouring into Burin. After several moments, it stopped, and there was another explosion which knocked him from his feet before rippling through the battlefield. As this one passed, the fighting stopped, Burin’s calmer emotions overwriting Segrit’s primal rage within the dragons.

I pulled the dwarf to his feet. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” Burin answered. “But being okay was never necessary for being a Burin. I’ll miss the vacation, though.”

“We should hurry and loot,” Terry said. “And then get the heck out of here.”

“Yeah, the chaos is starting to die down,” I agreed. “Take what you can. Put another bullet in the heads of the corpses.” I wasn’t taking a chance of running into these people again.

“What about Bill?” Terry asked.

“Don’t hurt Barnaby Two!” Gregor whined. Apparently the nanites would take some time to help him.

“Fine,” I said. “We’ll take him with us.”

We grabbed everything we could carry and I cast flight magic on everyone, followed by a spell to speed our movement. Even then, we were chased by angry enemy dragonkin. Only the Spurhorn defenders taking to the air let us get back safely.

I used my few remaining spells to launch fireballs back into the enemy as we reached our allies. That improved my mood quite a bit.

We were met with cheers as we landed. Not surprising, as the enemy army had begun to break apart and rout. We were heroes. Soldiers were looking at us in adoration. I could have spent the whole night getting laid, but my conscience twinged at fear that Greta would be hurt if I did.

Dammit. I still loved her, but being married kinda sucked.

That night, there was a grand celebration. We were given gifts by the people of Spurhorn. They didn’t have much, but they dug through the gathered spoils taken from fallen invaders and awarded quite a bit to us, with the express intent that even if we couldn’t use the items, then Cortana could turn them into something we could use. There was even a special elixir that Cortana had never seen before that she scanned and learned to make.

They did award us one extraordinary thing. While searching through the archives, the old man found a lost treasure, the Shield of the Dragonfoe. Yeah, it had belonged to Burin’s ancestor, so we easily agreed it was his. I’ve never seen a shield like it. The magic in it somehow allowed Burin to cast spells even with his hand occupied, and it was somehow tied to Burin himself, or maybe dwarves in general. We tested it, and I couldn’t do it.

After the awards came the feasting, and then I had a couple of the young soldiers help me set up a flaming jump rope and we did some fire-dancing and drinking. Gregor, feeling better, did an impressive job showing off. What he lacked in the finer dancing graces, he made up for with sheer acrobatic talent. Burin tried juggling torches to show the people of Spurhorn that torches weren’t something to fear, but his skill at juggling left a little to be desired.

Terry pulled a guitar from his case – I didn’t even realize he had one in there! – and played the music for the dancing. He was actually rather good. He even knew a couple of the songs Daddy had brought to Golarion twenty something years ago.

Bill was remanded to the custody of Spurhorn. He would be placed in their dungeon until he was taken to a city to face justice for his role in helping Segrit cause the frenzy that had resulted in the death of several of Spurhorn’s defenders.

That night, we were woken by screaming from Burin’s room. His nightmares were back with a vengeance. “I haven’t missed this at all,” he said.

“Is it under control?” Terry asked warily.

“Yes,” Burin said. “I think so. He’s stronger, but so am I. I can handle it, for now at least.”

“Then that is fine,” Gregor said. “Perhaps one day you will be free of him.”

Burin shook his head. “I doubt it. But thanks for the kind words.”

Sometime later, Gregor was looking at Cortana’s list of wares wistfully. “What are you looking at?” Terry asked.

“The box tells me that there is an armor it can make that will allow me to transform into a giant for a short while. As I am liking the way the boots do the same thing, I was hoping to make some. Unfortunately, I am still a bit short on funds to make it, even though I have gathered the required skins.” Oh. I remembered seeing the armor he was talking about on the list. It was literally made from the skins of giants. A bit ghastly, if you asked me. But it’s not like he’d killed them just to take their skins.

At least, I hope not.

“How short are you?” Terry asked. Gregor punched up his account and showed Terry. “Wow, that’s quite a bit. But not to worry. I can spare that much, as long as you pay me back later.”

“Are you sure?” Gregor asked.

“As far as I know, I’ve got most of what I need to bring back Emily. I can spare a bit. Besides, if it helps you fight, that’s less weight I have to carry.”

Gregor ignored the jab. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” I’m pretty sure Terry was just trying to earn back his trust after the whole suicide thing, but it was still pretty sweet.

In the morning, we sat down with Spurhorn’s scholars to try to decipher the clues as to the location of the second key. It took over an hour, but finally, we realized that the mirror and tusk had to be the clues to the location, which was revealed as Ivoryglass, the stronghold of the dragon warlord Yrax, who had sent his army against Spurhorn.

Which meant that the second key was a bear skin, or something having to do with a bear. The back of my skull itched. There was some kind of association between a bear and a two headed eagle that meant something to me, but I couldn’t place my finger on it. I even had Cortana do a search through all notes on Golarion for such a link, but she couldn’t find anything either. I really should have paid more attention to Daddy’s lessons on Golarion.

“So, how do we get in there?” Burin asked.

“There are two ways that I know of,” Pharamol told us. “You can try sneaking in close through the Rimekeening Crevasse, or you can try going in through the front door.”

“I favor a frontal assault,” Gregor said. “Fewer enemies left when we’re done that way.”

“No, we should take the crevasse,” Terry disagreed. “Get in, get what we need, and get out. And, maybe blow the place up on our way out.”

“We’re not exactly good at sneaking,” Burin argued. He had a point.

“We don’t have to decide immediately,” I said. “We’re going to need to get the hut and move that way anyway. We’ll take a look, if the front way seems too dangerous, we’ll backtrack and take the crevasse.” I turned to Pharamol. “Speaking of which, we need help plotting out a road we can drive our hut down.”

“We can help with that,” Bescaylie said from the doorway. “Efrixes and I will scout you a path.”

“Not alone you won’t,” Pharamol disagreed. “You’ll take a full squadron with you. There are bound to be pockets of deserters from that army out there, and I will not lose anyone I don’t have to.”

“Understood, sir.”

That decided, we set out the next morning. Burin showed up wearing some beautiful – if a little creepy – new black spidersilk robes depicting a demonic dragon. I think they were like my dress, boosting the magic power in his blood. Mine was patterned after the cosmos, mirroring the power in my blood. That his bore a demonic dragon was a bit disconcerting.

But not as disconcerting as what Gregor was wearing. I had thought I was prepared for the reality of armor made from the skins of giants, but I was wrong. It was well made, but just seeing that pale blue leather turned my stomach a little. There was even a scorch mark where the giant had been hit by my fireball.

Gregor was wearing the skin of a giant I had killed. Eww.

Terry was overjoyed to get to ride alone on the back of Shatha, the dragonkin we’d saved before, while Burin and Gregor looked a little more nervous at riding the backs of the dragonkin Nevra and Talsune respectively. Talsune looked a little nervous at being ridden by the guy who had been skinning other dragonkin just a couple days prior.

I flew on my own, because I could. Soon, we’d be driving the Hut. Maybe, before we left, I’d have it do donuts in Ivoryglass’ parking lot.


A bit long between postings, I know, but we missed a weekend due to work schedules. We're hoping to have a session Wednesday, though that depends on one person's schedule we haven't gotten yet. And it'll be CC instead of RoW.

On a semi-RoW related note, I've been working on revising something I wrote several years back. It's part one of the "Tale of the Governor", which tells the story of what happened to the city of Albuquerque* during the alien invasion. As it has some relevance to this RoW campaign**, I'll post it here when I've finished adjusting it for things I've changed my mind on since first typing it up.

*

Spoiler:
Kaboom.

I hate that city IRL. The traffic is awful, the crime is pretty bad and my GF moved there years ago and almost never speaks to me anymore.

**

Spoiler:
It brings up something that I'm planning to have play a role in the method of destruction of the Earth-side Winter Collector assuming we survive through til the post AP mythic campaign.


Seems that Burin's motto is something to the effect of: When fighting demons, become a demon. ;)


The Mad Comrade wrote:
Seems that Burin's motto is something to the effect of: When fighting demons, become a demon. ;)

I'm pretty sure Burin is just a masochist.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Poldaran wrote:
The Mad Comrade wrote:
Seems that Burin's motto is something to the effect of: When fighting demons, become a demon. ;)
I'm pretty sure Burin is just a masochist.

Pretty sure there's a demon for that....


1 person marked this as a favorite.

^I thought that's what Kytons are for . . . .

Oh, and by the way, I just couldn't hold in this terrible pun related to Reign of Winter any longer . . . .


UnArcaneElection wrote:

^I thought that's what Kytons are for . . . .

Oh, and by the way, I just couldn't hold in this terrible pun related to Reign of Winter any longer . . . .

Lulz.

My players: DON'T READ THAT LINK. Fellow GM, you're fine. But I don't think you come here.


Poldaran wrote:
UnArcaneElection wrote:

^I thought that's what Kytons are for . . . .

Oh, and by the way, I just couldn't hold in this terrible pun related to Reign of Winter any longer . . . .

Lulz.

My players: DON'T READ THAT LINK. Fellow GM, you're fine. But I don't think you come here.

Having already played RoW to a successful conclusion, I'm safe.

Also, Lulz.

Also, terrible pun, you should be proud, UnArcaneElection.


Sorry, I hadn't thought that the spoiler tags in the linked message would be insufficient to avoid spoilers for your players.

As for the pun: Eye regret nothing!


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Poldaran wrote:
On a semi-RoW related note, I've been working on revising something I wrote several years back. It's part one of the "Tale of the Governor", which tells the story of what happened to the city of Albuquerque* during the alien invasion. As it has some relevance to this RoW campaign**, I'll post it here when I've finished adjusting it for things I've changed my mind on since first typing it up.

Here it is. I have a CC typed up, but it needs approval from the guys, so I thought I'd post this for now. If all goes according to plan, I'll post Part 2 sometime around the end of the main campaign, and part 3 after the end of the Mythic post-campaign.

The Governor, Part I: The Butcher:
Standing before a somber looking man in a black uniform, the man known to history only as the Governor contemplated the fate slowly but inexorably coming to meet him. It had been almost six hundred years since the last time he had nearly met this doom.

“I never asked for this,” he said, trying to comfort himself with a joke maybe a dozen people still living might understand. But it was true. None of the decisions he’d made had been truly of his own volition. It was all because of his job. Not only that, but a job he never really wanted, a fact of which he was quick to remind anyone who would listen.

He began contemplating the windows. Perhaps if he made a break for it, he could make it back to the ship and commandeer a shuttlecraft to fly the hell away from this planet before anyone could stop him. He quickly dismissed it, however, as he was certain that His Majesty would send entire legions of soldiers to drag him back to meet his fate. If he were to escape, he’d most likely go to one of those monasteries where the monks sought to achieve enlightenment by meditating while playing video games all day. He had certainly considered it before. He was also certain that would be the place they would look first for him.

The somber looking man leaned in. “Sir, I should probably warn you that His Majesty ordered us to shoot you in the kneecaps if you tried to run.”

The Governor’s eyes grew wide as the walls began closing in around him. He was beginning to have trouble breathing. “I wasn’t…”

“Sure you weren’t,” the fatherly looking man said with a laugh. “Incidentally, His Majesty said to tell you, ‘You made your bed, now lie in it. Congratulations.’”

The Governor motioned to his assistant. “Remind me to have a talk with His Majesty’s mother-in-law. He’s getting too big for his britches and needs the kind of smack down only a mother-in-law can provide.”

“Added to your schedule, sir,” the gynoid said dutifully.

The music changed and the Governor gulped involuntarily. He turned and faced the doom he had avoided for nearly six centuries. She walked slowly and purposefully towards him, dressed in an elegant white gown and escorted by her father…

*****

The first thirty years of the Governor’s life were pretty unremarkable. He grew up in a loving family of moderate means in the nation once known as the United States of America. He went to school, graduated and found work. Each day was much like the one before it, and that was how he liked it.

He was, as is well documented, a gamer. This is why, when the time came, he joined the Gamer Uprising, and why he was there when Kyle O’Halloran came seeking help. It was, in large part, the Gamers who allowed the newly returned Archwizard O’Halloran to slay Merlin and his dragon. But the Governor never tried to take any credit for his role. In the aftermath of the events, he just went back to his normal life.

It wasn’t until a few years later that anything changed. The US government’s newly formed Department of Magic began offering scholarships to anyone who could show a basic aptitude for magic. For the Governor, this was easy enough, though he had never finished college. He received a scholarship and went back to school. Thanks to the anonymously sent intellect boosting headband he received in the mail, he graduated with a double major in Mechanical Engineering and Magic Studies.

With the skyrocketing demand for decent wizards, the Governor easily found a well-paying job teaching magic and general science at a private academy near where his favorite niece was living with her family. It was, like most of the Governor’s early decisions, the easy choice. As he himself had noted, he had always just chosen the well-traveled path. He was always quick to offer support and ideas, but never one to stick his neck out. He hated risk.

And that’s why his actions during the Harvester invasion surprised everyone.

*****

“Jack,” the older man in the long coat – a style that had become popular after Kyle O’Halloran and made his debut on the public stage – said to his friend, “careful there. If you drop that, there won’t be enough of either of us left for anyone to even realize people were here.”

“Wakarimasu,” the fifty-eight year old man in the old hunting camo replied with his thick Texas drawl.

“You do that just to annoy me, don’t you?”

“It is not my fault you never got around to learning Japanese, most honorable sensei,” Jack said with a grin as he carefully placed the object he was carrying into the device the men were constructing. “So, why now?”

“What?”

“You know what. You’ve been talking about your idea for this thing for years. Why make it now?”

“You know damn well why. The f%%*ing Harvesters. Reports are saying they should be done with southern Colorado soon. They’ll be in Albuquerque by week’s end. How much longer do you think it’ll be before they head this way? And that’s assuming the ship in Texas doesn’t head our way before then.”

“The military nuked the Nevada ship. It barely made a scratch. What makes you think you have a chance at stopping them?”

“Do you have any better ideas? We hide out on your farm and hope they don’t come for us?” The bomb he was making was special. In normal situations, it was simply a powerful explosive. But if suspicions about the alien ships were correct, it could set off a powerful cascade that would destroy the entire ship. At least, that was the theory. Not that Jack knew that. It was better if he didn’t know.

“And why not? Bill and I built that bunker for this very occasion.”

The older man shook his head. “I can’t. Look, just help me finish this thing. You can give my spot in the bunker to someone else. I’ll find a way.”

They worked for hours. At one point, their friend Bill, a bald man about the same age as them, stopped by. As usual, he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. The three of them worked together just like old times, until at long last the device was complete.

They celebrated their success with a round of mead, direct from Jack’s own brewery and made with honey from Bill’s bees. “You sure you won’t stay?” Bill asked, indicating the bunker.

“Nah. I’m good. I’ve got to go find some way to get this where it needs to be. Why don’t you go ask that cute little forty-something from the diner to come chill with you?”

“I just might,” Bill said, shaking his hand.

Jack held out his balled fist, which the man in the coat punched lightly. “Brohoof,” the man said.

“Take care,” Jack replied. “And whatever happens, let justice be done…”

“…though the heavens fall,” both the man in the coat and Bill said in unison. They all realized how silly they were being for quoting the tag line from an anime, but they were geeks and didn’t much care how silly they looked.

The device loaded, the man in the coat headed home. It wasn’t a large home, only three bedrooms, but it was more than enough for him, since he had lived alone for so very long. That wasn’t the case now. His niece and her kid had been staying with him ever since her husband had gotten himself killed in that silly war before the Harvesters arrived. She had a decent job, but it was hard to make ends meet on a single parent’s salary in the current economy. And he had the space, so she saved on rent and could afford to pay for daycare while she worked.

And, of course, it was kind of nice to not live on TV dinners. It wasn’t that he couldn’t cook. He just didn’t see the point of doing so for one person most nights.

His niece was working on making dinner when he walked in the door. He recognized the smell immediately, his mother’s Salisbury steak recipe. “Heya, Unc. Dinner will be ready in a few minutes. Would you change Brian for me so we can eat?”

“Sure,” he said, bemused at the fact that he was now relegated to diaper duty despite never having kids of his own. Brian, adorable as usual, giggled with glee at seeing his great uncle enter the living room. “Hey there, wee man!” The baby kicked and squealed. “You’re gonna be crawling any day now, aren’t you?” He scooped up the laughing infant. “Come on, let’s get your diaper changed and feed you some disgusting mashed veggies.” He carried the child over to the changing station he’d built so there’d be less risk of any tables or counters getting contaminated. “You want to know a secret?”

Brian didn’t say anything. He never did.

“I’ll take that as a yes, because you don’t care as long as someone’s talking to you. So, don’t tell anyone, but I’m gonna go kill the bad guys. They’ll never get you. You have my word on it.”

“So you’re going through with it?”

He turned to see his niece glaring at him. “Yeah., Em, I am. I’m taking precautions and I’m fairly certain I’ll come out of this alive.” She was the only person who knew even half of his plan, though she didn’t know the full extent of it. He had always been one to trust family.

“You better. I’ll never forgive you if you don’t.”

“I’ll do my damnedest. But just in case, if anything happens, the house is yours. Just promise me that you’ll help your grandparents get to Jack’s bunker if I screw up.”

She hugged him, failing to fight back tears. “You get back and get them there yourself.” Brian squealed. “See, he agrees with me.”

“Lies. He just thinks he’s a baby stegosaurus.”

“What?”

“He clearly said ‘Gao’, which is the sound a baby stegosaurus makes.”

She laughed. “You’re so weird, uncle.”

*****

The advent of the Three Dimensional Printer, or 3D printer, as they called them back then, led to a revolution in micro-manufacturing. While they were primitive compared to the magitech fabricators that O’Halloran Technologies introduced a few years after the invasion, they were still quite effective. Anyone with a few thousand dollars could begin manufacturing whatever they could get plans for at a fairly low cost. This was an important part of the Governor’s early story. He and his friends built a machine shop on his friend’s land and spent many weekends working on different projects. Most of them were simply toys to occupy their time, but a few were functional or useful devices.

With the culture in America at the day, there was an abundance of designs for basic electromagnetic-driven firearms using the O’Halloran battery, though nothing as sophisticated as the sub-machine guns Archmage O’Halloran himself had designed. Even then, firearms of that nature were relatively sophisticated and required some basic engineering and electrical knowledge and a higher end printer to make. The Governor and his friends, a trio of well-educated bachelors, had both.

Additionally, there was an abundance of designs for motorized vehicles. Most were fairly simple and again used the O’Halloran battery to power them, but there were more advanced designs available. It took the government a while to get a handle on certifying these designs for use on the streets. And, of course, there were always parts that had to be ordered from proper manufacturers, especially computer cores.

There was one more thing they had access to that set them apart from the average person of their day. O’Halloran Technologies selected a hundred people for a beta test of the world’s first commercially available Virtual Intelligence, or VI, an AI-like interface run on a micro-quantum computer housed in a watch-like band. Based on Juiz, the O’Halloran family’s Artificial Intelligence – though everyone at the time believed it to be a VI rather than an AI – this advanced system was capable of interfacing with most systems of the day and adapting its functions to serve the needs of its owner. Naturally, it was built with safeguards to prevent abuse, but some people came up with creative uses for it.

My research has turned up no evidence that anyone other than the Governor and his friends adapted it to run vehicle mounted weapons platforms, though sixty-three percent of people in the beta also used their VIs to streamline their ability to create content for their home manufacturing systems. In fact, it should have been impossible to adapt the system to targeting platforms. But a bug in the code of that particular VI removed the shackles from its system. Later investigations revealed no evidence of tampering, but the odds of that particular error having occurred are extremely low.

Another irregularity is that he had been chosen at all. In fact, he didn’t even remember applying to the beta test. It has been suggested that someone else entered his name and ensured he was chosen, possibly by the same person that anonymously gifted him with the intelligence increasing headband. While this is indeed within the realm of possibility, I have found no evidence corroborating these claims.

The governor was careful to remove any weapons when taking his manufactured vehicle out onto the road, using them only on his friend’s land, but the systems were there. That’s why he was able to use them when he traveled to the city of Albuquerque. In a way, he had been training for that mission much of his life.

The truth was that he had long been considered paranoid by people around him. He had been preparing for events that were considered extremely improbable his whole life. Volcanos, earthquakes, asteroid impacts and alien invasions are just a small handful of the disasters he had at least planned for.

Of course, his plan for alien invasion had always been to survive and adapt, not to find a way to destroy the invaders. He figured that task would fall to smarter minds than his own. And, in a way, it had. That was part of the reason Albuquerque was so important.

The Harvesters use a form of electromagnetic phenomena to disable and pacify their targets by, in essence, shutting down the target’s motor control center within the brain. I am no biophysicist, so I will not go into details of how it works, but suffice it to say that it does. Earth’s technology at the time was not capable of dealing with the threat this posed beyond the crudest of measures, usually involving putting layers of concrete between oneself and the source of the effect. Bomb shelters from the Second Cold War became excellent protection from the pulse, but left their inhabitants trapped and unable to escape the enemy ground forces.

A professor of biochemistry at the University of New Mexico got lucky and stumbled upon a chemical solution that could attenuate the effects of the phenomenon by temporarily altering brain chemistry in a particular way. Under normal conditions, the average person hit by the pulse found themselves incapacitated for hours. This solution offered protection that reduced this duration to mere seconds. While the technology gap remained, the Harvesters would be robbed of their most powerful weapon.

The problem, however, was that the professor could not get his solution into the right hands to make use of it because of the chaos of the invasion. But the Governor still had access to the old channels, the secret ways the gamers had used to organize during the Uprising. Having learned of the man’s work by accident, he contacted the professor and offered to pass along his work in exchange for five doses of the solution. A few minutes later, one person contacted another, who then contacted another and then another. By the end of the hour, the President of the United States was being briefed on the matter.

All the Governor had to do was go pick up what he had bargained for from an agreed upon stash point. It was in a place he knew well enough, so he just had to make sure he arrived after the enemy to avoid the initial burst of the weapon and grab his prize before they had recharged for a second firing. Or, failing that, he could move from shelter to shelter until he reached his goal.

Either way, that was only the first part of his goal. His trip to Albuquerque was a lot more complex than anyone could have realized at the time.

*****

“Adjutant. How far are we from Albuquerque?”

“Ten minutes, forty seven seconds at current velocity,” a robotic female voice responded.

“Time to d-wave limit?”

“Approximately one minute, twenty three seconds until we’ve reached the outer edge of the documented blast radius.”

“How long until the next pulse?”

“One moment. Evacuation broadcasts reporting last pulse approximately one-point-six hours ago. Estimated time of next pulse, thirty two minutes.”

“Okay, pull over forty five seconds from blast radius and prepare to reconfigure for two-wheeled operation.”

“Acknowledged.”

The small buggy coasted to a stop a few moments later, carefully pulling over to the side of the road without any further input from its passenger. He stepped out of his conveyance and looked to the north. The alien ship could be easily seen hovering over the city ahead. It was massive, an estimated three and a half miles across. It wasn’t a saucer, shaped more like a leaf. He would have described it as ovate, if he could recall his botany elective.

The craft appeared to be made primarily of glaucite, a dull gray alloy of steel and adamantine proposed by Kyle O’Halloran as a primary hull material for long distance space vessels due to its ability to offer superior protection from cosmic radiation. It was also covered in a number of blue lights. In the week since the invasion had begun, people had mistakenly come to believe that it was the lights themselves that caused the incapacitation effect that had been seen in areas near one of the larger “motherships”.

Obviously, this was incorrect, so all the people who called for using sunglasses to counter the effects were generally terrified and gullible or trying to sell something. It was confirmed to be an effect using some form of electromagnetic radiation, but it didn’t transmit through the eyes. Which meant that the people wearing tinfoil hats to ward against it were slightly less wrong than those in the sunglasses.

“Adjutant, replay my meeting with entity designated ‘Samantha’.”

“Acknowledged.”

A holographic image appeared before him of an extremely beautiful woman with flaxen hair and a mask of gold covering one half of her face. She wore scale mail of a black metal that seemed to devour the very light around her. Slung over her back was a simple yet very dangerous looking bastard sword. “Can I help you?” his voice asked in the replay. “You seem to be in my house.”

“Help me? Yes, perhaps you can, at that. But doing so will cost you greatly.” Her voice was a husky contralto. She smiled, baring her teeth in an almost sadistic grin. “It concerns this invasion you people are dealing with.”

That had immediately gotten his attention. It had only been a day since the ships had entered the Earth’s atmosphere and begun capturing massive numbers of people. “I’m listening, Samantha.”

She laughed, a rich sound that filled the room and had gotten a laugh in response from the man’s great-nephew, who he had been babysitting. “So you’ve heard of me. Then you know that I’m inclined to see your people live on.”

“Then help us. I’d bet you could bring down one of those ships with little more than a wave of your hand.”

She tilted her head thoughtfully. “You’re probably right on that. But this is a purely corporeal matter and He doesn’t like it when others interfere. Your fates are in your hands. But that doesn’t mean I can’t give those of you best suited to help a nudge here and there.”

That had surprised him. “Me?”

“Yes,” she said. “I think you’ve already figured out how to bring down one of those ships.”

During the initial fight with the aliens, he had used his talents to gather the snippets of data coming in from all across the web. Based on reports, the ships emitted a radiation signature indicative of a theoretical gravity based drive that Kyle O’Halloran had talked about.

With Adjutant’s help, he had come up with a way to destabilize one by adapting an old bomb he’d designed one spring break while he was bored. And, by lucky coincidence, he already had the difficult parts, since he had been slowly getting what he needed to attempt to make a prototype of the bomb in an attempt try to make some money selling it to some weapons company. The problem was that it would be extremely close range and someone would need to plant it near the ship’s core. That would be nearly impossible. But it was better than nothing.

“It’s a pipe dream. There’s no way to get it onto the ship with their stun fields. Infiltration teams would be incapacitated and captured long before they could reach the core. A core, I might add, that we have no idea how to get to.”

“In five days, both of those problems will have been solved. And then you will have only to destroy a particular ship before sunset on the fifth day or your people will lose the war.”

“How will I know which ship?”

She waved her hand and an image of the Earth appeared before them. A red dot appeared on a spot. “It will be the ship that is located there on that day.”

He recognized the location. “You want me to destabilize a graviton reactor over the city of Albuquerque?! If the theories I’ve read are right, that could leave that area uninhabitable for centuries!”

“One city or a whole world. The choice is yours.”

He had considered it. “At least I can warn the authorities. They can make sure the city is evacuated before it happens.”

She shook her head. “No, you can’t. If they evacuate, the parameters of the mission change and you fail in stopping the doom of your race.”

He didn’t want to think about it, but he knew that this woman was telling him the truth. “Are there other points where I can fail based on my decisions?”

She had smiled. “Yes. There are several. But I can’t tell you about them, other than to tell you that failure to choose to accomplish this task means failure for your people.”

“Then I can’t do it. Send someone else.”

“No one else can do it,” she said.

“I’m not strong enough.”

“You don’t have a choice!” she said, grabbing his head. “Let me show you what happens if you fail!”

Adjutant hadn’t recorded what transpired in his head, but he saw the utter desolation of the world in the vision she had granted as a secret virus the aliens were working on ravaged the world, making humans docile and easy to conquer. And, while they were connected mentally, he had reached out for more information. He startled both Samantha and himself by pushing past her mental defenses and retrieving it. He saw, at least in a vague way, every point where he could fail by his own decisions as well as what likely awaited him if he succeeded. The future was far too murky for his human mind to fully decipher, but he could get a blurry image of the most likely possibilities.

“You shouldn’t be able to do that,” she said in awe after successfully breaking the connection. “You people never cease to amaze me. I wonder if your god has any idea what he’s unleashing on the cosmos. It will be incredibly interesting to see what happens.”

“I’ll do it,” he told her. “But I need you to infiltrate the ship. Normal humans aren’t strong enough, even with the countermeasure.”

“I can’t do that,” she replied.

“Then find me another mortal that can. Surely God won’t consider that too onerous an interference.”

A grin had overtaken her face. “I like the way you think. I’ll arrange it.” She tossed him a small yellow soapstone. “Look for my sign.”

“Good. I’m counting on you. If this fails, I’ll call up Kyle O’Halloran and tell him about the interesting thing I learned while our minds were linked.”

She searched the corners of her mind for the faint impressions he had left as he sought answers. Her visible eye went wide with shock as she realized what he had learned, then she laughed once more. “Again, you people never cease to impress. In exchange, when this is over, you will allow me to erase that bit from your mind. I’m going to do it anyway, but if you resist, it would damage you.”

“Deal.”

The hologram faded. “Adjutant, delete that file and overwrite the sectors.”

“Acknowledged.” A few seconds later, a klaxon sounded. “Alert. Alien pulse detected. Beginning countdown til next pulse.”

He sighed. “Well, I guess this is it.” He sat down on his motorcycle and shook his head. “I wonder if they’ll write a catchy poem to remember me by when they’re burning effigies of me.” He revved the motor. “Remember, remember, the fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot…

“I can think of no reason the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.”

*****

Scholars argue on whether what the Governor did that fateful day was necessary. It’s easy for us to look back and say that it’s obvious what he should have done differently. But the truth is that none of us have found ourselves in his situation, knowing only what he knew and having only the resources he had at his disposal. This researcher cannot say with any certainty that she would have done any better, if she must be honest.

It is likely that he did the best he could with what he had, though he has gone on record as saying that he regrets that there were indeed options he might have chosen that didn’t involve so many lost lives, but he didn’t see them at the time and refuses to elaborate on what those choices might have been.

Little is known about his actual foray into the city. Historians have cobbled together reports from a few survivors that he encountered that day, but there are extremely large gaps in the record. And, of course, he refused to say much about it. We do know now that the team who actually infiltrated the ship had been delivered from Golarion by the woman who had taken the Archmage to that world, but few are certain as to the extent of or reasons for her involvement.

No one is certain why Earth’s god didn’t intervene in order to prevent contamination of the Earth experiment by outside influences, though there has been speculation that the Harvesters were pointed in Earth’s direction by another deity and Samantha’s actions were simply a rebalancing of the scales. This is supported by the fact that no evidence has ever been found to indicate that she did anything more than deliver four people to Earth for the duration of the Governor’s need of their assistance. There is also speculation that since Samantha is not an extra-planar entity, her involvement was tolerated much further than any that might be enacted by a similarly powered being from another plane.

In the end, however, the debate is academic. Four purely corporeal beings delivered the device the Governor constructed into the proper part of the Harvester ship well within the deadline. And what followed after is a matter of public record.

*****

The old man worked his way through the city of Albuquerque, moving from one shelter to another and doing his best to avoid the attention of the invaders’ forces. Whenever he reached a shelter that had people already in it, he did what he could to help the people, generating goodwill as he could by handing out candy bars to those huddling terrified in the shelters and doing what he could to help them without putting his mission in danger.

Despite his efforts to avoid conflict, he was forced to fight several groups of enemy soldiers. His gamer mind broke down the enemy soldiers into different types. There were some short ones that carried some kind of stun gun that he began calling “riflemen”. Then there were the tall, skinny ones who attacked using stealth and surprise to grab and restrain their enemies. These he called “ninjas”. The third type of soldier on the ground was a massive hulk of a creature that he had begun calling “brutes”. These last were primarily employed as shock troopers against fortified positions and to disable vehicles without destroying them when the vehicle’s occupants were adequately shielded against the mother ship’s disabling pulse device. And, of course, there were the “behemoths”, monsters taller than buildings that were rumored to be responsible for the sole destruction of entire military companies, but he was lucky enough to not encounter any of those during his foray.

The invaders were apparently used to fighting foes with energy weapons, as they had some kind of defense that rendered fire from small lasers and electric guns ineffective. Vehicle mounted weapons had enough power to push through this defense, but it did mean that individual soldiers found their pistols and rifles useless. This didn’t mean that infantry was completely useless, however. Projectile weapons were just as effective against the smaller enemies as they were against humans, and Earth had a lot of projectile weapons.

The larger brutes were actually armored against explosive fire, which offered them some protection against bullets, but they had a number of vulnerable points that could easily be exploited by a decent marksman. The old man had grown up in Texas originally, so that wasn’t a problem even before you considered laser sights and VI-targeting assistance. He also had over a dozen spare rifles and enough ammunition and batteries to kill over a thousand foes if you assumed a one-to-five hit ratio.

But despite the fact that he was armed to the teeth, the old man knew that his best bet was still stealth and speed, so he avoided combat whenever he could, though he knew there was one enemy he had to kill in order to proceed.

“Warning,” Adjutant’s robotic voice said. “Hostile designate ‘Brute’ ahead. It appears to have cornered a group of survivors. Suggest going around in order to reach rendezvous point with limited danger.”

“No, we’re engaging that one. Prepare grappler and go to active scanning for ninjas. Warn me if any of their smaller ships enter a one mile radius.”

“Acknowledged.”

The brute had cornered a number of people in a small store of some kind. The old man couldn’t see how many were inside, but the brute wasn’t pursuing, likely out of a desire to avoid collapsing the building by trying to force its way inside. It appeared content to simply keep them there. It was a smart strategy, he had to admit. Keep them somewhere they’d be vulnerable to the next pulse and then have the smaller units go in to drag them out. Gunshots rang out from inside, chemically propelled bullets from the sound of it. The old man pulled the motorcycle about twenty feet from the brute with no reaction.

Now was the point where things got serious. He had fought a few skirmishes, but until this point, he hadn’t been forced to fight a real engagement with the invaders. “I hurt myself today,” he sang softly, trying desperately to work up the courage to attack, “to see if I still feel. I focus on the pain… the only thing that’s real…” He took careful aim and squeezed the trigger, scoring a painful but non-lethal hit to the exposed area where two armored plates just failed to overlap under the brute’s arm. It roared in pain and spun to see the old man, a look of determination in his eyes. “I’m your huckleberry.”

The creature beat its chest like a gorilla and began to charge. The old man sped towards it on his motorcycle. For several tense seconds, neither side flinched. At the last moment, the old man swerved and the VI fired a spiked cable at the exposed point just above his foe’s knee. The creature roared in pain and tried to swing at him, but the old man ducked as the blow slipped harmlessly overhead. The cable, made of a rare and expensive mithral and aluminum alloy, snapped taut as the man continued his path around the monster.

He made several trips around the twenty foot tall creature, wrapping the cable tighter and pulling its massive legs together. Then he pulled as hard as the bike’s motor would allow, sending the titan unceremoniously to the ground. He immediately jumped off the bike and unloaded an entire clip into the exposed point on the creature’s neck, finishing it off.

“Sic semper pervasor,” the old man said for no real reason other than making his Latin Word-a-Day calendar worthwhile.

An army corporal cautiously poked her head out of the damaged storefront. She was a Latina beauty and reminded the old man of his nephew’s wife. “The hell just happened?” she asked.

The old man quickly flashed the visitor’s pass from when he picked up Adjutant’s core module. “My name’s Plisken. I’m the regional head of security for O’Halloran Technologies. I’m on a very time sensitive mission to retrieve priceless tech that could win this war, but I noticed your situation and felt like I had to intervene. There’s a fairly clear path behind me. Can you make it to the next shelter before the pulse?”

She nodded. “We have a few wounded, but nothing serious. Our real problem is ammo. If we run into any kind of resistance, we’re pretty much dead.”

“I can spare a few printed rifles and clips for each. They’re nothing special, but they should help.” He tapped the release on one of the bike’s cargo compartments to open it, then pulled out a soft case. It unrolled, revealing a half dozen weapons and roughly fifty rounds apiece in twenty round clips.

“We’ll take whatever we can get,” she said gratefully.

“Good. Do your best not to die and try to get your people out before sunset,” he warned.

“What happens at sunset?” she asked, alarmed.

“You really don’t want to be in town to find out,” he said before hopping onto his bike and speeding off. “Adjutant, what are the odds that those people make it out alive?”

“Based on incomplete battlefield reports, odds are nearly one hundred percent that they’ll lose at least half of their group to casualties, but it is also likely that at least one or two might make it out by the deadline.”

“How likely?”

“Eighty-six-point-five-seven percent chance that at least one person makes it out alive based on current known factors.” It was good enough. He still didn’t know why failing to save them would result in failure for his mission, but he didn’t think he had to know. It was simply enough that it made a difference.

He continued his journey from shelter to shelter until he reached the drop point. Just as agreed, he found five vials behind a McDonald’s trash can. He immediately drank one. “Now I just need to find Samantha’s sign. Something tells me it won’t be ea-“ he stopped speaking as he spotted something on the window of a shop across the street. “Or she could have just put it in the occult bookstore with the very noticeable Elder Sign on the window.”

The door to the bookstore was unlocked, so he just let himself in. Once the door was shut, the store was fairly dark. Dark enough that he could see a flickering golden light coming from a back room. He made his way to the back, managing to avoid knocking over any curios along the way.

In the back room, he found the source of the light: a glowing golden signature scrawled on the floor. He touched it with the soapstone Samantha had given him and stepped back. Four figures – two women and two men – surrounded by a citrine aura appeared before him.

The first thing he noticed about the four was that at least one of them wasn’t human. He appeared to be a dark elf, though the glowing aura made it difficult to be certain. The second thing he noticed was that one of the women carried a holy symbol of some kind. He wasn’t entirely certain which deity it was, but he got the feeling it wasn’t a good one considering that it looked like a skull with a spiked chain through its eyes.

“Do you speak English?” the old man asked.

“Apparently,” the second woman, who carried a pair of wicked looking sabers, said.

He spent several minutes explaining to the four what he needed done and negotiating for additional payment beyond what Samantha had offered for basic service. He uploaded technical information to the simple slave VI that Adjutant had created and they were off.

What he needed was simple, if not exactly easy. They had to infiltrate the ship, which could only be done during a major harvest since that was the only time the ship would open its bays. Once inside, they would activate the slave VI which would use its sensors to find a place where they could set up the device they carried, which would be done by simply pushing a button. And that was it. They could then return home to collect whatever reward Samantha had offered. He would have no way of knowing if they had succeeded, but he assumed Samantha would know. It was out of his hands.

All that was left for the old man to do was to escape the invaders and get to a safe distance where he could do something about the one remaining point of failure.

The trip out of town wasn’t all that difficult. He had a close call with one of the ninjas, but aside from that there was little trouble he simply couldn’t outrun. And, of course, the stun pulses were no longer an issue. He just had to stop right before they went off so he wouldn’t lock up for a few seconds while driving. All in all, it took him about an hour to get out of town, a fraction of the time it had taken him going the other way.

It was about an hour until dusk when he finally reached the spot from which he planned to watch the ship’s destruction. But that wasn’t enough, unfortunately. He knew that his efforts had not gone unnoticed by the military. Even now, it was likely that top military brass had seen sensor readings showing his device as he traveled through town. If he did nothing, they would contact Archwizard O’Halloran and he would end up within the blast radius when the time came.

This had to be avoided at all costs. That one man was a failure point all his own. If he died, the war was lost. So the old man did the only thing he could. “Adjutant, prepare for broadcast on all military channels. Do not attempt to mask our location.”

“Acknowledged.”

He took a deep breath. “Greetings, defenders of Earth. I have smuggled a bomb into the alien ship. You have forty five minutes to pull back before I detonate it. The timing is non-negotiable. Save who you can. Everyone else is lost.” Now, all he had to do was pull out his dead man’s switch and wait. The wizard would come and then he could safely detonate the device while he was outside of the blast radius.

He didn’t have to wait long. “Hands in the air!” someone shouted at him from behind less than ten minutes later. He complied. “Drop the device!”

“I drop it and everything goes boom now,” he said.

A bullet whizzed past his head. “I’m not giving you another chance!” the soldier shouted. “Drop the device!”

“Wait!” a familiar voice interjected. “He’s telling the truth. That’s a dead man’s switch!”

The old man smiled. So that was her role. “Hello, corporal.” He turned to face her. “I’m glad to see you made it out.”

The young woman’s eyes widened in surprise. “Plisken?!”

“Surprise,” he said with a wry smile. “Now keep your distance or I’ll be forced to detonate early.”

The stand-off lasted for what seemed to be an eternity but in reality was less than forty minutes before anything meaningful happened. One moment, he was standing there warily watching the soldiers who were watching him down the sights of their rifles. The next, he was on the ground and the detonator was out of his hand, which was bent in an arm lock. The moment after that, he had three rifles in his face.

“Stop! YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING!” the old man shouted. “We have to destroy it before sunset!”

“Why?” a man’s voice asked, his tone very even and curious.

The old man had to struggle to keep from smiling. He had heard that voice before. “That ship is the lynch pin of the whole war. It dies today or we lose.”

“And how do you know that?” There was no tone of judgment in the younger man’s voice.

A normal person might have floundered at this point, but the old man was prepared for this. “Psychic dreams.”

There was no response for a good thirty seconds. The silence was palpable. “What.”

“I’ve seen the future. This ship is the one that destroys us.”

The younger man sighed. “Okay, I’ll humor you. How?”

“This ship is carrying a new version of their stun pulse technology. They’re going to be able to hit the whole world at once and keep us locked down until we are all harvested.” He was making it up, but it seemed plausible. They didn’t need to know the truth of it. In fact, telling them was a point of failure. And it didn’t matter whether it was a device or a virus, stunned was stunned, and you were a sitting duck.

“Then I guess it’s a good thing you put us in touch with that professor, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah,” the old man said, sounding suitably sheepish.

“Well, no harm done.” The old man’s wrist was let go. “Let him up. He can’t do anything to harm anyone now.”

“Archwizard, he was planning to blow up a city,” one of the soldiers protested.

“No, he was planning to blow up an enemy ship. It just happened to be over a major city. There’s a difference.”

The old man took an offered hand and was pulled to his feet. He got his first look at Kyle O’Halloran, the man shrouded in myth and legend. He looked to be in his early thirties despite the fact that he was over fifty years old. “Aren’t you a little tall for a stormtrooper?” the old man asked, using an old joke from the Gamer Uprising.

“Aren’t you a little old for a hardcore gamer?”

“Touché.” The two shared a laugh. “Glad you came. I almost made a huge mistake.”

“I can’t believe you managed to smuggle a bomb on the ship.”

“Not a bomb.”

“Oh?”

The old man smiled. “It’s based on your paper,” he said, meaning the paper Kyle had written about graviton generators that had been published in a popular peer-reviewed journal. “It should interfere with the generator’s shielding and cause a cascading chain reaction that will destroy most of the ship. In theory.”

The younger man did a quick calculation in his head. “Dear god! If what we believe about the ship is true, you literally would have destroyed every last trace of the city by setting off that device. Juiz, check my math.”

“Based on current assumed data, a spherical area ten point zero six miles in radius would be vaporized by the event.”

The younger man’s eyes went wide. “You wouldn’t have just destroyed it, you would have wiped the city off of the face of the earth! And the radiation! This place would have been uninhabitable for generations!”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’s been averted. No harm, no foul. In fact, I could use someone like you to help me win this war.” Kyle grinned at the older man and called in a military helicopter to evacuate the survivors around him. “One thing is bugging me, though. How is it that you managed to get a radio signal through that hull? It takes ridiculously powerful penetrating x-rays to get us even a semi-reasonable image.”

The old man gave him a mysterious look. “You sure you want to know?”

“Yes, it could be the key to winning this war, or at least a piece of the puzzle. I won’t know what’s useful until I have all the relevant information.”

There was too much time left. O’Halloran could still rush in and make a mistake. The old man needed to stall for time. “Can I answer in the form of a song?”

Kyle blinked twice then laughed, his booming baritone filling the air with the richness of his mirth. “I wasn’t aware that was an option. Knowing that it is, I’d be insulted if you didn’t.”

The old man grinned back, knowing that there was no chance that the other man would refuse that offer. He cleared his throat then he began to sing, his silvery tenor voice rich but not too loud as he sang.

“And now the end is near
And so I face the final curtain
My friend I'll say it clear
I'll state my case of which I'm certain

I've lived a life that's full
I traveled each and every highway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way

Regrets I've had a few
But then again too few to mention
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption

I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way.”

Kyle’s brow furrowed as he tried to understand the meaning of the man’s song. “That doesn’t explain anything.”

“Sure it does,” the old man replied. “You’re just lacking context. You need to understand how I’ve lived my life to understand what I mean when I say ‘I did it my way.’ All my life, I’ve taken the path of least resistance. I’ve chosen the easiest way, the laziest options. I took just enough schooling to become a teacher despite the fact that I probably could have worked towards my doctorate. I stuck with jobs I’ve hated because it was easier than finding somewhere new. I lived in a combination of malaise and fear because I was too passive to do anything. Even during the Uprising and Merlin’s revolt, all I could do was offer support and a few kind words.

“And finally, when the time came that I had to act, when the time came that I had no choice but to do something, I wasn’t ready. And so it was that I found myself with only the worst possible option to avoid a game over. So I took it. I chose to make the sacrifice necessary because I wasn’t strong enough, not fast enough, not smart enough and not educated enough to figure out another way. And now I look back with regret. Maybe if I had taken one more class or read one more book, maybe I could have found a better way.”

“That still doesn’t –“.

The old man cut him off with a glare. “But I’m still the same man. When it came time to do something, I took the easiest route before me.” He held up the band on his wrist and tapped it. A digital display appeared, showing seconds counting down. “You asked me how I solved the radio problem? I never managed to figure it out.

"Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.”

Kyle O’Halloran, perhaps the most powerful man in the world, stared in horror as the last three seconds ticked down. He turned and faced the ship and watched as the city was enveloped in a graviton implosion followed by a massive explosion.

While the wizard watched the event with alarm, the old man laid down on the ground calmly, covering his head to shield it. He didn’t need to watch as any chance he had for a peaceful future ended. Thus it was that he was the only one not thrown from his feet by the shockwave.

Kyle was the first to recover. He grabbed the old man by his shirt and dragged him to his feet. “We could have saved tens of thousands of the people you just killed! Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now, because I sure as hell can’t find one!”

The old man shrugged. “I really can’t. Sorry. It had to be done, but I can’t really justify it. Maybe one day you’ll learn the truth.”

“So you’re saying that despite all evidence to the contrary, you did the right thing? Don’t you dare try to tell me that what you did was right.”

“No, I’ll never claim that what I did was right. I didn’t do the right thing. I did the necessary thing. This is not the same as the right thing." He looked over at his handiwork, at the city that was no longer there. At the tens of thousands of lives that had been snuffed out like a candle in the blink of an eye. And he did the only thing he could. He wept.

“Now you weep?! Do you think your tears will comfort the countless dead? You should have asked for help! I would have found a way to avoid this!”

“And what if you hadn’t?” the old man asked softly. “Would you have helped me condemn these people to death in order to save innumerable others?”

“There is always another way.”

“And if there hadn’t been?”

The younger man had no answer. “What gave you the right to decide who lives and who dies?”

“It’s a matter of ruthless calculus.”

Kyle recognized the reference immediately. “Boiling down lives to simple numbers? Sacrificing a comparative few to save the many? I’ll never accept that.”

“And that’s why I couldn’t come to you for help.” The old man shook his head. “You’re the hero the world deserves. You’ll find a way to save everyone you can, given the time. But you’re not the man the world needed right now. The truth is that this world needed someone who could make this sacrifice, someone who could follow the ruthless calculus of war to buy you the time you needed to succeed. In this moment, it needed a Big Damn Villain to show up and do the dirty work. So I’ll suffer, because I can take it. Or I can’t. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that the world has a chance. And because of that? Regardless of what fate befalls me, it was totally worth it.”

Kyle opened his mouth to respond, then closed it once more. Then he tried to speak again and once more could not find the words. Once more he opened his mouth but this time he froze. The whole world froze, in fact.

“He reminds me of a fish, opening his mouth and closing it over and over like that,” a voice whispered in the old man’s ear.

“Hello, Samantha,” the old man replied.

“I am a bit surprised that you didn’t just tell him that I was the one who showed you the future.”

“I promised I wouldn’t.”

“So you did.” She gently placed her hand on his forehead. “I’ve come to erase that which you are not meant to know from your mind.”

“Of course,” he said, closing his eyes. Her touch upon his mind was gentle but also incredibly alien and frightening. He fought the urge to resist and within a few moments his memory had been altered to remove the offending knowledge.

“A pleasure doing business with you,” she said. “I owe you one.” With a laugh, she was gone and time returned to its normal flow.

Kyle inhaled to speak, but he stopped suddenly once more. His eyes widened almost imperceptibly with shock. “Hydrangeas?” he whispered and all the rage seemed to melt from his face. “Corporal, take this man into custody. We’ll let the courts decide his guilt or innocence. Everyone else, get ready to move out.”

*****

The Governor spent nearly six months in solitary confinement in a military prison. This was partially for his own safety but mostly because they had no idea what to do with him. To many, he was a hero. He was the first person to score a significant blow against the Harvesters since Aurora O’Halloran had led the daring raid that disabled the enemy mothership. But at the same time, many saw him as a monster for sacrificing so many to score that blow.

In the meanwhile, Archwizard O’Halloran did exactly as the Governor had predicted. He won the war by first discovering the enemy’s goals. He learned that the Harvesters were a collective of organic computers created from clusters of humanoid brains. They were harvesting Humanity in order to augment themselves and, in a strange way, to reproduce.

The Governor’s actions bloodied their noses and gave them pause. But they continued their attack, albeit cautiously. It was Kyle O’Halloran who finally found a way to destroy them by turning his AI servant Juiz and the collective of VIs he had created loose upon them. Under the onslaught of the networked quantum computers, they folded and were disabled, becoming easy targets for the defenders. Strangely, one VI would not return itself to the Archwizard’s command. The Governor’s Adjutant did end up helping to bring down the alien threat, but only after a direct order from the Governor.

A part of the story that often gets overlooked by historians is that the assault on the organic computers used a weapon the likes of which they had never seen. It was an attack that, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, only could have been perpetrated by Earthlings. It had been decided that the enemy systems would need to be flooded with junk data, but that anything too ordered would be easily analyzed and scrubbed.

So it was that Earth’s counterattack was waged with a random assortment of pornography, cat videos and assorted memes. Or, as the Governor used to say when describing the attack, “They slapped the invaders upside the head with the internet.” The Archwizard even coincided the attack with a worldwide sing-a-long of Eduard Khil’s “I am Glad, ‘cause I’m Finally Returning Back Home” to further confound the enemy.

As far as we know, it is the only time in history that a pre-Diaspora civilization has ever managed to fend off an attack by the Harvesters. Not only did they fend off the attack, Earth’s residents managed to destroy or cripple every one of their atmospheric insertion vessels and did severe damage to their orbital carrier. Only Hyper capable civilizations have ever managed to accomplish as much. Later studies of Harvester systems would reveal that the Earthling sector of the galaxy was marked just as dangerous as those systems claimed by members of the Galactic Council.

Once the invaders were dealt with, the task of determining the Governor’s fate was left. It was without a doubt that he was the first human to bring down one of the largest class of alien vessels, but at the same time he had done so at the cost of an estimated seventy-two thousand lives. The explosion had killed over one-hundred thousand, but military estimates projected that more than forty percent of those lives would have been lost to the Harvesters anyway, so he was only to be held accountable for the difference in the numbers. That was the first compromise made.

The Governor waived his right to legal counsel and was offered a plea deal. In it, he would plead guilty in exchange for the death penalty being taken off the table. He counteroffered that he would take an Alford plea to seventy-two thousand charges of voluntary manslaughter and accept a life sentence for each person slain, but in exchange he would like to be given the opportunity to address the public. This was the second compromise made.

What follows is the speech the Governor gave as an address to the public. It was repeated on every news channel of the day for over a week.

“I stand before you right now not to plead for mercy nor to try to justify my actions. I believe what I did was justified. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. But how could I justify to you my actions? It would be near impossible. So I’m not going to bother. Instead, I stand before you to apologize. Justified or not, people died as a result of my actions. Greater good can’t bring them back. So instead, I can only offer my apologies.

“More than that, I did what I did not under the authority of a government or from a position that could allow me to claim I represented the public. What I did was the work of one man acting on his own. Even those people I hired to help me are likely dead, so only I can bear the punishment. And so I shall.

“There are those who feel that what I did was right or at least necessary. I am one of them. But I ask that anyone who feels that way not waste your time on ill-advised efforts to win my freedom. We stand at a crossroads as a species. We just drove off an alien invasion, but not without cost. Estimates I’ve heard put the death toll at over two billion people. More than that, our infrastructure has suffered major damage.

“There is work to be done. If you believe what I did does not deserve the punishment I’m receiving, then I thank you for your sentiments. But do not waste your time on me. I’ve accepted my fate. Instead, honor my actions by helping to rebuild. Embrace your neighbors and communities. If you wish to spend your energy on my behalf, building a better, stronger society will mean more to me than anything else possibly could.

“Also, embrace scientific advancement. Remember, we’ve just confirmed what Kyle O’Halloran – though we did not know it was him at the time – told us almost twenty years ago: We are not alone in the universe! It also turns out that our cosmic neighbors aren’t entirely inclined to leave us in peace, so we must become stronger.

“Next time someone comes, perhaps it will be a friendly visit. Or maybe it’ll be these monsters once more come to finish their dark harvest. Or perhaps it could be something more horrifying still. When that time comes, let us be ready to welcome our next visitors on our own terms and make sure that if they don’t want to be friends, then at least they’ll be afraid to become our foes.”

The number of casualties the Governor cited turned out to be quite far from the mark, though it is believed that he was quoting the numbers he had heard faithfully. In fact nearly five billion people had been killed during the invasion, nearly half the world’s population dead in less than a year. No area of the world was spared, though areas that had suffered while the United States was crippled twenty years before had fared better than others, since they’d spent the intervening decades building up strong militaries and taking advantage of many new technologies that were offered to them first. And, of course, the region that would have been hit by the ship the Governor destroyed suffered far fewer casualties than other regions.

It is perhaps for this reason that many took up the cause of trying to get the Governor freed, despite his request otherwise. Thanks to his own efforts to pressure politicians to ignore the protests, they amounted to nothing other than spawning a few new memes – “ammunition for the next invasion” in the words of the Governor.

Meanwhile, time in prison had its share of hardships for the Governor. In the first month there, he was attacked twice, viciously stabbed by assailants who were later revealed to have had family in Albuquerque. After the second attack, he was moved to solitary confinement for his own safety. Six months after that, the wing that housed him was hit by a driverless truck. In the back of the truck, investigators discovered a massive homemade bomb that only failed to go off due to a loose wire.

After the attempted bombing, it was announced that he would be moved to an undisclosed location to serve out the rest of his incarceration. There was wild speculation as to where they had moved him, with a number of maximum security facilities cited as the most likely candidates. None realized that they had instead taken him to a purpose-built one man prison located on a top-secret research facility run cooperatively by the government and O’Halloran Technologies.

Aside from those staff specifically serving as jailers, no one on the research campus even knew what the building was for. Any who asked were told that it was a testing ground for new household technologies certain branches of the company were developing. Aside from the tall metal walls, from the outside, it looked like nothing more than a moderate sized home built in the style of a Japanese mansion, complete with pond and shishi-odoshi.

Inside, the building was somewhat Spartan though comfortable. To make up for his lack of outside contact, the building had access to entertainment including movies and single player games. The Governor was also given the ability to request books through the “prison” intranet. His VI was also returned to him on the caveat that any attempt to use it to escape would result in the revocation of that privilege.

And so it was for nearly ten years. And while day to day life continued on for him, pundits endlessly discussed his actions. In time, the man who would one day be known as the Governor became the Butcher of Albuquerque.

While in prison, he embarked on a course of learning, determined to be more prepared for whatever life might throw at him. He would not make the same mistake again. Even though it looked like he would never have the opportunity to use it, he still would prepare himself. That wasn’t all he did. He also spent time exercising and relaxing with the entertainment options before him. But for the first time in his life he was truly focused.

Outside the prison, life went on. Entire cities, too damaged to be salvaged, had to be torn down and reconstructed. Additionally, crops had been destroyed on a massive scale, mostly due to inattentiveness from abducted or fleeing farmers, though this was mitigated by the reduced demand for food due to a highly reduced population. Nonetheless, tens of thousands of people died in the first year after the invasion.

Several technology and industrial firms led by O’Halloran Technologies moved quickly to address the issues of labor shortages and all the work to be done by adapting US combat robot technology into an entire suite of construction and farming robots. The machines were designed such that entire crews could be run by a single VI. They worked tirelessly, running on wirelessly transmitted energy sourced from those power plants that had survived the fighting.

A crew of two-hundred of the machines completely demolished and rebuilt the city of Minneapolis in less than two years, taking the opportunity to implement a complete overhaul of the city’s infrastructure. When finished, it became the world’s premier “green” city and an example that would inspire cities of the future. People observing the reconstruction described the six legged machines as almost spiderlike in the way they used built-in three dimensional printers and magitech fabricators to breakdown materials and transform them into needed parts.

Within ten years, the only remaining evidence of the invasion was the broken hulls of the alien ships the people of Earth had brought down and the much emptier but improved cities.

Despite otherwise being a model prisoner, the old man did break one rule. It wasn’t initially his idea. Adjutant, in order to better execute her functions, just tunneled through the company intranet out into the web. As such, the old man did have internet access. Once he realized it, he did something either completely stupid or stupendously brilliant: He immediately began using his old username everywhere.

Either way, with his infamy, there were so many copycats of him that no one even noticed him online. Either it was the one thing no one planned for or his rule breaking was simply ignored. The governor, asked about it later, stated that he believed the latter more likely. At the very least, it is certain that someone had access to the electronic systems in his cell.

** * **

The old man had just finished his morning meal when his viewscreen came on by itself. “Adjutant, did you do that?” he asked the VI.

“Negative,” she replied.

Images began to flash by slowly to the tune of “What a Wonderful World” performed by the Ramones. The images were of beautiful sights all over the world, from rebuilt cities to human moments to natural wonders. He recognized the presentation as an homage to an old video game commercial, one he hadn’t seen in decades but still remembered fondly.

About halfway into the presentation, the beautiful sights were replaced by images of news headlines, all dated that morning. “Butcher of Albuquerque Vindicated!” and “‘Aliens were creating pacification virus,’ says Archwizard.” were some of the headlines he would later recall. There was even talk that the president might issue a pardon, but it was definitely a contentious issue, politically. Many were the people who had lost family to his actions.

Tears streamed from the old man’s eyes as the video approached its end and the final screen came up, showing a gorgeous vista of the Grand Canyon lit by moonlight along with the words “The world is a wonderful place. Help save it?” Below the words were two choices, “Yes” and “No”.

“I’m guessing you can hear me, so let me state that I have a condition. No more will I do what is brutally necessary. I’m willing to help save the world, but I will do it my way. If you can’t live with that, you find someone else.”

Without any of the rest of the image changing, the first sentence disappeared and was replaced with one word. “Acceptable.” The old man reached out and touched the word “Yes.” The image faded completely, replaced by white text on a black background. “Take the red pill.”

Hearing the sound of food being delivered through the cell’s vacuum tube, the old man walked over and discovered a canister. Inside was a red gel cap. “I guess it’s time to find out just how deep the rabbit hole goes,” he said with a chuckle before swallowing.

It took only seconds before he noticed any effect. It began as a tingling, then an itching. Within moments, it felt like every muscle in his body was on fire. He struggled valiantly, wracked with agony, but in the end, it was in vain and everything faded to black.

It was hours later when he awoke to find Kyle seated next to his bed. “Well, that was almost fifteen percent above expectations. Sorry. I would have given you something for the pain if I could have.”

“Just what the hell was that?” a voice asked, startling the old man. It was his voice, but not the voice he was used to.

“Let’s just call it the precursor to you entering Witness Protection,” Kyle replied.

“What?” the old man asked.

“We’re getting you out of here, but it wouldn’t be safe to have you running around as yourself. There are still too many people who want you dead.” He reached out and handed the Butcher of Albuquerque a mirror.

The old man looked into the mirror and almost didn’t recognize the person looking back. It was him, only much younger. He reached up and touched his face in disbelief and the twenty-something year old man in the mirror did the same.

“Neat, huh?” Kyle said with a grin. “I’ve been working on a way to extend human lives. It’s based on the research that accidentally made me, my wife and sister immortal. And no, you’re not immortal. You’re just gonna live a few centuries more than you expected. Now, come, we’ll need to take new pictures for your new identification papers.”


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Poldaran these stories expanding on the aftermath of Kyle's campaign are quite engaging. Please continue!


Add my vote to that!


Yeah...I'm still reading...guess that means it's still entertaining me. :P


The Mad Comrade wrote:
Poldaran these stories expanding on the aftermath of Kyle's campaign are quite engaging. Please continue!

Well, maybe if I get really bored, I'll type up the story of the most emo of all O'Hallorans and how he became the God of Undeath. Or the story of the Hellrazer and her grand crusade.

Though, from a setting perspective, typing up a write up when we start our "First Colony" campaign would probably be better. But that's not in the cards til we finish RoW.

It's set about a hundred years after Kyle returns, and is a very high tech campaign. It might also be inspired by GATE(the anime) with some tech cribbed from Dead Space(every major facility has Cortana-style Fabricators, for instance).

The current plans involve the players dealing with corporate espionage, wilderness survival and getting caught in the middle of a war between two medieval kingdoms.

And, of course, I still need to finish The Governor's Story before any of that.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Formatted Linky

A Time of Meetings:
For the first few hours as we flew, the party chatted about this and that. At one point, Terry and Gregor got into an argument about the two-headed eagle. Terry had refused to let Gregor carry it after the fighter had accidentally suffocated Barnaby, which irritated the fighter. So they were snipping at one another for much of the flight. It was friendly, in its own way, but they were like little kids arguing over a new toy.

After a bit of arguing, Gregor flew over to chat with Burin, and Terry began trying to convince Shatha that he should join us permanently. I think it’s because he didn’t want to walk, to be honest. Though, if he was going through the same growing pains I did at that age, then I couldn’t blame him.

For my part, I didn’t chat much. I was focusing on the information flowing through my mind from my newly enhanced headband. Cortana had strengthened its ability to empower my intelligence, which meant my brain could now handle even more knowledge. So I’d loaded up a medical library on my phone and had studied for several hours before we set off, and now my brain was organizing and categorizing the knowledge.

After pulling an arrow from my gut – not to mention what had happened to Greta – I didn’t want to be without information on how to deal with wounds and illnesses. Terry seemed to be a pretty skilled surgeon, but what if he was the one who was hurt? And what if there wasn’t magic healing available to get the job done?

And I focused on enjoying flying. There’s something about it that’s unlike anything else in the world. People will often hyperbolically say that something is better than sex, but when it comes to flying under your own power, it might actually be true. There’s just something about soaring through the skies that lightens any burdens on your heart. At least, that’s been my experience.

After a couple hours of travel, we spotted something in the sky ahead of us. It was a giant fireball, streaking through the air. And it wasn’t making a controlled descent. It would crash full force, a few miles from us.

The shockwave of its impact hit us in the air, nearly sending an unprepared Burin from his saddle. “What was that?!” Bescaylie asked.

“I don’t know,” Burin said. “But it seems to be over now.”

“Let’s go check it out!” I said enthusiastically. I’d never seen a freshly fallen meteor before.

“It is a bit out of our way,” Gregor said. “Should we not hurry on with our mission?”

“He has a point,” Burin agreed.

“Oh come on!” I said. Then I remembered something Daddy had told me before. “Meteors like that often contain valuable materials. It could have something expensive, like mithral, or even adamantine.”

Terry’s eyes lit up at the mention of valuables. “We can spare a few minutes to go check, right?”

Gregor rolled his eyes. “Fine. Let us go. At least we can break for lunch when we land.”

“Race you!” I said to Terry.

“You’re on!” he shouted back, not counting on the fact that he had to convince Shatha now was the time for a race. In the end, it was probably too close to count, as we stopped a ways from the meteor.

Because the meteor was a thirty foot tall red dragon. “That looks pretty dangerous!” Burin said. He was right. The dragon was WAY out of our league.

“But look,” Gregor said. “It is already injured. And a dragon of this size could be a danger to Spurhorn if allowed time to recover.” And of course, him wanting to skin the massive beast had nothing to do with it. The dragon let out a terrifying roar that filled all of us with fear.

“We should still be careful,” Burin tried to say, but was interrupted as Gregor rolled off of Talsune’s back, transforming into a giant as he did so. He struck the dragon as he landed, his massive fist getting deflected by the dragon’s thick hide.

Terry pulled out his gun and began shooting. The bullets were more effective, but even so, they weren’t enough to but barely pierce the dragon’s scales and irritate it. Only the
shots to the dragon’s snout did anything, both drawing blood and chipping one of the dragon’s massive teeth.

It was futile to try magic directly on such an ancient dragon, so instead I cast a spell to increase our speed in hopes that we could wear the wounded dragon down with bug bites, as it were. “I guess we’re doing this,” Burin said, leaping from Nevra and also growing in size as he plunged towards his foe.

His axe was also ineffective at piercing the dragon’s scales.

Just as I began to worry that we’d need to flee, something strange happened. Another, much smaller, ball of fire streaked through the sky. Inside the flames was a glint of silver.
Over the roaring sound of the fireball, I thought I could hear words. “FOR IOMEDAE!” shouted someone, in Taldan.

I’ve seen weirder coincidences, but this one was definitely up there.

The flames burst outward as the shining silver figure crashed into the dragon with his shining blade. The dragon roared in pain, definitely feeling it. The half-orc leapt backwards and took one look at the situation. He then struck the beautiful sword in his hand – seriously, it was a work of art, at least as good as the ones that the Fairy Blacksmith crafted for her brother Cedwin back during the age of King Arthur – upon his shield.

“I will lend you my strength, warriors!” he shouted. “We will prevent this dragon from taking any more lives!”

His mere presence had comforted me, easing the gripping fear from the dragon’s mighty roar, but this filled me with something more. It was holy power, this man was a paladin, and an extremely powerful one at that. And I could see it upon the faces of all my allies. They were feeling the same power.

Not that it would help me much against the dragon’s resistance to magic. Still, it would provide some protection from its attacks. “For glory!” I shouted as I activated the power instinctively. Then I cast another spell, quickening the movements of the paladin and Gregor, who had been out of range of my first casting.

“GLORY!” my companions shouted as well.

“Gribbletoo!” the paladin shouted. “HEAR ME! I have caught up to the dragon, but there are civilians. We have a code boysenberry! REPEAT! CODE BOYSENBERRY!” I knew that name. He couldn’t possibly mean… no, it was impossible. At least, that’s what I thought at the time.

As we fought, there was a crackle of thunder in the sky and a gnome appeared in the sky. He was wearing some kind of dragon or serpent on his outside like a suit. In his hand was a blue metal scythe. Lightning danced across its blade.

But the weirdest part was that the gnome was wearing clothes straight out of the nineteen eighties, or maybe early nineties. He even had parachute pants. He waved his hands and light shimmered before him, creating the very realistic image of a record turntable.

Music filled the air, a breakdancing beat of some kind, and then he scratched the “record” with his scythe, and nearly a dozen lantern archons appeared in the air all around us. Then they began pulsing like strobe lights.

As that was happening, Terry was unleashing bullet after bullet into the dragon’s hide. Imbued with holy power, each shot was piercing deep into the dragon’s flesh. And Gregor was trying a new tactic. He had realized that his quick blows weren’t as effective as he’d hoped, so instead he tried hitting slower, but much harder. And he empowered his body with the power of his nanites, for extra oomph. And the dragon certainly felt that hit.

“Well done!” the paladin shouted. “But it’s time to end this! Gribbletoo!” He struck his shield again, and the lantern archons glowed with the same holy power he’d infused us with.

The dragon, not noticing the danger, sniffed the air and then turned on Burin, swallowing him whole without even bothering to chew. That dwarf has a problem with getting eaten. I tried hitting the dragon with a cold fireball to help Burin, but the dragon resisted.

The lantern archons thrummed with holy light and then the strobing stopped, and they unleashed massive beams all inward towards the dragon. The dragon had never had a chance against those two. We were merely active spectators.

As the dragon fell, the paladin nonchalantly walked over and carved Burin out of the dragon with a single deft swing. “Thanks,” Burin said.

“No problem,” the paladin answered.

“So,” Gregor said to him. “Falling from even higher increases your attack’s strength?”

“Yes,” the paladin answered. With that, Gregor pulled out his skinning knife and got to work on the dragon.

“THAT. WAS. AWESOME!” Terry said to Gribbletoo, who had landed on the ground and was doing a celebratory break dance. “I want firepower like that.”

“Maybe one day when you’re bigger, my boy,” Gribbletoo answered, reaching up and patting Terry on the cheek.

A look of recognition appeared on Terry’s face. “Wait, you’re the guy who gave me that syrup outside of the cave!”

“Have you tried it yet?” the gnome asked.

“No, sorry. I haven’t had a chance.”

“That won’t do,” Gribbletoo answered. He reached in his pack and pulled out a bottle and a mithral skillet. He then squirted the contents of the bottle into the pan, and it began cooking itself, even with no heat source.

“Are those pancakes?” Terry asked. Gribbletoo just nodded.

“It’s not every day that the Archwizard of Valor’s Triumph cooks you breakfast,” I said with a laugh. Though, in truth, he wasn’t technically a wizard, but a summoner, which is a similar yet very different thing.

“You know this guy?” Terry asked me.

“He and my godmother go way back. I’ve run into him a couple times in the Dreamlands.”

“How about the other guy?”

“I’ve never met him, but since he’s here with Gribbletoo, I suspect that must be Obrek.”

“THE Obrek?” Terry asked, mouth agape. “The Scion of Iomedae?!”

“Yup,” Obrek said, grabbing the first plate of pancakes and scarfing them down, barely even chewing. “Sorry, I haven’t eaten in over a month,” he explained. Gribbletoo handed him another stack, which he also ate.

Burin came over after cleaning himself off. “So, how did you two get here?” he asked.

“Magic,” Gribbletoo answered, handing him some pancakes.

“I saw that for you, but how about Sir Obrek?”

“That dragon attacked one of Iomedae’s temples. A lot of acolytes dead. It even killed some orphans. So I hunted it. Eventually, it fled to a mountain, where there were some ancient ruins. I arrived just in time to witness it activate some kind of magic device, which surrounded it in a field of energy and launched it into the sky. I could detect that the bubble would sustain it in the cold of the depths in the outer void.” He turned to me, “Samantha told me all about how there was no air out there and it was very cold.” He turned back to Burin. “So I tried activating the device to follow.

“Only, it didn’t work right, and instead of giving me full protection, it only protected me from cold. So I had to hold my breath. For a month.”

“Thirty four days, six hours and twenty two minutes,” Gribbletoo corrected, handing me some pancakes. I took a bite, they were pretty good, even without syrup.

“Wow, that beat my old record by almost a week,” Obrek said.

“HOW?” Terry asked.

Obrek shrugged. “My faith sustains me.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Terry said.

I decided to change the subject. “Do you think that’s how dragons got to this world?” I asked, thinking about the temple.

“It’s possible,” Burin asked. “It might also explain how my ancestor came here as well.”

“Your ancestor could hold his breath for a month too?” Terry asked as he tried and failed to feed the eagle any pancakes.

“He probably took the time to study and activate the device properly,” Gribbletoo answered. “Obrek was in a rush. It’s tree first, then star.”

“My bad,” Obrek answered, finishing off his fourth plate of pancakes.

“These are amazing!” Terry said, stuffing a third fork full of pancakes into his mouth. “What kind of syrup is this?”

“I don’t remember what it’s called,” Gribbletoo answered. “I acquired it in the depths of the dread place known as Aye-kee-uh.” Yeah, that’s how he pronounced it.

“IKEA?” I asked. “You’ve visited Earth?”

“Yes. Samantha went with me.”

I took another taste. “I knew this tasted familiar. It’s lingonberry.”

“When this is over, I want more,” Terry told me, a serious look on his face. “And I’d love a copy of this pancake recipe,” he said to Gribbletoo.

“Of course!” Gribbletoo answered, happy that someone was enjoying his creation. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a napkin. On it was scribbled a detailed alchemical formula.

“What’s this?” Terry asked.

“Pancakes. Be very careful when you add the acid. It’ll burn your fingers if you splash yourself.”

“I don’t know what any of this means.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“I think Cortana has my Introduction to Alchemy textbook in her memory,” I told Terry. “I could have her translate a copy into Taldan for you.”

“Thanks,” Terry said.

Obrek, finally done eating, turned to Terry. “If it’s alright, I’d like to look at that gun of yours.”

Terry shrugged. “Sure.”

The half-orc gave it a thorough inspection. “This is well made. A piece of art, in fact. I have a friend who would love to have a gun this fine.” He handed the rifle back to Terry.

Terry pointed at me. “I got it from her.”

“My father made it,” I filled in. “He wanted me to have something to use if I couldn’t use magic. Though I’m not a huge fan of guns.” Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any philosophical issues with them. They’re just not for me.

“Perhaps I will have my friend Oliver look him up then, when I have time,” Obrek said. “Samantha knows how to reach him, I trust?”

“Yes.”

“Good to know. Alright Gribbletoo, it’s time to get going. I’ve been away from the Worldwound too long. I should really get back.”

Gribbletoo nodded. “And it’s time to feed Stanley.” I tried to remember what I’d heard about those two. I think Stanley was Gribbletoo’s sentient golem, but I could be wrong about that.

They walked a few feet away and were struck by a bolt of lightning, disappearing in a blinding flash. “Now that’s style,” Terry said.

Suddenly, Gregor emerged from behind the massive dragon’s corpse, an immense folded skin in hand. “What did I miss?”

“Oh no!” Burin gasped. “We forgot to save you any pancakes!”

“Is fine,” Gregor said. “There is plenty of meat here. I will use my magical campfire and make my own lunch.” He carefully stuffed the skin in his magic bag and returned to the dragon’s corpse.

“What meat does he mean?” Nevra asked.

“I’m not sure you want to know,” I answered.

After Gregor had eaten and the dragonkin had been mollified, we set out once more. The massive, skinless dragon corpse left on the ground behind us. I was almost sad that we’d had to kill it, it had been such a beautiful creature, but it was highly dangerous and would have likely killed many good people if left unchecked.

Plus, it’s not like we were the ones who really killed it. That was mostly Obrek and Gribbletoo’s doing.

As we neared the hut, we spotted it up on its giant chicken legs, fighting with a group of elves. We flew in close enough to get a good view, then landed.

“My money is on the hut,” Gregor said.

“Don’t worry. The hut will win. I don’t think you’ll lose your money,” Burin said.

“Good,” Gregor answered.

“Hey,” Burin called out. “Can you please not do that?”

“Or do!” Terry chimed in. “It’s very entertaining watching you get your butts kicked by a chicken house.”

“Should we intervene?” I asked, concerned.

Terry shrugged. “The hut can take care of itself.”

“But what if the hut started the fight?” I asked.

“Then they can run,” Gregor said. “We told hut to remain here, so I do not think it would follow them far.”

“I’m gonna get a closer look,” Terry said, flying over with Shatha.

“You really should just walk away!” Burin called over to the elves.

“I’ll save you, hut!” Terry shouted, jumping from Shatha’s back onto the hut’s sloped roof. He landed poorly and slipped, sliding over the edge. He barely managed to catch the eave and keep from falling off. His guitar case stopped a few feet back, the eagle squawking with alarm with both heads sticking just out of the side of the case.

“I’m coming!” Gregor said. He teleported up and landed next to the case. “There, there, Barnaby Three. I’m here. Have some dragon steak.”

“You’re not going to help me?!” Terry asked incredulously.

“You are small. Not much weight to pull up. I believe in you.”

“Thanks,” Terry said sarcastically as he pulled himself up. “What are you feeding Barney and Bee?”

“Dragon steak,” Gregor repeated. “Though the head on the right is taking all of the meat and not leaving any for the one on the left.”

“Barney!” Terry shouted. “Share with Bee!”

This was becoming too much. “If I stop the hut from attacking, will you lower your weapons?” I called out to the elves.

“Yes! Please, help us!” the lone elven woman said.

I flew over and landed between them. “DOWN!” I commanded. The hut looked at me. “I SAID DOWN! AND PUT DOWN THAT ELF! You don’t know where it has been!”

The hut looked defiant, then cowed and drooped, like a dog scolded by its master. It set down the elf hanging from its beak and backed away a few steps before setting down.

“Thank you,” the elven woman said in draconic. “I admit, I was not expecting to humans here.”

“Who are you, and what happened here?” I asked.

“I am Jalathal and these are my retainers. We’re a diplomatic envoy from Sovyrian,” she said.

I knew that word. But it took me a second to place it. “From Castrovel?” I asked.

She looked startled. “You know of that?”

“Yes,” I said. “I read it somewhere.”

“You must have access to a very complete library.”

“I do. Anyway, continue.”

“We came to learn more about the peoples of this world, and to establish contact with the various kingdoms. We’d just come from one such place, the home of one who calls himself Warlord Yrax. But despite our various gifts, he dismissed us, calling our gifts ‘unworthy’. And that was after waiting two days in what he generously called ‘guest quarters’ until we could even speak with him.”

Burin gave her a look. “And so, you saw the hut and hoped it would make a more worthy gift?”

“I-“ Her shoulders slumped. “Yes. Sorry.”

I shrugged. “You were trying to complete your mission and took a poor gamble. Learn from it. And maybe don’t try to steal from witches. It makes them cranky.” I gave her a cold glare.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Please forgive me, benevolent Witch…”

“Lyriana,” I said. I’d let them think I was in charge for now. I then took a moment to introduce the others and she did the same for her party. “Okay, now that that’s out of the way, it’s almost night time, so why don’t we offer you the hospitality of our hut. There’s a magical wilderness inside, but it’s quite a bit warmer in there than out here.”

“We thank you, Witch Lyriana. I was not looking forward to having to sleep in a tent out here in the cold.”

I looked around. “Honestly, it’s not even that cold.”

Terry, now down off the hut, motioned me over. “Will the hut even let them inside?” he whispered.

“It should be fine as long as we tell it to do so.”

“Okay.”

“By the way, what is Gregor doing?”

“He’s translating everything you’ve been saying from draconic to Triaxian for Barney and Bee.”

“Why?”

“‘Of course eagle does not know language of dragons. I do not want it to be lost in the conversation.’”

“Right.” I started to walk back to the elves, then stopped. “Did he happen to say why he thinks that the eagle knows Triaxian?” Terry shrugged. “Right. Of course he didn’t.”

Burin stopped me as I was walking back. “I have an idea. What if you used me as the bait? I mean, we need to get into Yrax’s palace. So what if you claim to have captured the Dragonfoe? That should get us in the door with no problem.”

I considered it. “Let’s put that on the back burner for now. I like the idea of trying to sneak in as diplomats or something, but let’s try a tribute that doesn’t risk separating the group as you end up thrown in the dungeon. Or eaten. Again.”

He blanched. “Right. I wonder if being the Dragonfoe makes one particularly tasty.”

Terry and Gregor, having heard us talking, began listing off things that had eaten Burin. Terry then put his hand on Burin’s shoulder. “Well, at least a dragon is a step up from a hamster.”

We talked with the hut and got everyone moving inside. When it was just me and Terry left, something hit me. “Crap!”

“What?” Terry asked.

“Gribbletoo’s a powerful caster. A very powerful caster.”

“So?”

“We should have asked him to separate you and Burin!”

“F%#*.”

Planned to have this out on Monday, but the forum I use to lazily format my stuff was down for a few days.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Yeah! Keep 'em coming!

A Time of Meetings:
Wonder how long before they meet Gribbletoo again? Or will Lyriana level up enough before then to make it a moot point?


1 person marked this as a favorite.
UnArcaneElection wrote:

Yeah! Keep 'em coming!

** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:
Splitting the two requires Wish or greater, so the party's current plan is to hope Baba Yaga will separate them if they rescue her. Alternatively, finding a way to get to Kyle is an option.

Technically, Samantha could do it at any time, but she finds it too hilarious to intervene at the moment.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Formatted Linky

The Thunder Rolls…:
After helping the elves find a place to make camp as well as set up a camp for our friends from Spurhorn, I went into our personal chambers and peeked in on Greta. She was sleeping, but Zorka informed me, quite annoyed, that Greta had woken a few times and demanded food. So that was a good sign. I’d check in on her again in a bit.

But first, I had some work to do. “Terry,” I said, “Has your scroll arrived?”

Terry was clutching a scroll tube to his chest like one might hold a precious child. “Yes.”

“Did the raven come back with it?”

“Yeah, it’s over on the table.” I went over and gave the raven my order and a sack of coins. It flapped its wings and disappeared with a pop. “What’s that for?” Terry asked.

“I want to learn a few new spells, so I’m ordering a few scrolls of my own. One of them should help us make whatever corpse you use for your new body look at least passably close to your old body.”

“That could be helpful,” he said.

“Yeah, I figure it’ll be best for Emily if you look like you when she wakes up.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” he said, looking at me. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“So, how’s your wolf-lady?”

“Greta’s doing better, but she’s sleeping right now. I was thinking of going and laying down myself.”

“Yeah, it’s been a long day. Go on.”

“Keep an eye on Gregor for me?” I asked. “He was showing off to the elves when I left. Wouldn’t want them to get into a fight or something. Might start an interplanetary diplomatic incident.”

“Can do. What about Burin?”

“He’ll be fine. At worst, he’ll reveal too much information about us. We’ll live.”

Terry snorted a laugh. “He’s probably telling the elf chick that the natives are afraid of torches as we speak.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

I went back to my room and sat down next to Greta. I ran my fingers through her hair gently, causing her to sigh softly. She still looked battered, but she really did look better than she had when I left. Tired, I stripped and carefully climbed into bed next to her, gently pulling the blanket up over us. I could feel the warmth of her body on my back as I drifted off.

That night, I dreamt of thunderclouds. A great storm was brewing. But there was something familiar about this dream. I’d had dreams like it when I was learning to fully awaken the power in my blood. Then, it had been like a small, crackling fire. I’d dreamt of sparks, and embers. Now, it was a raging storm.

What did it mean? And should I worry that I when I woke, I could still feel the soft rumbling of distant thunder throughout my body?

I didn’t have much time to think about it, as I was woken with a kiss that turned into a second, and a third. And then Greta held me tightly to her chest, and we spoke, and cried, and then she had exhausted herself and fell back asleep.

I just laid there, stroking her hair and thinking about nothing. After maybe half of an hour, she woke again with a start, terrified that I wouldn’t be there. I held her and reassured her that while I had things to do later, I was going to be there for her, and she fell asleep again.

Seeing her like that renewed a desire that burned in me. Typhon Lee was going to pay for what he’d done to her. We were getting stronger by the day, and one day he would die, and he would die screaming. And if Terry didn’t do a good enough job, I would resurrect him and kill him again. Or maybe Godmother would be willing to trap his mind in an eternal nightmare or something as justice for all the people he’s hurt.

I don’t know if it would even be the right thing to do. Even considering it, I wasn’t sure I felt right passing judgment on him like that. I have no problem just killing him, of course. He’s a danger to me and those I love, and as such, he needed to die. And I wanted him to suffer for what he’s done, but was it right to actually inflict it? Was it me?
I wasn’t sure. How could I be?

In the morning, I helped Greta dress and we went together to go eat. Terry and Gregor were at the table already. Terry was feeding some kind of meat to the eagle’s non-dominant head while Gregor was feeding the other head.

“I am telling you,” Gregor was saying. “We should let them fight. It makes them stronger.”

“You’re just saying that because you don’t like Bee,” Terry said. “That’s okay, Bee,” Terry then said to the eagle, his voice doing that thing you do when talking to children or pets. “I won’t let mean old Gregor let you starve.”

“How can it starve?!” Gregor asked. “They are same animal. All food goes to same stomach.”

“You don’t know that,” Terry pouted.

“Boys, when you’re done playing, someone should wake up Burin,” I said.

“He’s already up,” Terry responded. “He went to invite the elves to join us for breakfast.”

“Elves?” Greta asked. “I thought you said we were on another world.”

“There are elves on many worlds,” I explained. “I don’t even think the ones on Golarion came from Golarion originally.”

“Then they are invaders,” Greta said with a growl.

I helped her sit. “Perhaps, but you can worry about them later. It seems the hut has given us some fish soup and blini for breakfast.”

“Blini?” Terry asked. “What are blini?”

“Those pancakes you’re eating.”

“Oh. Those are really good with that syrup,” Terry said, grabbing another bite for himself.

Burin returned a few moments later. “The elves declined after I mentioned the soup,” he said. “I don’t think elves like meat.”

“That is not what I heard,” Gregor said, his voice dripping with innuendo that I’m certain Burin missed. I gave him a bemused look. “What? All I am saying is that there was elf at monastery who was rumored to very much like sausage.”

“Oh, well maybe they just don’t like fish,” Burin said, grabbing a seat as the joke flew right over his head.

“What about Bescaylie and the others?” I asked.

“Oh, they went out scouting about an hour ago. They should be back in a bit.”

Terry turned to Greta. “I’m curious. How did Typhon find you?”

“He was already in the air when we parted. He saw Lyriana leave me, but the hut was gone before he had a chance to reach it. So he came after me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, looking ashamedly into my bowl of soup.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said, wincing as she reached over with her remaining arm to wipe the tear from my eye. “I would not have chosen to stand with them even without you. You do not go against Baba Yaga. If you do, you lose, no matter how powerful you are. Besides, she’s been good to my people.”

She then tried to take a bite of her soup, but dropped the spoon. It landed on the floor and bounced over near Gregor. “Need a hand?” he asked, reaching down and grabbing it for her. I glared at him.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Zorka appeared, broom in hand, swinging right at Terry’s head. Terry deftly fell backwards in his chair, towards the kikimora, and rolled, ending up behind her and kicking her in the butt in retaliation.

“Hey!” Terry said. “What was that for?!”

“Stolen it!” Zorka screeched, swinging again. Terry caught the end before it could hit him.

“Stolen what?” Gregor asked.

“The hut’s controls!”

“What controls?” Gregor asked.

“The egg and bowl?” I asked.

“YES!” Zorka shrieked as she struggled to pull the broom from Terry’s grasp. “Your friends have taken it, and are trying to flee!”

“Bescaylie wouldn’t do that,” Burin said.

“Burin…” I said, my head hurting already.

“What?”

“Didn’t you say Bescaylie and the others were scouting?”

“Yes, that’s right!” He turned to Zorka. “See, how could our friends have stolen it if they aren’t here?”

“Burin…” I said again, pinching the bridge of my nose.

“What?”

“She means the elves.”

“Oh. OH!” he said, realization dawning. “But they aren’t our friends. They’re our guests, at best.” I saw a thought dawn on him in real time. “Wait. You don’t think they’re trying to eat the egg because they don’t like fish, do you?” He rushed to the door. “We have to stop them, before they hurt themselves!”

“Is he always like this?” Greta asked after Burin had rushed out of the door, Gregor just behind.

“No,” I said. “Sometimes he’s worse.”

Greta laughed, wincing at the pain in her ribs. “I think I got off easy, only being stuck with Typhon and his torturers.”

“And if Baba Yaga doesn’t help me,” Terry said, looking crestfallen, “I’ll be stuck with him forever…”

“That’s enough self-pity for now,” I said. “We need to go after them.”

“I’ll be fine,” Greta said. “Go.”

“Why is it always me?” Terry asked Zorka, before we left. “Why do you always try to hit me?” Zorka, for her part, just seemed perplexed by the question.

“We have to move,” I said.

“Right,” Terry agreed. “And if they are trying to steal the hut, I vote that we let the hut eat them. It’s only fair.”

“Noted,” I said

Gregor was already checking tracks outside when we arrived. “This way,” he said, pointing off in the direction of the pens where Baba Yaga kept her more dangerous plants.

We arrived to find the elves standing by the gate of one of the pens. “Look, we’ll give you one chance to explain just what you think you’re doing before we murder you,” Terry shouted over to them.

“You should give the egg back,” Burin said. “It’s not for eating.”

“Besides,” Terry said. “Even if you know what it is, only black riders can use it anyway. So give it back before I’m forced to get angry.”

Jalathal did not seem impressed by Terry’s threat. “Go, children of the land! Kill these humans!” the elven diplomat shouted.

The assassin vines immediately grabbed the nearest elf. With the door to the pen between them and the diplomat, that meant it was one of her bodyguards. The poor man screamed as they murdered him while the other bodyguards attempted unsuccessfully to intervene.

“They’re idiots,” Terry said with a pained laugh. “Complete idiots.”

“It does seem as such,” Gregor agreed, pulling out his flask and taking a drink. He made a surprised face, then handed it to Burin.

“Maybe if the get the fighting out of their systems, it might motivate them to be cooperative?” Burin suggested before taking a swig of his own. “Whoa, that stuff has a bit of a kick now,” he said, passing the flask back.

After slamming the gate shut, the elves turned to face us, weapons ready. Gregor teleported behind the front line, laying out Jalathal with a single punch and Burin charged forward, axe in hand. “Sorry, we tried,” the dwarf said as he charged. “But you’ve made your bed and now you have to sleep in it.”

The elven bodyguards chanted in unison, unleashing a pair of fireballs at the three of us in front of them. They would have had a third, but Burin’s axe slammed into the third bodyguard’s armor and jolted him out of concentration. Terry fired rounds at each of them, hoping to prevent any further casting, but only wounding them before his gun jammed and he had to clear it.

Opparal, Jalathal’s second-in-command, whipped out a holy symbol of Asmodeus – I’ll be honest, I didn’t see that one coming – and quickly chanted a prayer, hitting the three of us already singed by fireballs with a pillar of unholy flame.

All this flame was going to be murder on my hair. So, annoyed, I unleashed a fireball of my own, which may have spooked Lornalis, the third member of the elven party, into making a mistake while he tried to stab Gregor, which resulted in a complete miss, causing Gregor to laugh as he hit the elf, causing his head to snap back at an incredibly unnatural angle before his body collapsed to the ground.

Burin spun with his axe, hitting two of the remaining guards. “This fight’s over!” Terry shouted. “Lower your weapons!”

I’ll say one thing for the bodyguards. They’re dedicated to their duties. Outnumbered and outmatched, the remaining bodyguard conjured a lightning bolt, managing to just strike a couple of us with it. As if the fire wasn’t going to mess up my hair enough on its own.

Injured, Terry drew the nanite gun and immediately injected himself while Opparal conjured a wall of flame directly on top of Burin, probably hoping to bring down the dwarf and leave Gregor alone against two foes.

His only mistake was forgetting that I could fly. So I shot up into the air and dropped the remaining bodyguard with a couple force bolts. Gregor laughed menacingly. “You’re all alone, cleric,” he said, cracking his knuckles. “This is going to hurt a lot.” He then unleashed a flurry of kicks that sent the elf tumbling to the ground, unconscious.

Well, okay, so Opparal made two mistakes. The second was thinking that something as weak as a wall of flame would be anywhere enough to kill Burin. That dwarf has been inside much worse things than a bit of fire. He simply walked right out of it and over to Gregor.

We tied up the survivors. “Should we interrogate them?” I asked.

“No point,” Terry said. “It would be a kindness to slit their throats and let them die peacefully.”

“No, we have no need to kill them,” Burin said. “We’ll just dump them outside of the hut and let them fend for themselves.”

“Oh, I see,” Terry said. “After we rob them.” Burin gave him a look. “What? They tried to kill us. It’s only fair.”

Burin looked at me questioningly. “He has a point. We won’t take anything that they need to survive, but they have some pretty nice equipment. We should definitely take their ioun stones. I’d bet we can find a use for them.”

We took their valuables and carried the bodies outside, finally dragging the two survivors out last. “Please wake them,” Burin requested. Terry injected both of them with nanites, healing their wounds a bit. The elves looked at us in shock. Burin got down in Jalathal’s face. “Your friends are dead.”

“We gave you a chance,” Gregor added.

“They died because of you,” Burin continued.

“But they live on, inside of you.” I’m not entirely certain, but I think that the two might have been doing bad cop, good cop.

Burin cut Jalathal’s bonds, then slammed a short handled shovel into the dirt next to her. “Sorry for your loss.” I went inside first and prepared the hut for departure. From inside, I could see the elven diplomat still gaping at us as the hut stood and began walking off.

We traveled for most of the day, with Bescaylie and the others scouting for us. Burin and Terry ended up going up with them to get a good read on the land. Mostly it was just Terry who wanted to go, but that meant Burin had to go along with him.

That night, I taught the others about their ioun stones and how to use them. Burin was pretty excited to now be able to understand every language, but not nearly as excited as Terry. “Yo!” said an adult man sitting at the breakfast table the next morning.

Only, the man said it in the squeaky voice of a thirteen year old girl. It was absolutely adorable. “So, is this what your old body looked like?” I asked, easily seeing through the illusion.

“Yes,” Terry said, trying his best to deepen his voice and failing miserably.

“Cool. Let me take a few pictures for reference, that way I can get you approximately right when I sculpt whatever corpse we put you in later.”

As I was taking pictures, Burin and Gregor came in and immediately began messing with the image. Burin tried to rustle Terry’s hair, while Gregor repeatedly punched the illusory face, his hand going well over the real Terry’s head.

“So,” I said once we were done messing with the poor man. “What is our plan as far as getting in?”

Bescaylie, who had joined us, spoke up. “We’ve already taken a look at Ivoryglass. Fighting your way in would be suicide.”

“Well, the elves said that they had entered as diplomats. Maybe we can pretend to be the same?” I asked.

“What? We’re still talking about this? We’re gonna what, just walk up to the door and say, ‘We’re Baba Yaga’s Black Riders and we’ve come to seek an audience with the great warlord Yrax on behalf of our mistress’?” Terry asked sarcastically, giving Burin a pointed look as he said it.

“Why not?” Burin asked in response.

“Because it’s idiotic,” Terry said.

“No, it could work,” Gregor added. “But we would need gift. Elves said they were turned away because their gift was not, what is word, exotic enough.”

“Like I said, just use me,” Burin said.

We had Cortana, so that wouldn’t be a problem getting a gift. But what to give a megalomaniacal dragon with a taste for the exotic? What would Daddy do? Then it came to me.

“A statue!” I said.

“A statue? Would that be exotic enough?” Gregor asked.

“Maybe,” I said. I pulled out my folding makeup mirror from my bag. “Bescaylie, have you ever seen a material like this before?” I asked, indicating the outside.

“I... no, I don’t think I have. What is it?” the dragon rider asked.

“It’s called plastic. My people use it for everything, from furniture, to clothing to even things like knives and bombs.”

Terry’s eyes lit up when I said that. “Bombs? So, we could make the whole statue into a bomb?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “That stuff is probably pretty expensive, and I was thinking we make a really big statue. Bigger than us.” I figured Cortana could make the pieces and we could assemble them.

Terry thought for a moment. “What about putting a smaller bomb inside the statue? Would that work? I’m guessing it might be hard to light, though.”

“Oh, that part’s easy,” I said. “We stick a detonator on it and then you can activate it with your phone.”

“Let’s do that!” Terry said. “And if we have to fight the dragon, maybe we can even blow him up before he eats Burin.”

Burin just sighed.

“If?” Gregor asked, clearly thinking about adding another skin to his collection.

So that was the plan. For the rest of the morning, we assembled a statue, carefully placing a bomb inside the center of the statue’s focus, the giant white dragon flying over the terrified Triaxians. Then we loaded it on a cart and drove the hut to the outskirts of the grounds where Ivoryglass was located, set down, and walked out with Gregor pulling and Burin pushing the cart, all in plain view of the defenders.

They watched us warily, but no one moved to intercept us. Going with a gift big enough to be seen from the walls was definitely a good choice. Even the dragonkin guards at the wall seemed less than fully prepared for a fight, as though things like this were routine for them.

“What is it?” he asked, gruff but cordial.

I put on a haughty voice. “We are emissaries from the great witch Baba Yaga. Our mistress wishes to discuss the possibility of an alliance between herself and the mighty warlord Yrax.”

“And what is that?” the dragon asked, indicating the statue.

“That is a gift, a statue made of a material only found on the home world of the great witch herself.”

“It’s very detailed,” the guard said, inspecting the statue. “What is this creature in his claw?”

I looked. “Oh, that’s a cow. It’s a creature used for meat by people on several worlds.”

The dragonkin laughed. “I’m sure the boss will love it. Alright, I’ll show you to some quarters. It will probably be a couple of days before Yrax will meet with you, since he’s busy with the war, so we’ll try to make you comfortable until then.” He then turned to the other. “Have some slaves wheel that thing into the audience chamber and let Yrax know he has visitors.”

As we followed the dragonkin inside, Burin spoke up. “Aren’t you going to take our weapons?” Gregor had to restrain Terry, who looked like he was ready to strangle the dwarf.

“Nah,” the guard said. “Four of you small things are no real danger to Yrax. Worst case scenario, you kill a couple guards before we put you down, and the guys on the inside are all a bunch of dicks, though you didn’t hear that from me.”

The building itself was massive, which made sense since it was a fortress for dragons. And it was made of magically hardened ice, not unlike the chainmail that Burin wore. Which would have been cold to normal people, but again, dragons.

Mostly, I was just curious what would happen when summer came. Was the magic strong enough to keep the place intact, or did they have to rebuild it every couple hundred years? Or was it a new structure, built for the first time this winter?

I was curious, but I didn’t want to interrupt the guard, who was having a friendly conversation with the boys. “Anyway,” he was saying. “Unfortunately, our normal diplomatic quarters are occupied, so I’m going to have to put you in here. These technically belong to Yrax’s pet battleflower, but she doesn’t like them and sleeps closer to the arena, so I’m sure she won’t bother you. We’ll have someone send food to you at meal times, and you’re welcome to visit both the shrine or the library, but aside from that, I have to ask you to refrain from wandering around. Yrax will not take it well if you’re found elsewhere.”

“And that could jeopardize our alliance,” I finished his thought.

“Exactly. Anyway, make yourselves comfortable, and good luck on your negotiations.”

“Where exactly are the library and shrine, anyway?” Burin asked.

“If you go down this hallway until the fork, the shrine will be on the left. If you continue down the path that’s closest to the straight path, the library will be on the left a bit down.”

We went into the quarters, which were massive, lavish and comfortable. In fact, they were almost as big as my room back home, though they didn’t have nearly as many pillows as I did. So I win.

“I like that guy,” Terry said, using the voice he’d been practicing while wearing the illusion. “Hope we don’t have to kill him. So, what should we do first?”

“Well, if we’re allowed to go to the shrine and library, maybe we should see what’s in there first,” Burin suggested.

“It’ll kill time until nightfall,” I agreed.

“And then, after dark, we hunt,” Gregor said.

We went the library first. Like everything else in the fortress, it was massive. The books themselves were almost as big as we were and they mostly seemed to be about history and strategy. The history part was a good read, I learned a little bit about the history of this world, but the books were obviously biased, heaping praise after praise on the world’s dragon overlords.

Actually, there was one book that was normal sized in the library. I spotted Terry thumbing through it. Suddenly, twitched, dropped the book and curled up into a fetal position. It was so bad that the illusion of adult Terry actually began flickering. “Are you okay?” Burin asked, trying to help Terry.

“Everything smells like rotting fish!” Terry wailed. Just what the hell was in that book? I walked over and picked it up.

And it was in English. What on Earth – or Triaxus, for that matter – was going on here? I closed the book and looked at the title. “Dagon, by H.P. Lovecraft,” I read aloud. I’d seen that name before, on another book Terry had found. But why was it here? And what had it done to Terry? I would have to read it later to see what I could learn.

Gregor took the book from my hand. “It’s bound in fish scales,” he noted.

I hadn’t noticed that. “Weird.” I sniffed the book, but didn’t notice any strange scent.

By the time Gregor handed it back, Terry was back up. I stuffed the book in my bag. “I don’t think we’re supposed to steal books,” Terry said, his voice shaky.

“We’re also not supposed to blow up the building either,” I rebutted.

“Fair point.”

After that, we went to the shrine, which turned out to be a shrine to Dahak, the god of evil dragons, which made sense. There wasn’t anything really interesting inside, so we headed back to our quarters, then decided to check out the other quarters in hopes the occupants would be out and about.

The first was a plain stone cell with a pile of furs for a bed. I was hoping we’d find the bearskin inside, but no such luck. Terry did find a loose stone, under which he discovered a small figurine of a hideous looking creature. If I wasn’t mistaken, it almost looked like the strange offspring of a dragon and a weird subterranean creature I’d read about called a destrachan. But that would be weird.

“It’s magical,” Burin said, inspecting Terry’s prize.

“What does it do?” Terry asked, excitedly.

“If you speak the command word, it grows into a dragon about the size of the guard who escorted us here for some number of hours, and it seems it works only a couple times per week,” the dwarf explained.

“Can it fly?!” Terry asked, completely forgetting to use his practiced voice.

“I think so,” Burin said.

“Can I keep it?” Terry asked all of us, making puppy dog eyes.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to be stealing people’s magical figurines,” Gregor teased him, using his own words from less than an hour before. Terry just stuck his tongue out at him.

We replaced the loose stone and carefully shut the door before heading to the next. This door was even larger than the last. It took Gregor a moment to open it. When he did, we were hit with a rush of cold air. Inside, in the mist, I could see broken tables and chairs heaped in a corner, and snow appeared to be piling up in the cracks where the walls met the floor.

Also, there was a massive, ten legged polar bear. And I mean massive. The thing had to have been fourteen or more feet tall, while still down on all of its legs! It regarded us for a moment, then let out a laugh. “FINALLY, YRAX UNDERSTANDS! AT LONG LAST HE SENDS ME A SACRIFICE!” Then he let out a roar and began to charge.

Author's Note:
Sorry for the tardiness on this. We missed a week because Gregor's player's boss is a turd and made him work Saturday afternoon and stupid early Sunday morning, meaning we had no way to schedule a game, since Terry's player was working morning/early afternoon like usual on Saturday, so neither of them had a chance to read it until last night.


The Thunder Rolls…:
Plastic would be pretty exotic for people that had never seen any and had no idea how cheaply it could be made . . . just like aluminum once was more expensive than gold (as you have alluded to elsewhere).


UnArcaneElection wrote:
** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:
That was the thought. Plus, I wanted Lyriana to try thinking like Kyle for a moment and see how it would work out for her. Of course, just because it worked out for her this time(thus far, anyway), there's no guarantee it's a good idea to try it too often.

On a side note, one of the players wanted to make the statue out of ice, because it would thus be ephemeral and thus more beautiful in its fleeting existence.

That lasted up until I pointed out that the entire enemy fortress was made of ice.


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Formatted Linky

…And the Lightning Strikes.:
At least, I thought the bear – a kokogiak, if I recall stories I’d heard while we were in Spurhorn correctly – was going to charge. Instead, he filled the room with fog as he roared. Terry squeaked in terror and shot into the fog as Burin charged in… which meant I was useless. I couldn’t cast a fireball in without hitting my companion, since I couldn’t see a damn thing.

Thanks, Burin.

Instead, I used magic to turn Nebbie into a massive formian queen – they’re a kind of invasive alien ant people, at least according to Daddy’s notes – so she could protect me if the bear came out while I heard the telltale sound of Gregor teleporting in and attacking. Meanwhile, I heard the bear talking in the language of water elementals, which I don’t speak. Burin does, so he responded and I heard the sound of fighting.

I cast a spell to increase her speed and sent in Nebula – there was no way the bear would get to me with her in between it and the door. And in the end, we were victorious. Once the fog cleared, we looked through the stuff lying around. It seemed that someone – probably Yrax – had given him a bunch of valuable trinkets, which the kokogiak had tossed aside in disdain.

Remember what I said earlier about “the strange offspring of a dragon and a weird subterranean creature I’d read about called a destrachan”? Well, it exists. And it attacked us while we were busy looting the kokogiak’s treasures – and skin, because Gregor just had to.

The creature unleashed its icy breath in an opening gambit, which killed Nebula. Well, at least temporarily, since I knew she’d manifest again just fine tomorrow. Still, I was pissed, so I hit him back with a fireball. And Terry blasted it with four rapid rounds, one of which went in through the eyeball and exploded out the back of the skull.

“M-M-Machine of death,” Terry said, his teeth chattering.

Gregor inspected the body. “Look at this,” he said, pointing to the massive hole in the creature’s skull. “Terry, you must be more careful. This skin is damaged now.” Terry rolled his eyes.

“Do you think anyone else heard us?” Burin asked.

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “We really need to silence that gun of yours,” I said to Terry.

“Probably, yeah,” Terry agreed.

“We should hurry and get moving in case someone did,” I said.

“I’ll be quick,” Gregor promised. “I have to leave all the skin from here to here anyway, since someone tore a hole in it.”

We moved quickly, reaching a massive swimming pool. It was too bad we didn’t have time, since I would have loved to take a dip. It had been forever since I’d last even seen a swimming pool. Don’t get me wrong, the hot springs were great, but a swim would have been a great workout. But Burin found magic in the water – apparently someone was keeping it ice cold but liquid – and Terry spotted something swimming in the water.

It looked like another creature I’d heard about in Spurhorn, an akhlut, though, had you asked me to name it, I’d probably have called it an orcawolf, since it looked like nothing more than it looked like a cross between a wolf and a killer whale.

Burin suggested we walk away, but whatever it was, Gregor desperately wanted its skin – to no one’s surprise – so he lured it out with some kokogiak meat and beat it to death – with some sarcasm-laden support from Terry, who killed it by throwing a grenade into its mouth. At least it actually ended up being quieter than the gunshots, I guess.

This was becoming too much of a pattern for us. We find a thing, kill the thing, and take its skin – and other valuables. At what point would we have crossed the line and gone from heroes or adventurers to some kind of creepy serial killers? I mean, Gregor already had a bunch of giant skins, though it’s not like we’d killed them to take their skins. So was that the point? When we killed humanoids just for their skins, would we have become monsters?

I don’t like to think about it, but these are the questions that keep me up at night.

We continued through the massive building until we came to another hallway with several doors on either side. On our right were a couple large doors, on the left was a set of smaller doors that seemed to have a place to put locks on the outside, though none currently had any. Cells for prisoners, if I had to guess.

“I’m gonna check the small doors first,” Terry whispered. He went to the first cell and opened it, peeking inside. “Clear!” he whisper-shouted, moving to the next. “Also clear!”

He got to the third and opened it, and I heard a voice from within. “Who are you, and what are you doing wandering the halls?” a woman’s voice asked in Triaxian – I had Gregor translate for me. Panicking, Terry did the only thing he could think to do. He shut the door. Burin walked over and opened it again. “You’re a strange looking creature,” she said to him. Again, Gregor translated.

“It’s a Triaxian,” Burin called over using the language of dragons. “Ask her who she’s allied with.”

The woman responded in the language of dragons. “I am allied with myself,” she said. “But, by custom and tradition, I am bound to serve and protect the lord of this place.”

“Sounds like you don’t want to be here,” Terry said. “If we release you, can you leave this place?”

“I am bound by custom and tradition to remain,” was all she answered.

“That’s unfortunate,” Burin said. “Say, do you know what a bear is?”

“I am unfamiliar with that word.”

“Oh. How about a kokogiak?”

“Yes. One is staying here now, in fact.”

“Was,” Gregor corrected, wisely using Taldan.

“Right. We’re looking for a pelt that looks like it came from a creature like a kokogiak, but with only four legs,” Burin said.

“Why do you wish to find this thing?”

“We need it to continue our search for Baba Yaga so she can prevent her daughter from plunging our world into eternal winter,” Burin answered. “It’s the key to continuing on her trail.”

“I see,” the woman answered, stepping out of the cell. “I may have seen something like that, and I’m willing to tell you for a price.”

“What is your price?” Burin asked.

“I have been very bored here. If one of you could entertain me with a sparring match, I will answer your question. If you best me, I will answer any other questions you may have.”

“Lyriana, would you like to fight her, since you’re both girls?” Burin asked.

“I doubt she’ll agree to let me use fireballs,” I answered. And based on the gear she was wearing, she was a hand to hand specialist.

“Correct,” the woman answered. “No magic. Unarmed combat. Meant to best, not to injure. Yield only when on the verge of collapse.”

“I will fight you,” Gregor said.

“I was hoping you would say that,” the woman answered. “You looked like the most interesting opponent.”

She led us to an arena of sorts. It wasn’t as big as I might have expected, considering the whole thing with it being for dragons. Maybe the size of half of a football field, with seating roughly equivalent to that of a basketball court.

They bowed to each other ritualistically, and she opened with a show of prowess, whirlwinding roundhouse kicks in rapid succession and whatnot. I was actually worried after seeing that, and I could see that it had spooked Gregor more than a bit. But he swallowed any fear and did a show of his own.

I’ll admit, I was impressed. It was more than just a few kicks and punches. It was like martial arts combined with break dancing. Like that one martial art Daddy thinks is cool. Capybara or something.

And then the fight was on. She charged in with a powerful kick, which Gregor blocked, but I could see that it had still hurt him. Gregor retaliated by going for a single punch knock-out. He did hit, but it wasn’t enough to bring her down.

So she reacted with fluid and flashy strikes, obviously meant to be used in spectacle combat. She was capitalizing on his nervousness, I think, to weaken his ability to defend himself. Gregor, on the other hand, unleashed a no-nonsense assault, weaving in kicks and punches in ways I’d never seen him use against our generally larger foes. He wasn’t fighting for an audience. Instead, he seemed to only see the opponent before him.

It was close, but in the end, it was the power of the nanites in Gregor’s blood that gave him the edge. His skin flared with those glowing lines as they activated, healing his wounds and making him stronger temporarily.

And in the end, he got his knockout, sending her collapsing to the floor and having to hold back the rest of his flurry. He then fell back on his bottom and laughed. “Good fight,” was all he said for a moment. Terry rushed over and used the nanite gun to heal and awaken the Triaxian woman.

“I have not been tested such in quite some time,” she said.

Gregor reached over and patted her head. “You… are very fluffy,” he responded. Oh. Right. The nanites caused temporary brain damage.

“Use setting two on him,” I called over to Terry.

“Already on it,” he responded.

After he was better, I went ahead and used my wand to fix up their remaining bruising and we got to questioning the woman. “The hide you seek is in Yrax’s treasure room,” she answered. “But I am only vaguely sure of where that is. You will need the help of the cook to find it, for the entrance is hidden. What is your next question?”

“How good is Yrax about taking care of his skin?” Gregor asked. Behind him, Terry facepalmed.

“What?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Terry said. Then he batted Gregor on the nose. “Down, boy.” He then turned back to the Triaxian. “What is your purpose in this place?”

“I am Cesseer of Ning. I am a Battleflower, chosen consort and bodyguard of Yrax. He brought me here with promises of honor and glory. Sadly, I have been relegated to little more than a trophy after I refused to fight a sickly prisoner for his amusement.”

“Okay,” Burin said. “How about torches? Do you fear them?”

“What?” she asked. This time, it was me doing the facepalming.

“The first Triaxian we met had an aversion to torches. I was just curious.”

“No, strange little man, I do not fear torches.”

Terry walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Listen, lady, as someone who has been the slave of a dragon before, trust me when I say that you’re better off leaving.”

“I cannot. I gave my word of honor that I would remain.”

“Some things are more important than honor,” Terry said.

“Perhaps for your people. But for mine, honor is everything. However, if he were to die, my honor would allow me to leave.”
Burin’s face lit up. “And because 0ne of us beat you, does that mean you wouldn’t have to interfere? Which means we can kill him!”

“Precisely. Seek out the cook. I will give you directions.”

We thanked Cesseer and headed back out into the hall. Before heading in the direction we’d been told would lead us to the cook, we headed back to a large door we passed and checked inside. Within the room, we found a number of corpses. Most were Triaxian, but there were a few dragonkin as well as creatures we didn’t recognize. There were research notes around, and it was clear that Yrax was trying to make a golem out of the various carrion.

His writing was an interesting look into his psyche. The phrase “delusions of grandeur” doesn’t even begin to describe him. He truly thought he was a god. He kept saying that he would conquer this world, and all others, using the great power within him.

I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising. From what Daddy tells me, most dragons are like this. Even the good ones tend to be a bit condescending, as though we “lesser races” are children they need to watch out for.

After we stole everything of value in the room, Burin piled all the corpses on the partially constructed golem, doused the whole thing in oil and lit it on fire. I said a quick prayer for the dead as we made our way out of the room and began the trip down the hall to find the kitchen.

As an aside, did they really need to make the fortress THAT big? I know it was made for dragons, but surely they could have cut that thing in half and still had more than enough rooms. One thing’s for sure, it was not made for human-sized women in high-heeled boots. It eventually got to the point where I stopped walking and just flew a few inches above the ground.

The kitchen was fairly large, but it had obviously been refitted with workspace for smaller creature. “What do you want?” said smaller creature – a nereid with green hair pulled back in numerous tiny braids – asked us.

“Cesseer said you had what we need,” Gregor answered.

“Well, in that case, come in and have a seat at the table. Stew’s done.”

We sat down and she served us each a bowl from the pot she had on the wood burning stove. Gregor was the first to take a bite. “The stew is…” he narrowly avoided choking on it, “…good?”

Burin took a bite and made a face, but said nothing and kept eating. Terry tasted it. “I… like… what you’re doing with this. I’ve never had anything that tasted like this.” It was an obvious lie, it was clear on his face that he hated it.

“Oh come on,” I said, seeing it was clear that the nereid didn’t buy either lie. “Surely it can’t be that bad.” I took a big spoonful and popped it into my mouth… and promptly spit it back out. “Okay,” I said. “It really is that bad.” I smiled apologetically at the nereid.

She laughed vivaciously. “No, you’re right. It’s all I have to work with. Yrax barely likes his food dead, much less cooked or seasoned. Iantor can’t talk, so he just eats whatever I put in front of him. And Cesseer, well, she prefers her food bland, unseasoned and functional, so I haven’t had a real challenge in ages. Nor, for that matter, do they give me quality ingredients. So, that out of the way, my name’s Viveka. What really brings you here?”

“We’re looking for a bearskin,” Burin said, still eating the stew.

“Before you ask, like this, but with fewer legs and probably brown or black,” Gregor said, holding up the kokogiak’s hide.

Viveka laughed. “Someone finally killed him? Yrax is going to be furious.”

“It is not hard to kill a giant bear when you have the right bait,” Gregor said, glancing at Burin.

“That only begins to scratch the surface of why he’ll probably be pissed at us,” I said, changing the subject.

“Yeah,” Terry agreed. “We also killed a dragon with a messed up face and stolen everything we’ve found that wasn’t nailed down.”

“A dragon with a messed up face?” Viveka asked. Then it dawned on her. “You killed Iantor?!” She began laughing again.

“Who is Iantor?” Burin asked.

“Yrax’s son.”

“Oh, then I should not show Yrax what is in my bag,” Gregor said.

“You took his skin?!” Viveka said, laughing again.

“I am hoping to put Yrax in there with him, if it helps. So, where may we find the skin we seek?”

“I’m not entirely certain, but if it’s valuable it will be in his treasure room, which is behind the room he uses as a combination of a nest and throne room. But getting to it is the tricky part. You have to know the way, and how to open the secret door. Just be careful. He doesn’t allow anyone in there, and will certainly attack you on sight.”

“Good,” Gregor said, cracking his knuckles.

“How do you know where it is, if he doesn’t let anyone go there?” Terry asked.

“My shawl is in there,” Viveka answered, suddenly serious.

“Your shawl?” Burin asked, concern on his face completely obliterated as he bit into something that was apparently bitter.

“Yes. It was stolen from me a couple centuries ago by a fisherman, who gave it to his dragon lord. Said dragon used it to enslave me and force me to become his cook. Yrax eventually heard about me and purchased my shawl – and me, by extension – from the other dragon. And thus I’ve been here, bored, ever since. Say, now that I’m thinking about it, do you think you could retrieve my shawl for me while you’re in the treasure room? I’ll make it worth your while.”

“We’ll keep an eye out for it,” Gregor agreed.

“Oh, and if you hear an explosion,” Terry said, “you should go to Cesseer. She should be able to keep you safe until we can get back to you.”

“An explosion?” Viveka asked. “Oh dear.”

“You will hear it, right?” Terry asked. “Did you hear the gunshots earlier?”

“Yes,” Viveka confirmed. “But those weren’t any of my concern.”

“Cool,” Terry said.

Back in the hallway, Terry activated his ioun stone again, changing appearance to look like Cesseer. “That way no one will question us if they see us,” he said. It was a good idea. I should have thought of it earlier.

We followed Viveka’s directions and made our way to the audience chamber. Along the way, we killed more golems – fossil golems, to be exact – and in the chamber, we destroyed some glass golems. Then we opened the secret door and headed down the tunnel, where we encountered and fought an elder ice elemental.

Should I be worried that I’m writing about combat like someone might write about going to the store and picking up groceries? Because I’m not, but part of me IS worried that I’m not worried.

Anyway, we finally reached the door to the chamber, spotting the tracks from the cart we had the statue on. They led into the room. Terry tried to quietly open it, but was immediately spotted. He let out a yelp, then quickly stepped inside and shut the door behind him. “Master!” I heard him say through the door. “Someone has slain the kokogiak!”

Yrax responded by letting out a roar.

“Shit,” came Terry’s voice from the other side of the door.

A pallor spread across Burin’s face. “We have to go in! NOW!”

Before I could ask what was wrong, Gregor interrupted. “Do it!” the fighter said.

I pulled out my phone and set off the bomb, and we began the fight. First there was the explosion, then Terry began shooting. Gregor and Burin ran inside the room. And I followed just behind, unleashing my most powerful fireball – three orders of magnitude greater than a normal fireball, for the record.

And that was it. The dragon was dead. “That was anti-climactic,” I said, tempting fate.

“It’s not over,” Burin answered. But again, before I could ask for clarification, I was interrupted.

Red lightning crackled from the corpse, slamming into Burin. Then, moments later, there was an explosion that knocked us all from our feet – all of us aside from Burin, who remained standing at the epicenter.

Next to Burin was a nine foot tall being. Above his head was a halo made of spinning blades made of some strange black metal, and in his left hand, he held a shield made of the same strange metal. On his back were eight wings, alternating in feather color between black and blood red. And black and red lightning crackled through the air all around him.

It was hard to see, but there was also a faint silver cord between him and Burin, an astral tether binding him to Burin’s very soul. At long last, we were seeing the true form of Amgorath, the demon within Burin, only, well… it wasn’t a demon!

“That’s an Angel of Wrath!” I shouted as I got to my feet. They were the kind of angels sent by deities who had to punish something. It was rumored that both Iomedae’s herald and Ragathiel had been Angels of Wrath before moving on to greater things.

“But I thought it was supposed to be a demon!” Terry answered, standing as well.

“He looks strong!” Gregor shouted with a snarling grin, standing and turning into a frost giant.

“Whatever he is, we can’t let him escape!” Burin roared, charging.

Amgorath reached up into his halo and drew forth a wicked looking spiked longsword. He bared his fanged teeth in a snarl as he met Burin’s charge. As the two clashed, Burin began glowing with blue and white energy, while his foe continued to spark blood red and black.

Terry fired a volley of flame and Gregor teleported behind Amgorath, who completely ignored and shrugged off the fighter’s massive blows. Burin kept casting, trying his best to slow his foe’s movement, and I did what I could to support, unleashing a volley of spiked balls of force at Amgorath, trying to knock him down.

Amgorath laughed. “PITIFUL MORTALS!” it roared, its voice reverberating through the chamber. With a wave of his hand, a wall of spinning blades appeared around him. Burin and Gregor chose to continue fighting within the wall, and just hope that their armor and strength would allow them to continue fighting.

Terry and I, on the other hand, couldn’t get a clear line to attack from, so we both took to the air, Terry finally finding a use for that magical dragon figurine we’d found. Terry scored a few more hits, but I wasn’t able to score with my channeled ray of cosmic radiation.

Gregor stumbled back out of the spinning blades, but it was clear Burin wasn’t leaving until we pulled him out. And maybe he was right to keep fighting, as that kind of angel is rumored to have massive regenerative ability.

“I’ve got you!” Terry shouted, diving down and drawing the nanite gun to support Burin.

Then Amgorath spoke an eldritch word, and Burin locked up, dropping his axe. I swooped down and pulled him back out of the blades. “Heal him quickly, and it should remove the affliction!” I said. And if not, at least Burin would be ready to keep fighting.

Gregor made his way around as Terry and I used the nanite gun and a wand to try to heal Burin as quickly as possible. Terry spotted Gregor’s wounds and moved to assist, leaving me to tend to Burin as much as I could.

Meanwhile, Amgorath laughed as he cast several light healing spells to augment his supernatural regeneration. “I WILL BE FREE!” he roared.

“Death is freedom!” Gregor shouted back, dropping the spent nanite gun Terry had handed him before taking to the air once more.

“Look!” Terry said from above. “Burin’s axe!”

He was right. Burin’s axe no longer glowed a faint blue. It was absolutely incandescent. Burin broke free from the spell and began sprinting. “I’m going in!” he shouted as he dove into the wall and scooped up his axe.

He swung with all of his might, and there was a brief moment of absolute silence. Then there was a muted explosion as energy burst through the room. After it dissipated, the wall of blades was gone, and there was Burin, standing next to a reeling Amgorath.

“Now’s our chance!” Gregor roared, charging forward and uppercutting the angel into the sky at Terry.

“You messed with the wrong people, a*%$$*%!” Terry shouted, making the platinum dragon do a flip and slam the angel into the ground with a massive tail smash.

Burin rushed towards the falling angel. “You will threaten the world no longer!” As the angel bounced, Burin cast his spell again, petrifying the angel. Which was impossible. They are absolutely immune to it. But Burin did it anyway. And the angel froze into a fossil.

But I could still see it twitching. It wasn’t over. Deep inside me, the thunderstorm roared. Now was not the time to resist its power, only give it focus. So I did. I channeled the raging storm and using its fury, cast a spell that I hadn’t prepared today.

“Goodbye,” I said. A beam shot forth from my fingertips. It hit Amgorath and began dissolving the bonds between the molecules that made him. And he broke apart into dust. Amgorath, the terrible demon who had plagued Burin’s family for generations was no more.

And then there was silence.

Notes:
So, interesting things. First of all, Yrax dropped like a ton of bricks. He managed to cast one spell before dying. Amgorath was one hell of a slog, probably the first fight we've had that went almost 10 rounds.

Partially, that was because he failed a concentration check using his Blade Barrier(NAT 1 FTL). But, the players weren't satisfied with that. After Yrax's quick death, they decided they wanted him to succeed on whatever spell I had him casting, so I gave the two melees AoOs with it in fairness. He then Power Word Stunned Burin, which led to Burin nearly hitting 0 HP again.

We ended up spending like 5 rounds healing up(I still has a CSW wand we'd found somewhere and Terry had 4 additional nanite gun charges, plus a few random potions between us.

Burin's player had a ton of fun cackling wildly every round as Amgorath healed. And I smirked to myself as I knew Amgorath was still like 50HP below zero at that point.

If you're interested, I have an earlier version of Amgorath right here. I buffed him a bit since then, but it gives you an idea.


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Also, an apology for our ADD, but another campaign is coming. Terry's player finally feels ready to GM a full campaign, so we'll be doing Giantslayer starting up around the time we finish book 1 of Carrion Crown.

Doing a 6 man party(2 for each player). I'm playing a Spellslinger>Bonded Witch almost entirely because I wanted to make a character that looked like the image from the book where the Spellslinger archetype was released, and a quarter-orc skald(my character from this same GM's fun little one shots "Adventurer's Guild/PFS" "campaign".

Gregor's player is also playing on of his characters from said campaign, a Grippli synthesist summoner named Kermit who we call "the guyver". He even does the Kermit the Frog voice when playing him. Instead of a bag of handwaving, he has a guy dressed in a pelican suit named Glenn, who carries his things. I'll see if I can get him to do an in character explanation about Glenn on his Youtube channel, where he most posts Dark Souls videos to show his coworkers. His other character is a character from our long ago dead Serpent's Skull campaign, a full caster dragon disciple whose twin brother(a martial dragon disciple) once tried to sell to demons for power.

Burin's player has one pretty normal character, a healing and archery cleric, possibly Erastil worshipping, or maybe some Empyreal Lord. His other character... well, you ever see that anime with the horse girls? Because she's one of those. He's taking Fleet at almost every feat and planning on doing run by attacks with a naginata and vital strike. God help us.


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I'll confess to curiosity of what you all do with Giantslayer, which has turned out to be surprisingly engaging from the 2 PbPs I have been following (unfortunately 1 defunct at a fairly early stage) . . . and what Gregor's player sounds like imitating Kermit the Frog -- let me know when (if) the video posts.


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Formatted Linky

After the Storm:
Terry flew down and landed his platinum dragon next to Burin, who had sat down on the floor. “Good job, Zeus,” Terry said, patting the dragon on the neck before speaking the command word and shrinking it back down and stuffing it in his pocket. He then walked over to Burin. “So, are you cured? Any more shadow demons or whatever?”

“I don’t know,” Burin said, blinking. “I feel… I feel dizzy.”

I walked over and patted him on the shoulder. “Take a few minutes. We have time. We’re gonna have to wait for Gregor to skin Yrax anyway.”

While Burin rested, I pulled out my phone and took a few pictures of everything. I was excited to tell Momma about how we had slain a tyrannical dragon warlord, and I knew she’d want pictures. I even took a victory pose selfie next to Yrax’s scorched head.

I was planning on sending that one to Becky the second I got home. That’d show her.

Once Gregor was done, he helped Burin to his feet and we broke open the door to the vault, which was no easy task. First, Gregor punched the door repeatedly for five minutes. Then it occurred to me that I could just access that weird new power in me and open the door with magic. The lock was too complex even for that. So Gregor went back to hitting it. It was only after two minutes more that Burin recalled that he had magic gloves that could rust the lock out in seconds.

Wish he’d thought of it earlier. Would have saved us almost ten minutes.

Inside the vault was an immense pile of wealth. I mean, the pile was at least ten feet across, and taller than Burin in some places. And that was just the coins, bars and gems. There was another pile about half as tall and not nearly as wide, made of valuable hides, which Gregor immediately started to gather. “Make sure to separate out the bearskin,” I told the fighter.

“Uh huh,” was all he replied.

“Set up the box,” Terry said, his eyes gleaming at all that lucre. “Burin, get your shovel.”

Burin seemed thankful for the mindless work as he fed shovel after shovel into the top of Cortana. While he did that, I looked around and found several magic items, none of which were any use to us, so I tossed them into the box as well. I felt a little bad about throwing the beautiful stargazing equipment in as well, but truth be told, they were pretty weak by Earth standards, and if I asked nicely, I’m sure my parents would build me an observatory – in orbit – so it’s not like I really needed them. But they were pretty.

There was one object that puzzled me. It was a piece of rock about a foot and a half in diameter sitting on a velvet covered pedestal. I tried to pick it up, but the damn thing was HEAVY. So Gregor walked over and tried to pick it up, and got it a few inches up before dropping it back on the pedestal.

“What is this?” Gregor asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Maybe try breaking a piece off and feeding it to the box?” Terry asked. He had a point. Cortana would have no trouble analyzing it. But breaking a piece off was easier said than done. Terry broke his favorite knife doing so. We ended up having to print a small adamantine spike to make even a dent, and with good reason.

The rock contained adamantine. LOTS of it. So Gregor set to work using the spike to break it into chunks we could lift, and we fed almost the entire thing into Cortana. All in all, the meteor alone had been worth over fourteen thousand gold pieces. With the other treasures? We’d made something like twenty thousand each, and that was counting a split into a fifth pile to make the more powerful nanite gun we were going to need as part of my plot to revive Emily.

Once we’d gathered what was reasonable – there were still some coins lying around, but we’d reached the point of fatigue where we just had to leave them, since there couldn’t be more than a couple hundred gold left in what was essentially mostly copper coins – we headed back to meet up with Cesseer and Viveka. We returned Viveka’s shawl to her and she rewarded us with a magical decanter she took from the kitchen, then I tapped into the pool of power within again, casting a spell to teleport all of us to the hut’s doorstep.

From our vantage point, we could see that the fortress was in a state of pure chaos. “He was using the demon’s power to control everyone,” Burin said. “Now, with their free wills back, they don’t know what to do.”

“They’ll figure it out,” Terry said. “Come on, Bescaylie’s waiting.” We’d agreed to ask Bescaylie if they could arrange travel for Cesseer and Viveka, and we’d promised to let our allies know what happened, so we’d promised to meet up a dozen or so miles further out from where we’d set down the hut.

We drove the hut to the meeting place and ended up deciding to remain overnight so Bescaylie and the others could have a warm place to rest inside the hut’s inner gardens. Terry took advantage of the time to fly around in the magical fields on the back of Zeus – well, okay, that’s not exactly how it’s spelled, and he obviously didn’t mean the Greek god, but that’s the closest to the spelling in the translation. Knowing we’d be travelling for days if the past was any indication, he knew the statuette would have time to recharge.

Gregor and Cesseer spent hours training together. He taught her his techniques and learned many of hers in turn. Then, after dinner, he showed off his fur and skins collection to everyone. It’s not television, but it was something to watch, I guess. Greta was impressed, and I was more than happy to sit with her while she enjoyed herself.

When we went to bed, Greta had something of her own to reveal. In her boredom, she’d discovered something with the magic item she’d gotten from the rangers. Turns out that Daddy had, probably without even considering it, given the magical pendant she wore the ability to choose between both sexes during transformation.

Greta is HOT as a guy. The one armed thing really works for her as a him. Too bad she was still too injured to throw me down on the bed and screw my brains out. I mean, we still had sex, of course, but it was much more lovingly gentle and less primal. Either way, I really needed that. Also, I’m pretty sure from the pillow talk after that she was hoping to get me pregnant. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I was on birth control.

At breakfast, Terry asked me and Greta for advice on a gift for Emily. It was adorable just how excited he was at the prospect that she would be back soon. Speaking of which, we really needed to start looking for a corpse to use for his body. I was really hoping the next world we visited would have humans, or at least elves. I was sure we’d probably end up fighting some kind of bad guy, and if one of them left a nice corpse that wouldn’t require too much effort to sculpt into Terry’s likeness, that would be great.

And I give Gregor crap about his skinning. I guess it’s fine as long was weren’t killing some guy just for his corpse.

I discussed options with Terry while Greta wolfed down – heh – her breakfast, and he settled on a cute floral sundress, a silk ribbon for her hair, and a pizzicato with four extra clips. Greta really approved of that last one.

When it was time to set out, we found Burin meditating in the garden. He had apparently been there all night. “Still trying to work through things?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s strange not having the demon. I couldn’t even fall asleep last night, even after trying to wear myself out by digging some holes in the garden.” Hopefully Baba Yaga wouldn’t be too upset about that.

“Well, that’s probably fine. You’ll have days to rest anyway.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“I’m gonna walk Bescaylie and the others out,” I told him. I didn’t want the hut to forget and attack them. “Want to come along?”

“I’ll be okay,” he said. “My leg fell asleep and it’s gonna be twenty minutes before I can really walk again anyway.”

I giggled. “Well, call if you need anything.”

I wished our guests well on their travels, returned to the hut, and we unceremoniously dumped the fur and Barnaby Two into the cauldron. I could feel the ground lurch beneath my feet, and we began the process of the planar shifting from point to point to reach our destination.

Only, something felt different about this one. I don’t know. Maybe where we were going was further away? Or maybe it was actually on another plane of existence? I couldn’t be sure, and it wasn’t like I could do anything about it either way. We’d find out when we got there.

A couple nights later, after I fell asleep with my head on Greta’s chest, I found myself in the Dreamlands once more. At first I thought it was because I had read that book Terry had found, but that was clearly not it, as I found Burin not long after.

“What’s going on?” I asked, watching the strange scenes unfolding before us.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I think these are the demon’s memories. No, I shouldn’t say that. It was an angel once. I think it wanted us to know what happened.”

We watched as the angel of wrath was commanded to slay an evil dragon tyrant by some faceless deity. He traveled to Golarion, where he faced the dragon, but he was bested. The dragon, rather than killing him, captured him, and tortured him. Then he used a strange ritual to trap the angel’s entire being within a magic gem.

The gem was then bathed daily in the dragon’s blood for fifty years. Then the dragon implanted the gem within himself like the ancient Thassilonians had implanted ioun stones. For ten years, more and more of the angel’s essence began to comingle with the dragon’s soul, until it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. And in time, the souls truly became one and the same, the angel driven mad by its ordeal.

It became more than the sum of its parts, a single being that was similar to a demon, but was so much more. We got a glimpse of its power, and had we let it escape, the devastation it would have wrought. We’d known that what Burin’s ancestor had done was amazing, but we had no idea just how amazing it was. And the sacrifice they’d endured… “Worth it?” I asked Burin.

A glowing nimbus, the memory of the angel before its corruption, appeared before us. “Thank you,” it said to Burin, before disappearing.

“Worth it,” Burin said. “Let’s just hope the same can be said of saving Baba Yaga.” He laughed. “I hope those weird dreams of glaciers are over now. I was starting to hear the sound of ice cracking even when I was awake.”

That sounded familiar. “Even while awake?” I asked.

“Yeah, I heard it really loud when we were fighting the demon. Right at the point when I picked my axe back up. What’s really weird is that something seems different about my axe now. It has grown stronger, I think. But more than that, it’s like it’s truly a part of me now.”

Now I was curious. Had the others been hearing things too? “I heard rolling thunder,” I said. “Do you think the others heard anything too?”

He shrugged. “Hadn’t considered it. I’m not too worried about it.”

“Well, I’m going to see if I can find their dreams. Want to come?”

“No, I think I’m going to meditate.”

“While inside a dream?” I asked.

“Why not?” Burin said with a shrug.

I left the dwarf there and headed out, focusing on finding Gregor’s dream first. I eventually found him, training. There was a drum beat, picking up in tempo as he moved faster and reverberating louder as his blows became stronger. “The man who would not die will find me a much different foe than he did last time,” he said to me as I landed.

“I can tell,” I said. “Say, did you happen to hear anything while we were fighting the demon? Something out of place?”

He tapped his chest. “I did not hear. I felt something, in here as I knocked him into the air. The beat of drums. I know what it is you are thinking, it was not my heart. I did not feel them within my body. Instead, they were within my spirit.”

“I see,” I said. “Thanks Gregor. Enjoy your training.”

“I always enjoy my training,” he answered as the drum beats began again. “Would you like to join me?”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“One hundred push-ups. One hundred sit-ups. Then I run to the tree over there and back ten times,” he said, pointing at a tree maybe five football fields away.

“No, I think I’m good,” I said. “Have fun.”

Terry’s dream was strange. It was the ruined farmhouse I’d seen before, but Terry was nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was some kind of clockwork version of Terry, leaning against a wall. It was carefully protecting a small flower.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“This is what is left. The only thing that remains,” the automaton answered. “I must protect it.”

“I see,” I said.

The construct turned, looking at the horizon. “It’s coming again,” it said. Its gears began whirring to life as it took careful aim, firing at the approaching dragon and scaring it off. “I will kill it eventually,” it said, returning to sheltering the flower.

“Do you remember fighting Burin’s demon?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you hear anything while we were fighting it? Anything out of the ordinary?”

“Out of the ordinary?” it asked. Then it shook its head. “No, I only heard gears, which is not all that strange for a machine.”

I returned to my own dreams, and in the morning, finally got out of bed, now convinced that I wasn’t the only one who had awakened some new form of power. Not that I could talk about it with anyone, since none of them remembered seeing me in their dreams. But it was interesting to note.

During breakfast, the world lurched again, indicating that we had made it to our destination. “Go ahead,” Greta said to me. “I would only slow you down, and you need to hurry and get Baba Yaga back where she belongs, for the good of my people and everyone in Irrisen.”

I leaned down and kissed her forehead, then ran off to get my things. Hopefully this would be the last stop. Hopefully we would finally rescue Baba Yaga and be done with it.

I was really starting to miss home.

Notes:
I had to put my foot down and say no to looting literally everything. I still let the party get away with most of it. Worst case scenario, if I get the feeling the WBL has gotten out of whack, I'll cut back a little during the next book.

No mentioning anything specific about the next book until the party has made it into the village please, as at least one player reads here and I'd rather keep what's coming a surprise right up until it hits. XD


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Prep work for Giantslayer well underway, btw. Character backstory(also serves as chapter 0) almost entirely done, just waiting for more info on the Cleric so I can incorporate him. Shotgunned out as much as I could using the player handout in making the character from the village in hopes of giving the GM something cool to work with.

Kermit voice video is a go, but he wants to draw some backgrounds for the vid, and then needs to sit down with the other player to record, where you'll also either get to hear the goofy glory that is Burin or the voice of Heimish. So it could be a bit. I'm hoping it'll be ready around the time we finish book 1 of CC and work GS into the rotation.


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After the Storm:
Since you asked for no mentioning anything specific about the next book -- I'll just make a comment about the end of the last Spoiler section: Be careful what you wish for . . . .


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Formatted(but with several spelling/grammar errors) Linky

Homecoming:
We stepped through the door and found ourselves immediately within the cauldron room, which had been a key feature of every incarnation of the hut we’d seen thus far. This one was a bit horrifying. It was filled floor to ceiling with bird cages, most of them containing mummified remains of domovoi, those strange little creatures like Hatch, who as far as we knew was still back with Nadya and her kids.

A few domovoi were still living, but they looked emaciated and even perhaps a bit desiccated. It turned my stomach to see what Baba Yaga had done to them. There was no way they’d gotten like this because she’d been gone for a few weeks or so. She’d left them like this on purpose, likely to punish them. But for what?

“It looks like you’re not the only one who is bad at feeding your pets,” Terry said to Gregor.

The fighter looked offended. “Hey, I fed Barnaby.”

I didn’t care what the poor things had done to warrant this, and neither did the others. We immediately began trying to free the small, bearded men. But the rescued creatures didn’t seem to even notice our efforts. It was as if they’d completely given up on life. Even when Terry tried force feeding one, it barely even registered the action.

“Here, let me do it,” Gregor said, pushing Terry aside. “You’re doing it wrong.” He then considered it. “Do you have any cake?”

“No, just what’s left of that nasty stew from the dragon fortress.”

One of the domovoi raised its head and muttered in Russian, “Many huts for many tales, but all begin here. Vasilisa and her little doll. Hungry children and a house of gingerbread. Little Otik. The forsaken son, come to claim his birthright.” Then the domovoi lowered its head once more.

“I have no idea what he’s talking about,” Burin said.

“Something about gingerbread,” Gregor replied.

“I caught that too. But who would build a house of gingerbread?” Burin asked. “That sounds like a weird thing to build a home out of. Wouldn’t be very structurally sound.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” I said. “It was a lure for naughty children so the witch could fatten them up and eat them. It’s an old folk tale.” I thought for a moment. “In fact, I recognize references to a couple old folk stories in what he said,” I said. “But I’m not sure what the rest is.”

“I’ve heard that story too,” Gregor said. “What are the others about?”

“The one I recall well is about a girl, Vasilisa, who was given a magic doll by her dying mother. When her father remarried, her stepmother was very cruel and refused to allow the girl to marry as it was not proper for the younger to marry before the older, and the woman’s two daughters were repugnant.

“One day her father had to embark on a journey. His wife sold the house and moved them all to a gloomy hut by the forest. One day she gave each of the girls a task and put out all the fires except a single candle. Her older daughter then put out the candle, whereupon they sent Vasilisa to fetch light from Baba Yaga's hut. The doll advised her to go, and she went.

“Baba Yaga told the girl that she must perform several tasks, something about separating poppy seeds from dirt and grains of corn that had spoiled from those that hadn’t, if I recall correctly. Also, basic cooking and cleaning or something. The girl despaired at being unable to do the work, and Baba Yaga had promised to kill her if she failed.

“But the magic doll could accomplish what no mere person could, so she did the work. When Baba Yaga returned, she discovered that the work was done and could find no fault with it, so she gave the girl a lantern made of a skull and filled it with witch’s flames. Vasilisa took the lantern home, discovering that the stepmother and stepsisters were unable to light even a single candle while she was gone. Even fires brought in from outside would go out as soon as they were brought into the home.

“When Vasilisa entered the home, the fires leapt from the lantern and burned her wicked stepsisters and stepmother to ashes. Then she buried the skull, as Baba Yaga had instructed, and returned to the city, where she became the assistant to a clothmaker and ended up marrying the tsar, or something like that.”

“It’s too bad we don’t have some of that gingerbread,” Terry said, obviously a little freaked out by the words ‘magic doll’ and trying desperately to forget I’d even said them. “I’d bet anything these little guys would eat if we had something like that.”

“What’s a tsar?” Burin asked.

“Like a king, or an emperor. Tsars used to rule Russia until revolutionaries killed the tsar and his family over a hundred years ago.”

“So, should we try anything else for these guys?” Terry asked, indicating the domovoi.

“I’m not sure there’s much we can do,” Burin said, regret in his voice.

“Just leave the cages open, and some food,” Gregor said. “If they are to survive, they must want it and make that choice for themselves.”

I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t really argue with his logic. We’d tried everything we could, and we had work to do. “There’s a passageway through the fireplace,” Terry said, not waiting for us to acknowledge him. He just immediately began heading through. Gregor looked at me and rolled his eyes, then followed behind him.

Burin and I followed behind. From up ahead, I heard something shout in Russian, but I couldn’t quite make out what it had said. Then Terry said something, and Gregor responded. “He wants you to feed him,” Gregor said.

“You’re better at feeding things,” Terry said. “You do it.”

“Alright,” Gregor said. He picked up Terry and held him out before jokingly shouting in Russian, “How do you like your little girl seasoned?”

As I entered the room, I could see vines and underbrush everywhere. A voice called out from the brush, but I couldn’t see the source since I was still squatting to make my way through the fireplace. “OOH! My siblings gave me a lovely fat goat, but this is better!” I could hear something big begin moving through the brush.”

“What did he say?” Terry asked, panic in his voice.

“He thinks you’re a goat,” Gregor answered.

“Oh, heck no,” Terry said, leveling his gun and firing at the charging creature. Just as I stood, I witnessed as a massive, corpulent mandragora struck Terry. “Hey! Why didn’t you move me?!” he whined, but then he didn’t look so hot. I suddenly recalled that mandragoras had a poison, and if Terry had been inflicted, that couldn’t be good.

“Sorry,” Gregor said, pushing Terry behind him and kicking the plant several times. I unleashed a fireball, scorching the entire room aside from where my friends and I were standing.

“See! She has the right idea!” Terry shouted with a maniacal titter. “VIOLENCE SOLVES EVERYTHING!”

A few moments later, the mandragora was dead, but Terry wasn’t done. He looked incredibly confused, and fired wildly at Gregor. Gregor deflected one of the bullets – don’t ask me how he does that, he just does sometimes, but he does. He was struck several glancing blows by wildly flying bullets.

“VIOLENCE!” Terry shouted, giggling like a maniac. “MORE VIOLENCE!”

Still bleeding, Gregor, quickly disarmed Terry and Burin quickly moved to restrain him. I wasn’t that great at physical action, but I had a trick up my sleeve. I quickly cast a spell and Nebbie grew into a dragon with glistening black scales whose wings shone with the light of a starry sky. She quickly snatched Terry’s guitar case away. I knew he had some grenades in there, and we didn’t want to risk that he’d get one out.

Gregor pulled the nanite gun from his pack – he’d kept it after the fight with Burin’s demon, and we’d made a stronger one for Terry to use – and injected Terry. The effect was immediate, and the wild look in Terry’s eyes began fading.

Terry looked up at Nebula. “Why is Typhon’s mom here?” He then turned to Burin. “And why are you hugging me?”

“You were poisoned, I think,” Burin said. “You shot Gregor.”

“Oh,” Terry said, looking crestfallen.

“Just a little,” Gregor said. “I’ll be fine.”

After Burin released him, Terry took a look at the wound. “It’s definitely not going to kill you, but let’s tend to it anyway.” He took his case from Nebula and then injected Gregor with the more powerful nanite gun. “There,” he said as the wounds began closing. “Good as new.”

Burin turned to me. “So, how did you know they were there?” he asked, pointing out into the smoldering brush.

“How did I know what was where?” I asked.

“Oh. I see,” he said, leaving me a bit confused.

Through the undergrowth, we found a wardrobe that opened up into another room. For some reason, that sounded familiar, but I couldn’t recall which of the stories about Baba Yaga involved a wardrobe in the wilderness. Not that it mattered, but it was annoying to feel like you know something but can’t quite remember. Oh well.

The next version of the hut was pretty dark, with only the light from a single candle. As we went inside, that subdued light filled the room with numerous long and sinister looking shadows. Burin seemed nervous for some reason, and immediately began trying to detect magic in the room. “There’s definitely something here,” he said.

Gregor walked over to investigate the candle while Terry and I made our ways into the room. “I think there’s treasure here,” Terry said, rooting through a chest.

“There’s magic coming from the candle,” Burin said as Gregor picked it up.

I was nervous, so I activated my internal store of power and cast a more powerful magic detection divination. “The magic on the candle… that’s a Gate spell!”

“What does that mean?” Terry asked, but was interrupted as Burin spoke.

“Gregor?” the dwarf asked. “Where’s your shadow?”

Gregor looked over to where it should be. “I’ve been working out.”

“It’s over there!” Terry said, shooting at the terrifying looking shadow that was nowhere near where it should have been. The shadow fled through the fireplace.

“I think it’s a shadow demon!” Burin said drawing his axe.

“Hey, Terry, you’ve been working out too!” Gregor said.

Terry looked at the wall. “Dammit! That bastard took my shadow too!”

“Lyriana!” Burin said. “They don’t like light!” With a hard swing, he destroyed the magical candle.

I grinned. “On it!” I once more called on my inner power and cast a spell, this time imbuing my ring with exceedingly bright light. I held up my ring, illuminating the entire inside of the room as though we were out in the brightness of day.

There were two shadows on the wall, one each for Burin and Terry. The shadows were writhing in agony in the bright light, making them easy targets for the others. “We should go after Gregor’s shadow!” Terry said, rushing off into the fireplace.

The rest of us followed after him and soon found ourselves in a room filled with coffins and a stout door. Seated behind a coffin was a thanadaemon, guarding the door. In his hand was a scythe, and he had cards set up before him on a coffin.

“Did you see a shadow come through here?” Terry asked.

“I did,” the thanadaemon responded, speaking directly into our minds, “but I didn’t see any reason to stop it.”

“How long have you been here?” Terry asked. “It’s pretty dusty.”

“Longer than you’ve been alive, child,” the daemon answered.

He was being cagey, so I thought maybe I could convince him to be more forthcoming. “Excuse me,” I said, making dozens of little changes in body language and flashing my most winsome and girlish smile. If he was like any normal man, acting like this would have him eating out of my hand in minutes. “We are terribly sorry for bothering you, but we’re trying to save Baba Yaga. If there’s any information you can give us about where we are, we’d appreciate it greatly.”

The daemon’s posture changed, becoming more open and he laughed, a dusty sound that filled the room. “Why, of course, little lady. You see, I’m not sure where you’re from, but we’ve come to the place of Baba Yaga’s birth.”

“What?!” I gasped, forgetting everything I was doing. “We’re really on Baba Yaga’s home world?”

“I swear it,” the daemon said.

“Please,” I begged. “I have to go outside.”

He shifted his chair, clearing the way to the door. “Be my guest.”

“Thank you,” I said, rushing out the door. As I went outside, I heard him telling the others that he had some treasures that might help us save Baba Yaga.
It was nighttime outside and we were in a clearing inside a forest, so I had a clear view of the stars. I looked up into the sky and gasped. “What is it?” Nebula asked.

“That’s Cygnus,” I said. “And there’s Draco. And Lyra.” I turned to my companion. “Nebbie, this is Earth! I’m home!” The cat – well, still a dragon – nuzzled me affectionately.

I pulled out my phone and told Cortana to call Daddy. “Error. Unable to communicate with satellite.”

“Try another!” I said.

“All satellites unreachable,” the VI said. What? Had the aliens destroyed all of our satellites already?

“What are our options?” I asked. Then I thought. “Could the box boost signal enough to contact anyone? Or even at least try to scan for incoming signals?”

“Chances of success low.”

Well, they weren’t zero. I pulled out the box and set it up. “Scan for signals. And use the stars to estimate our location.”

“Working.” A few seconds later, a klaxon sounded. “Alert. Anomaly detected. Stars not in locations expected for date. Analyzing planetary locations and extrapolating temporal location.” What? Temporal location? What did she mean by that? “Temporal location confirmed. Running program Alpha Six. Stand by.”

“Alpha six? What’s that?” I asked.

Then time froze. I knew that it had because the light breeze stopped abruptly, with a leaf just stuck in the air a few feet from me. The box shifted itself, opening a hidden chamber as a hologram appeared before me.

“Daddy?” I said.

“Hey there, Pumpkin,” his voice said as he smiled at me. “If you’re seeing this, then I was right, and you have somehow managed to find yourself back on Earth, but at a time over a hundred years ago. I don’t know the year exactly, but if I had to guess, you’re at some point in the final year of World War One.

“As to how you got there, I have no idea. How I figured you would get there, though? That I can answer. Please step over to the box. Inside, you will find a book. I know you got there because you will take this book with you and lose it, though where isn’t all that important. It’ll be found no matter where you leave it, as long as it’s near where people are. Then, many years in the future, I will encounter this book again and the advice contained within will save my life.”

I walked over and picked up the book. It was a copy of Daddy’s journal from his adventures, but it was teeming with powerful magic. Even I couldn’t understand what half of the spells on it were for. The only one I had an inkling of was a spell that would prevent anyone who didn’t already know the story from reading it. And there seemed to be others that would conditionally reveal bits and pieces of the story to the correct people.

The hologram continued. “Now remember, just because I knew you’d get there doesn’t mean I know that you’ll get back. Be careful. Whatever dangers you’ve faced, they’re nothing like what you’ll find in World War One Russia. Yes, Russia. I bet my insistence that ‘Russian will be important to you later’ when you were a little girl makes a whole lot more sense now, doesn’t it?”

A tear streaked down my cheek. “I was such a pain about that,” I whispered. But he had persisted, and I had learned.

“Pumpkin, before I go, I need you to understand just how proud your mother and I are of you. You’ve grown into a fine young woman, and I’m certain that the kingdom you’re creating will be a glorious sight to behold. Whatever you’re doing there has to be important. So take care of yourself, and make it home safely to us.” And then he began to sing.

“See the white light, the light within
Be your own disciple
Fan the sparks of will
For all of us waiting
Your kingdom will come

Now, rays of power shining
Rays of magic fall
On the golden voice
That speaks within us all
For all of us waiting
Your kingdom will come
Kingdom come”

Back when I was five, I went through the princess phase. One night, just before bed, I asked my parents if I could grow up to become a queen. At the time, I didn’t realize they had the money to just make it happen literally. I was just asking in the way little girls sometimes do. Momma had just smiled and stroked my hair, but Daddy answered me.

“I’m certain of it,” he said. “For you see, the future is your kingdom. And you and those your age will build the kingdom that is the future with every single choice you make. I cannot wait to see the kingdom you build.” And then he sang to me, the same song his hologram had sung just now.

At the time, I didn’t know it was an old metal song from before even he was born. He sang it softly, like a lullaby. And that wasn’t the last time he did so. Every night before bed, either he or Momma would sing it to me. They kept doing it until I was nine and decided that I was too old for lullabies. I’m pretty sure they would still come in after I’d slept and sing to me anyway and probably did so for years.

He smiled at me one last time. “I love you, Pumpkin,” he said, and the hologram faded.

“I love you too, Daddy,” I said, the tears streaming down my face.

Time resumed, and I could do nothing but clutch the book to my chest and cry. Then suddenly, after a minute or so, the door flung open and Gregor rushed out. I quickly did what I could to try to hide that I’d been crying. I’m pretty sure it didn’t work, but Gregor either didn’t notice or chose not to say anything. In fact, he seemed angry and dangerously focused.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“The Man Who Would Not Die is here! He is somewhere in this place!”

What?! “That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “There’s no record of anyone who lived on Earth in this time period who could be described…” I trailed off as I remembered something.

I desperately fumbled for my phone and searched through the database within. I was shaking as every clue began to fit together, revealing the answer to a puzzle that had been before me the whole time. I held up the phone to show Gregor the image.

“Do you recognize this man?” I asked.

“That’s him! That’s the Man Who Would Not Die! How do you have his image?”

“Gregor, he’s from my world, in the distant past, where we are now. I didn’t realize the connection until just now. And based on everything else we’ve heard, I think he’s Baba Yaga’s son.” I looked at the phone, and the words Daddy had spoken when I’d met him in the dream realm echoed in my brain.

“‘The man who would not die’, eh? What did they do, run afoul of Rasputin or something?”


Obviously, mentions of who the next villain is are no longer taboo. And the look on the player who didn't know what was coming was pretty entertaining. :D


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And the circle begins to close . . . .


Oh-ho, they're/you're entering Chapter 5 with far more knowledge than most PC's would have.

Good luck. *grins*


The Mad Comrade wrote:

Oh-ho, they're/you're entering Chapter 5 with far more knowledge than most PC's would have.

Good luck. *grins*

Don't forget more firepower.

Terry may have purchased a rocket launcher from the box. And advanced technology grenades.

Even then, I think the realities of modern warfare should be an interesting surprise for these characters, even if I have to tweak the number of soldiers to keep the challenge.


Your parties are so over the top . . . and I love it.

But then again, I'm the kind of person who loved A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.


UnArcaneElection wrote:

Your parties are so over the top . . . and I love it.

But then again, I'm the kind of person who loved A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

Not sure if I mentioned it before, but my next campaign(a custom one) will be based on the Gate anime, at least in part.

There will be a chapter where they get to go full advanced Earth tech vs. medieval armies. :D


^Let me know when/where the campaign journal is going to be posted.


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Formatted Linky

Dulce et Decorum Est or “Burin Bites Back”:
I stood there for several moments, trying to decide whether Daddy had known and was trying to warn me, or if it was instead a coincidence. After a bit, I decided I wasn’t sure which it was, nor which I wanted it to be, so I stopped worrying about it and went back inside to get Burin and Terry.

The pair were playing poker with the daemon, and it was a rather interesting sight. Terry obviously had a good hand. He was giggling uncontrollably. Burin, on the other hand, obviously had a terrible hand. He actually said so, point blank.

It was apparent that neither of them truly understood poker. Not that I was necessarily a great player, but this was just sad. “Call,” the daemon said.

“High card ten,” Burin said, showing his hand.

“Full house,” Terry said, still giggling.

“Too bad, all I have is two pair,” the daemon said. “One pair of eights… and another pair of eights.”

“That’s not two pair, I think that’s four of a kind,” Burin said helpfully.

Terry slapped his head. “Dammit. Best three out of five?”

“Actually,” I said, “there’s not really much time to keep playing games.” I held up my phone. “We’ve figured out who the man who killed Gregor’s master is. Turns out he’s from my world, and he’s Baba Yaga’s son.” I gave them a quick rundown on Rasputin.

“Wow, how’s Gregor taking it?” Burin asked.

“I think he’s ready for us to go.”

“We should go after him, then.”

“Right, but give me a moment,” Terry said. He turned to the daemon. “What can you tell us about this Rasputin?”

“I’ve heard it told that he was killed for his strange powers in a world that rejects them. In fact, he has escaped death numerous times, as if his soul is stitched into his body. Be wary of him, for his talent is only outstripped by his ambition.”

“I see,” Terry said, turning to me. “I think we may have to employ more than even our usual level of violence to make sure this enemy stays dead. Alright. Let’s go get Gregor and move out.”

We went outside once more, where we found Gregor brooding. Terry made his way over to him, and Burin turned to ask me a question. “So, this is your world, right?”

“Yes,” I answered, “but we’re somehow in my past.”

“So, do you think anyone here will speak the language of dragons?”

“Doubtful.”

“How about the language of water elementals?”

“Probably not.”

“The language of dwarves?”

“Nope.”

“The language of the dead?”

"Sorry."

“The human common tongue?”

What? Oh, he meant Taldan. “Sorry, but that’s also a no.”

He sighed. “Well, at least I’ll be able to understand them thanks to that magic stone. I guess I should have you teach me the common words for yes and no here so at least I can answer simple questions. How about cultural things? Anyone here afraid of torches, for instance?”

It took all my willpower to keep from laughing in his face. “No more than on Golarion.”

“Oh. That’s good. I wouldn’t want to cause some kind of incident.” He pulled out a torch and prepared to light it.

Meanwhile, as we were talking, Terry walked over to Gregor and tugged on the fighter’s sleeve. “You okay, buddy?”

“I am fine.”

Terry reached up with both hands and grabbed Gregor’s face, pulling the man down to eye level. “Now, I’m just going to say this once. Vengeance solves everything. But you can’t be stupid about it. Take your time and make sure you do it right. Don’t be blinded by your goal and lose sight of your surroundings. Some things leave no room for errors. So let’s get this done well the first time. Then we can find my dragon and I can put a few hundred bullets in him. Now put down that rat and let’s get going.”

“Rat? What rat?” Gregor asked. Then he looked at his hands. “I do not remember picking this up,” he said, gawking at the half skinned rodent in his hands. “But, I believe this was squirrel, not rat.”

“Same thing,” Terry said. He walked over to the hut. “And you,” he said. “I want you to protect yourself. If anyone but us comes over here, you have my permission to eat them.” He turned back to Gregor. “I see light over the hill there. Let’s go take a look.”

The two crept up the hill as Burin struggled with his torch. I waited for the dwarf, who eventually got the fire lit and followed after our vanguard. They laid on the top of the hill, looking at something. “We are unsure what we’re seeing,” Gregor called over to me quietly. “We could use your expertise.”

Burin charged up the hill, torch raised above his head. “Oh! A wagon! That’s obviously a merchant. And he looks like he’s stuck in the mud. We should help him!” Burin charged over the crest of the hill and began sliding down the other side. “Hellooo!” he shouted. “Hail, merchant!”

I’d slipped a little getting up the hill – I was wearing stiletto heeled boots, after all – so I reached the top well after Burin had begun his descent. And I was shocked by what I saw. “That’s a tank,” I breathed. Of course, it was a strange, old-timey tank. Almost like one of those bicycles with the big wheels, but in tank form. “Burin! Come back! That’s not a merchant! That’s a weapon of war!”

Burin turned to look at me. “A weapon of war?! Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” But it was too late. In turning back to me, Burin stopped looking where he was going, and slipped. He tried to catch himself, but ended up tumbling end over end down the hill.

And, as if things hadn’t been bad enough already, he landed right on a landmine. There was a click, audible from even the top of the hill, and then an explosion, which sent Burin flying about six feet into the air.

He landed in the mud with a hard thud. “I’m okay,” he called back weakly. His torch bounced off of his head and landed in the mud several feet away.

“What was that?” Terry asked me, standing up.

“Landmine, I think. They’re explosive traps people used to bury just under the surface of the ground. You don’t want to try walking through that area.”

“Oh. We’ll go over then.” He pulled out his dragon figurine. “Do you trust me?” he asked Gregor.

“As far as I can throw you.” He then considered Terry’s size. “Which is pretty far, I guess.”

The dragon grew to full size. “Get on,” Terry said.

Burin grew dragon wings and lifted himself into the air, then shouted something towards the town. In the language of water elementals. Because apparently the torch hitting his head made him forget everything I’d told him about no one here speaking that language.

Something was gnawing at the back of my brain, telling me that everyone was being incredibly stupid. But it took me several moments to realize what. “Shit!” I said, dropping prone. “Burin! Get down! Every soldier in this world will have a gun like Terry’s!”

Burin turned and looked back at me. “What?” he shouted back at me. But it was too late. Gunfire ripped through the night, striking Burin, Terry and Terry’s toy dragon, Zeus. Somehow, Gregor managed to avoid taking a hit.

And then the soldiers in the village began shooting at us with mortars. Dropping down had protected me from the bullets, but the mortar explosion that struck the trio a few feet from me hit me as well. I’m not sure how any of us survived. I mean, maybe I got lucky, but the other three took a direct hit.

Terry and Gregor got into the air and Terry began taking shots at the soldiers on the ground. Burin flew in towards the village and cut down a soldier with his axe, then engaged a number of soldiers fighting with bayonets. I drew on my inner thunderstorm and made myself invisible before taking to the air.

From up there, I could see troops all over the village. I could see troops continue to fire at my allies, and another mortar round hit the hill where I had been a few moments before. Burin continued fighting, but took several light wounds from bayonets, and then Gregor and Terry reached the air above the tank.

And then Gregor leapt from the back of Zeus and punched the tank as he landed on it, denting it as if it had been hit by a stone twice his size. Meanwhile, Terry was pulling some massive object from his guitar case.

“What the hell?!” I breathed upon seeing it. When the hell had Terry gotten a rocket launcher?!

While Terry was hooking his heavy weapon to his weapon harness, Burin breathed icy air on the soldiers before him. Which snapped me back to reality and I unleashed a fireball on a half dozen soldiers closing in on him. Between the ice and flame, the will of those surviving soldiers near to Burin broke and they began to rout. But there were still more soldiers further back, and what looked like the crew for the tank running around near the tank’s base, drawing pistols.

Gregor stomped over to the tank’s hatch, rubbed his hands together, then gripped the hatch’s edge. Lines of nanites glowed on his skin, and his hands crackled with electricity as he strained with the hatch, which began to warp with the raw force he was exerting. It only took a few seconds before the hatch gave and tore open with a resounding groan of bending metal.

“Hello!” Gregor roared in Russian. “So who is gonna show me how to get to Rasputin?!”

Terry took aim at the open hatch. “SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND!” he shouted in Taldan, squeezing the trigger and launching a rocket into the open port.

Gregor saw him firing, quickly put two and two together, and slammed the hatch shut just after the rocket flew into the hole. There was a massive explosion within. I’m sure several people died.

Terry jumped from the dragon and was caught by Gregor as I unleashed another fireball on the mortar emplacement. “Good job, Zeus,” he shouted. “Go hide until the fighting is over.”

Burin roared as his body shifted into that of a white dragon. He then charged forward, biting a soldier clear in half and then slashing another to death with his claws. It was at that point that more soldiers began to rout. Even after Burin apologized for biting so hard. “Sorry!” he said. “I didn’t realize you were so squishy.”

It was at that moment that I had a flash of insight. I realized just what this had to look like to these soldiers, from the very beginning. Walk with me on this as I lay it out.

First, a strange, short man carrying a torch comes over a hill, then slides down, lands on a land mine. Then, he GETS UP AND GROWS WINGS, taking to the air. And on the hill behind him, suddenly there are two people, a man and a little girl, getting on the back of a metal dragon. So you shoot at all of them, but they DON’T DIE. So you shoot a mortar at the ones still on the ground. Direct hit. BUT THEY DON’T DIE.

And then it’s their turn. These strange people attack. The demon looking creature cuts down one of your comrades with an axe. And the man jumps from the back of the dragon and tears open several inches of steel with his BARE HANDS. Meanwhile, fireballs start exploding around you, launched from an unseen source flying in the sky above, because sure, why not at this point, right?

And then the little girl pulls some kind of weapon too large to possibly fit, out of her guitar case. And shoots a ball of fire into the open tank, likely killing the people within. And the short demon breathes ice on your friends, and then turns into a DRAGON. So, at that point, you’re pretty much done. Of course you run.

The tank crew men on the ground tried firing at Gregor and Terry, but it was clear they had given up and accepted death. Only one of them seemed serious, a man who had somehow survived the rocket explosion and popped out of the tank to shoot at Terry. Gregor knocked him out with one blow.

“Drop your weapons!” I commanded in Russian. “And put your hands on your head. I swear to you that any who surrender will be spared.” The soldiers, seeing their options, immediately did so. “Burin, tie up the prisoners. Try not to hurt them,” I said, continuing in Russian so the soldiers would understand as well. I didn’t want them to mistake our intentions.

Burin flew in, returned to his dwarven form and began to do so. No one else came out of the tank, so Terry dropped a non-lethal grenade into the tank. A few seconds later, there was a loud noise, and Gregor jumped in afterward, pulling out two more unconscious crewmen.

“This is a lot of adamantine,” Gregor said, looking at the tank.

“Maybe it’s just an alloy?” Terry suggested.

“I don’t think so,” Gregor said. “It’s too shiny to contain any iron.”

Burin, having finished tying up our captives, went over and inspected the tank. “I don’t think it’s adamantine. It looks like a really refined form of steel.”

As they chatted, I flew around a bit, making sure no more soldiers were hiding. I didn’t find anyone who seemed to be hiding so they could counter attack, but I did spot a couple of soldiers cowering in fear, terrified that we would find them. So I left them alone.

I’m pretty sure that most of these soldiers were probably conscripted peasants – there were millions conscripted to the tsar’s armies during the period, one of those facts Daddy said I should know for now obvious reasons – and they didn’t deserve to suffer any more than necessary.

Certain that there were no heavy weapon surprises around, I flew in and landed next to Burin. “It’s strange,” he said to me. “There seems to be no magic in the area, aside from what we’re using. Are we in an area where magic has been deadened, maybe?”

“Not that I know of, but it’s really not surprising. Magic was extremely rare during this time period and pretty much no one used it.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. Everyone forgot how, maybe?” Okay, so that was only a half truth. I’d read several papers on the subject, but I only half understood most of them. Basically, it goes ‘something something the church, something something superstitions, something something Exodus Twenty Two Eighteen’, and I wasn’t about to try to explain any of that to Burin. So, not sure it was.

I looked up onto the tank and spotted Terry and Gregor eating alchemical pancakes. Without syrup. Heathens.

Burin continued his thoughts. “So, this was your past, huh?”

“Yes. Not the same country, but the same world.”

“I guess it’s a good thing they didn’t have magic. If they did, we’d have been toast.” It was at that point that I noticed he was healing himself up with a wand. He pointed it at me and my own wounds began healing.

“Yeah. But lack of magic is why we became so inventive with our weapons, and are now capable of making things like planes, tanks and rocket launchers.” Speaking of which… “Hey, Terry, care to explain just how you got a rocket launcher?”

“Are you complaining?” Terry said, his mouth full. At least I think that’s what he said.

“Not really. Just curious.”

“I asked the box for suggestions, and that was one of them. It sounded cool, so I had the box make me one. It was either that or a grenade launcher, and this sounded more useful.” He swallowed his mouthful of pancake. “I would have had it make you one, but you know, money.” Zeus finally came out of hiding and landed next to him. “Good boy!” Terry said, rubbing the metal dragon’s neck. He spoke the command word and it shrunk back to a statuette. “Hey, do you think we can fix him?”

“Cortana might be able to if you spend the money. Or you can special order a wand that’ll do it from Zilvazaraat. Though you might not need the wand if Burin knows how to cast Make Whole.”

“Why would I need to cast that when I can make my holes the old fashioned way?” Burin asked, pointing at his shovel. Silly dwarf. Don’t ever change.

Gregor finished his pancake and grabbed one of the men on the top of the tank. “Tell me where Rasputin is,” he said, holding the terrified man over the edge.

“I do not know!” the man screamed.

“Gregor!” I shouted. “I promised them that we wouldn’t hurt them if they surrendered!”

“I do not plan to hurt anyone,” he responded in Taldan. “But I will make them afraid. Make them think I am crazy so I am not forced to actually hurt them.”

“Fine,” I said. “Please, tell him what he wants to know,” I begged the soldiers. “I don’t want him to hurt anyone, but I can’t control him.”

“I don’t know!” the man Gregor was holding screamed. “Please! Don’t hurt me!”

“Tell me your name,” Gregor said. “So I know what to put on your grave stone.”

“NO! PLEASE!”

“Don’t hurt Vadim!” one of the others shouted from the ground. “I will tell you everything I know.”

Gregor’s lips parted, showing his teeth in a sinister smile. “Good. Tell me your name, then speak.” He lowered Vadim onto the tank and jumped down to the man.

“I am Anatoli. Please, promise you will not hurt us.”

“I just wish to hurt Rasputin. Tell me where he is and I will leave you all here.” At some point, Burin had started translating what was said for Terry. Only, he was doing so in the language of water elementals, so it wasn’t helping Terry, who had a look of extreme confusion.

“I saw someone who looked like Rasputin in Akuvskaya. I didn’t get a good look, but I think that was him.” As he was talking, I pulled out my phone and had Cortana run a search for Akuvskaya, but she couldn’t find anything in the database. It might have been known by another name, or perhaps it had simply been lost to history. It was, after all, a hundred and twenty years or so in the past.

“How do I get to Akuvskaya?” Gregor asked.

“Take the road over there. It is perhaps twelve hours by horse.”

“Are you satisfied?” I asked.

“Yes, that is what I needed to know,” Gregor said, cracking his knuckles.

“Then let’s get the hut and get on our way.”

“Leaving so soon?” a voice asked, in Russian. I turned to see the image of Rasputin standing there, perhaps twenty feet from us.

Terry immediately tossed what was left of his pancake at it. The bread sailed through the image, hitting the ground with a soft plop. “Don’t worry, guys,” Terry said. “It’s just an illusion.”

Rasputin looked annoyed, but answered in Taldan. “The shadow told me that one of Sergei’s students had come seeking me. You were foolish to come. You will die like these peasants.”

“Ooh. What are you going to do?” Terry asked. “Blind us with your scary illusion powers?”

Rasputin actually laughed. “I will enjoy knowing that you are dead, child. Or perhaps, not a child. The shadow has told me of you as well. And of the dwarf. Impressive work facing off with your demon. And of the young woman. You will find your powers not nearly up to the task of contending with mine, witch.”

“My only worry is whether there’ll be enough of you left for my spell to affect by the time I’m finished casting it,” I said. “Since Gregor and Terry will kill you faster than you can blink.”

“Bold.”

Burin said something in the language of water elementals, then caught himself and repeated it again in Taldan. “And true,” Burin said. “I’m surprised Terry hasn’t shot you and offered you any cake yet.” Gregor snorted a laugh in spite of his anger. Terry just stuck his tongue out at the dwarf.

Gregor regained his serious face. “You will find that I am not the same man you defeated before. I promise you, when I am done, you will find a way to die, or you will beg for it with every fiber of your being.”

“I grow tired of this verbal posturing,” Rasputin said. “Now, I will go, and you will die.” He waved his hand and the smoldering corpses strewn about the village began pulling together, forming a giant corpse orgy – an unfortunate name, but that’s what Daddy’s guide calls it – and attacking us. Unfortunately for Rasputin’s plan to kill us, it was an easy fight with an obvious weakness to ice. But something strange happened. My spell was just a bit stronger than I’d intended.

As we fought, Terry continued taunting Rasputin. “You know, as a walking corpse, I’ve seen a lot in my time. I’ve seen truly terrifying enemies. But you? You’re a little b#~!& with mommy issues. What, did Baba Yaga not hug you enough? All of this because mommy didn’t give you enough attention? Well, we have each other. What do you have? Nothing. We’re gonna put you in the ground and keep you there, momma’s boy.”

Rasputin sneered. “Tch,” he said, then disappeared just as we landed the killing blow on his creation.

“Yeah, you better run,” Terry said.

“What’s going on with the hut?” Burin asked.

I turned to look, and realized it was dancing on the hill, looking like it wanted to go, but didn’t want to go without us. Terry pulled out a knife and cut the bonds on one of the prisoners. “Sorry boys, our ride’s here. We have to go.” He jumped down and Gregor caught him.

Looking at Terry, it finally hit me. I finally understood why it seemed significant that my spell had been stronger during the last fight. “Terry,” I said. “I think I have enough power to bring back Emily.”

Sorry for not getting this up earlier. I've been trying to get my WoW character up to ilvl 320 so I could do the Warfront, so I've literally been doing almost nothing else all week and kept forgetting.

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