Draconnic Shenanigans - Episode 34

 Chapter Thirty Four: Spicy Dinner Time

 

(Artwork by A.I. from The Reiker Vexx song Kibbles Monster Stew)

 The goturi crowd where grinning and looking down on the King's Special from the sides of the arena, their small bodies filling the seat build for much bigger persons, they green membraned wings shifting as they waited for the next round of insults, their blue scales shining in the strange glow from the bioluminescent lamps that hanged down on massive chains from the supporting struts of the arenas canopy.

"I am going to have to find out who built this place originally," Ulrich muttered, "Because it certainly wasn't this lot, "They have no refinement what so ever."

 "I'd dispute that," Tasnar observed, "They do not kill each other in disputes, keeping their cutting to the ego alone and so both combatants walk away alive and still useful to their society, whereas in our society, we lose at least one member and maybe even both. Their way of settling disputes might be something that we need to bare in mind."

"The weak..." Sabal began and then trailed off.

"We'll have to let the weak live and maybe even breed," Tasnar stated what had occurred to Sabal mid-sentence, "It is a numbers game now, we need the numbers more than we need the purity." Sabal looked like he was going to wriggle his way out of his skin but he didn't speak out as Kaelin stepped forward, much to the anticipation of the crowd as she raised Haggis' blowpipe to her lips, the swirling, skirling of the bagpipes flying through the air, making the crowd stamp their feet, clap their hands and their wings beating time to the tune. The stands echoed to it, the air ringing as Kaelin wound the crowd round her little finger with the music. Eryale's veil shifted as if she had raised her eyebrows underneath it, the serpents of her hair swaying along to the rhythm. Kaelin had them all eating out of the palm of her hand.

"Goturi?" she questioned loudly as she let the blowpipe fall, "Goturi? I thought you were a wee goblin's offspring."

"Oh," the goturi champion rolled her eyes and spread her hands in mock terror and then drew herself up.

"Who's afraid of the big, bad wolf,

Big, bad wolf, big, bad wolf?

Who's afraid of the big, bad wolf,

Big, bad wolf, big, bad wolf? 

Who's afraid of the big, bad wolf?

Nooooot me!"

 Her sing song voice made Kaelin narrow her eyes, even as she wondered what the hand gesture of flicking something off the chin meant. It obviously meant something as the champion continued doing it a lot long than necessary if it was an itch or a crumb but the meaning flew over Kaelin's head. However, the crowd took Kaelin's side so perhaps the champion had over sold it to her audience.

Thorian shuffled and grunted, his brain overheating with the effort of equally his earlier offerings to the competition. He knew that he had the words somewhere in here but they just wouldn't come into focus sharply enough for him to be able to speak them out loud. They were in there though, he just knew it. He screwed a finger into his ear, trying to winkle the thought out of his head.

Jeremiah sniffed delicately and decided to step forward, having bidded his time long enough. It was infuriating to have such a large audience not paying attention to him. He smiled behind his beard, wondering if these little degenerates had a knowledge of the gods. It they did not then perhaps they would be open to instruction on the matter and what he could do with a whole hoard of followers was quite an entertaining idea.

"Goturi?" he asked, "Or is that Kobold? Either way, you have the dingiest rags I've ever behold."

 It was bad grammar and would have made any of his tutors twitch but it was worth it to see the little creature tug the hem of what she called a skirt as the crowd laughed at her.

"You're a little human, short and stout,

We all have to listen to the junk you spout,

When you see danger coming, we hear you shout,

So I'll pick you up and wring you out."

Jeremiah glared at the champion as the crowd laughed even harder at her come back. Gerald buzzed nervously as Kaelin sniggered, Thorian guffawed and even Ulrich's Ash Elf tag-a-longs coughed and cleared their throats. Jeremiah's fingers curled into a fist as a fish tail on the champions side rose into the air. They were still fair ahead but the humiliation, oh he would not forget the humiliation.

"You, Sir," he said quite deliberately, "Stink!"

The crowd quietened, obviously expecting more and some frowning as Jeremiah's use of honorific to slur sank in. The champion however, smiled back, an idea visibly bubbling behind her eyes.

"You think you have heart,

But you just need to fart,

And it don't smell like fruit tart.

You weren't my first choice,

The garbage would do and...

If I had a brick I'd throw it at you."

 The crowd roared again and a show of red paddles gave the point to the champion. Jeremiah stepped back as the decorative brass fish showed its tail on the champions side of the score board. If these ingrates couldn't recognize true intelligence then he would not cast his pearls before swine.

Kaelin stepped forward to take his place, having eyed the closing gap between their score and the goturi's champion. It was sitting ten to thirteen to them but they were going to have to pull out the works to make sure they won.

"A necromancy would rather reanimate the dead rat you call a dress than you," she declared.

"Twinkle, twinkle little witch," the goturi champion replied, "Mind your own business, you nosy witch!" A equal number of red and blue paddles were trust into the air at that one, a fish going tail up on both sides of the score board.

Kaelin narrowed her eyes, beginning to compose her next come back but Thorian stepped forward, steam drifting from his ears gently but a huge smile on his face. He set his feet, threw back his head and roared.

"Your scales are thick, your gut is round 

Your feet sink three feet in the ground.

If sneaking's hard and running worse,

Just roll down hill and hope for the worst."

 He held his arms up and turned for the crowd, beaming as they cheered for him. The goturi smoothed her dress over her girth and watched him, waiting for the crowd to quieten before she fired the return shot.

"Big Numpty sat on a wall,

Big Numpty caused a great fall,

All the King's Horses

And all the King's Men,

Couldn't put the wall back together again."

 Outside the arena Peter whistled shrilly, feeling that his position as Ulrich's mount was being called into question but the crowd cheered and this time the King's Special held the field. With that mark of approval Jeremiah stepped forward again, raising his hand for silence.

"There once was a goturi who stank

At insults and it's just fired blanks,

It played the game

But its rhymes were lame

So please go in the corner and... wink."

 The limerick stuttered as Jeremiah realized that he had probably better not use the actual word of that ended that last line, as it would reveal a worldly knowledge that was at odds with his appearance as a man of the cloth but enough of the audience fell in as to the substitution that they roared with laughter. Jeremiah turned and bowed to the royal box. Oh they might not sit in the royal box but he knew social status well enough to recognize the ruling class of this stunted little society.

The goturi raise one paw to her forehead and mock stumbled back, exaggerating her distress.

"I'd touch the Earth,

I'd touch the Sky,

But if I touched you,

I'd surely die."

 Her proclamation gained a few giggles but Jeremiah took that round hands down without effort.

"You know," Kaelin stepped forward, walking round the goturi's champion, looking her up and down like a noble at a horse fair checking out the goods, "You know... I would make a purse out of your hide but it won't be fit enough for an ant."

The goturi straightened, stilled her face to deadpan blankness and then ran her eye up and down Kaelin in return.

"Roses are red," she started.

"Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

If you don't shut up

I'm gonna punch you.

Roses are red,

Your eye is blue,

'Coz you didn't shut up

When I told you to."

 Kaelin grunted as the goturi inadvertently reminded her of her grandfather, her hair fluffing up in response and distressing amount of hair growing out of her clothes as the wolf tried to come forward but found that it was too tired to part way through the change. It was probably that comical display of fluff that resulted in the goturi siding with their own champion but the King's Special was still leading.

"The arena is fire," Thorian noted, "But your insults are water; they are keeping me wonderfully cool."

The goturi champion rubbed her snout and frowned. It was obvious that she wasn't used to being beaten this darn hard.

"Violets are blue,

You wish you were pretty

And I do too.

You make a skunk jealous,

You smell 'great' too,

Your face is so pretty it belongs in a zoo."

 "Well thank yea!" Thorian beamed at her, "You're the first person who think I'm pretty!"

The goturi champion stood there, mouth open, as Thorian smiled at her and it was only Ulrich's restraining hand that prevented him from running across the arena to give her a great big hug. The fish tail on the King's Special side of the score board clacked firmly into place. They lead by five points now but had no idea how many they needed in total. Kaelin finished rubbing her hair back down smooth and smothered a yawn. Well that was one benefit of being so tired that the wolf was struggling to rise, it was easier to put it back to bed. She straightened and looked at the champion. She owed Kaelin one for stirring up the old muck.

"You who think you are so clever and grand

Spreading insults all around,

But I'll let you in on the final end,

My tiny vermin friend,

You couldn't get a job as a firing squad target!"

 It didn't quite rhyme, she admitted that, but it did get nods of approval from the goturi around Eryale but was it enough to carry the day?

 The matronly goturi sucked her teeth again and then launched her attack.

"Roses are red, Violets are blue,

Faces like yours belong in the zoo.

Don't be so mad, I'll be there too,

Not in the cage but laughing at you!"

 "Aye," Kaelin agreed and gave the goturi just enough time to look surprised before finishing her counter attack, "From the sewer grate!" The crowd started laughing and then Thorian finished the job.

"This little squirt is reusing material!" he protested and the crowd dissolved in hooting laughter. The champion bowed in acceptance as the King's Special scored another point.

Jeremiah reckoned that he had the measure of his audience by now and decided to unleash the crudest insult he knew, with a special twist.

"Look at this poo

That smells like do

And knows not how to bath.

Come all and boo,

Look at my fine bod

And ask what he hath got.

I'll tell you my blessing,

It is the one true god

Klu'ga-nath!"

 The crowd screamed and cowered in their seats as the lights in the arena seemed to darken, a creaking, cracking cold clutching the air. Eryale's serpents reared up, biting at the air while at her side Estella shrank in her seat, Valodrael's darkness filling her eyes. For a second the world tried to turn black and then it slowly released the air, goturi slowly sitting up in their seats again.

"Will you stop saying that name!?!" Quenril demanded, clenching his fists to stop his hands from shaking.

The goturi champion was panting as if she'd just run a mile, crouched by her pet carrier, trying to settle the creature within. After a moment, she gave up and opened it, lifting the creature out so that it cold drape across her shoulders like a feather boa. It was long and black, the feathery branches of its gills flicking round its neck like a ruff. It blinked bead like eyes in its flat head as it studied the King's Special, shifting damp feet on the champions shoulders.

Once it was settled and calm, she turned back to the King's Special and readied her reply.

"If I were a bird

I'd sing a song

And fly about.

I'd go up high

And give a great big shout,

'Look out everyone

The idiots are about!"

 Ulrich had the feeling that she could have said anything at that point and would have carried the vote, the fact that she had managed something coherent just earned his respect. He would never admit it but he was struggling to not throw up all over his shoes. He had seen the damn thing again, that damn dragon made out of shadow and a light that should not existence. The color defied description, a rotten shade, a hue of corruption that made his stomach churn and his throat constrict at the same moment, causing a sensation like he was being strangled. The closest he could described it as was purple but it was not like that truly either. It was a color from outer space.

He breathed a little easier as the fish tail on the side of champion clacked into place and so did a lot of other people it appeared, like, most of the audience.

Kaelin stepped forward, shivering the last affects of that thrice curse name out of her hair and drew a deep breath.

"You be the lowest of the low, " she stated, "So low in fact, a rat considers you too low to urinate on."

It was not she admitted the best or the wittiest insult ever composed but under the circumstance it was the best she could come up with. The goturi champion wagged her tail, winding herself to deliver a blistering round.

"Woe to he who is ruled by the noise of his own stomach," she pointed a claw and ignored the fact that the same could be said of her. Granted, seeing that she was pointing at someone who didn't seem to realize what he was dabbling with, nobody was going to point that out. "In order to learn something, you have to listen to something other than the cavernous sound of your own ignorance! If you are looking for your dignity, I don't have it, seeing as you are none of your best friends, best friend. And oh! If you bother to bathe - pro tip, you don't KEEP the filth for sentimental reasons!"

She was panting again as she reached the end of the rant but the audience was on its feet, roaring its approval. Tasnar, at the risk to his own health, was quietly joining in the applause. The fish dropped its head, raising its tail into the air. Kaelin did a quick count  - eighteen to fourteen in their favor but Jeremiah had definitely lost them the crowd with that damned name. She started racking her brains for some good ones, something that could get them the crowd back but then Eryale rose from her seat and held up her hands.

"We have our winner," she announced as the crowd quietened, every head turning her way. Her veil twitched with that hidden smile and her hands lift high. Then the right one dropped as her head turned to the King's Special, honoring their earlier wins despite Jeremiah invoking his abhorred god.

The Kobold Champion smiled and bowed to them as the crowd started flooding down off the stands.

"Good game," she called, "Aye will have to make a note of some of those as aye have not hear them before."

"Just don't go repeating them wholesale or we'll have to do you for copyright," Thorian called back.

"You what?" Kaelin demanded with her confused to the point of disgusted face.

"Yeah," Thorian admitted after a beat as the gates to the arena swung open, "I don't know where that came from either."

The champion nodded again before she turned and picked up the animal cage, her pet axolotl shifting its damp feet on her sleeves. Ulrich could see its wedge shaped head blinking over the top of the crowd as the goturi poured into the arena.

"Yes, thank you," Kaelin said, trying to turn as they crowded in on her, "I can walk you know, I can whoa!" She was lifted bodily from her feet and found herself bobbing on the hands of the crowd, the sea of blue scales flowing underneath them.

"Oh whee!" Thorian laughed as they streamed through the arena gate, the goturi apparently a lot stronger than their scrawny looks suggested as Jeremiah bobbed along at the back of the group. Peter whistled in alarm, his length coiling and looping as he tried to trundle over the heads of the crowd to get to his master.

"Its alright, Peter," Ulrich called, "I'm fine, no need to panic, it's just a moment of high spirits."

How high were those spirits though, Kaelin wondered as they flooded back out into the streets of the subterranean city, the crowd apparently filling the wide boulevard to the brim as they flowed on through the city, the rush of their cheering chattering voices making the cavern ring to their exuberant shouts. All this excitement couldn't be for them winning, nobody could be this happy for the away crowd to have won.

Ulrich, on the other hand, was perfectly relaxed, waving to the crowd as he floated along on the surf of living creatures, taking their adulation for granted.

"Oh nothing at all chaps, nothing at all," he smiled, "Just doing our bit for your culture, glad to provide the entertainment, after all it is not surprising that you don't get to see many new things, trapped in this cave like this. Oh think nothing of it, had a super time providing a new distraction."

Eventually the flood of excitement slowed down and the cheering quietened, the crowd of goturi lowering them to their feet. Kaelin straightened up, eyes wary, wondering what was coming next.

"Do you smell that?" Thorian asked, eyes gleaming. The others turned their heads, noses testing the air. What came to them was savory, fresh and mouth watering, a serious reminder to empty stomachs that it was long after time for afternoon tea and that they had been traveling ever since they had paused for a lunch of crab legs and most of that had been through excessively cold water.

"Why I do declare that our diminutive hosts have prepared something that may be suitably snackish," Jeremiah observed, "Shall we discover where this delectable odor is coming from?"

Kaelin looked around. The crowd had deposited them on the pavement outside of one of the strange buildings of this city. The this one had its main block set back from the boulevard but two side buildings reached out to the road, making a sort of three sided courtyard and again, it had that odd architecture, that misalignment at the corners that made it hard to understand how it was constructed. It was stone, it's building blocks were all square but somehow the way they met at the corners made the eyes feel that the geometry was just slightly off. It was like trying to describe a square that had four point five sides or a circle that had a straight edge. It wasn't completely wrong, but it wasn't right either. Ulrich rather felt that it was like the differences between Valodrael and the dragon he'd been seeing glimpses ever since Jeremiah had healed him back at the dwerg's city. They were both incredibly dangerous, both seriously scary and both quite capable of striking you stone dead or worse, but some how the human mind choice Valodrael as the one that it would rather be up against in a fight. Possibly because there was something human about Valodrael, for all his teeth and unhallowed joy in the fear of his prey, there was something understandable in his motives and connections to others, something that, for all its darkness, you could reason with, you could get a handle on, an idea of its direction and therefore try to get out of its way. The other one, that dragon of sick glow, that thing of the color of outer space? There was no understanding, there was no way of getting a handle on its mind, it was anathema to the structure of human conscience, of human thought, all it did was breach boundaries without effort, without choice, just by being it broke whom ever looked at it. If that was what people in asylums saw all the time then it was no wonder they were mad. Ulrich shuddered and petted Peter as his giant centipede came trundling over, whistling that he had been separated again from his master and wasn't happy about it.

"Nu..." Thorian frowned, "Nu... eye... butt."

"The insult slinging competition is over, my incoherent friend," Jeremiah stated, "You can stop over working what brain you have."

"Aye wasn't over working my brain," Thorian pouted, "Aye was trying to work out what is written there." He gestured at the front of the building. Kaelin blinked. She'd been so distracted by the buildings out of kilter architecture that she'd missed that there was a large banner made out of what looked like a bed sheet, hung above the main door.

"I've finally got the counting," Thorian continued, "So I'm not going to give up on the reeling and righting. I'm going to get the hang of this. I know they are words that stay so I'm going to stay with them."

"A laudable goal, Sir Thorian," Eryale stated as she reached them, Estella trailing in her wake, "And one that should be encouraged. If however, you find that in the end you have not the energy or the time to pursue your studies then may I recommend the art of pictograms."

"What are pict-o-grams?" Thorian asked with a frown.

"Gestures that stay," Eryale explained as they made their way up to the main door, "Writing is words that stay, pict-o-grams are gestures that stay. Think of it as this - if you met one of your race from half way across the world then you might not speak the same language so you won't know each other words but if he held out a spear you'd know that he was dangerous, whereas if he held out a piece of food you'd know that he came in peace. Well a pictogram is the hand that holds out the food, or the spear, carved down on something harder than air so that it stays for longer."

"Now that is an idea," Thorian nodded slowly, "But what does it mean, that up there?" He pointed up at the banner above the door.

"It says," Eryale's veil twitched with her smile, "Nibbles and Nee, who are the owners and chief cooks of this establishment." At the word cooks Thorian's stomach unleashed a roar that would have put a dragon to shame.

"Well, my good friends," Ulrich smiled, "Shall we partake of the vittles on offer in this establishment?"

"If Jeremiah goes first," Kaelin folded her arms. Jeremiah gave her a long look but Kaelin didn't back down, staring back with a blank expression until he smiled, or at least grimaced.

"Of course I shall go first, my dear Kaelin, if you are feeling too weak to cross the threshold first," he said and turned to step through the door.

"He's monster bait," Estella whispered to Eryale, "He burnt one of my talismans to ash the first night I met him just to see what would happen, if it would damage me as well, so they use him as a... shield to make sure the next room is safe for all of them."

"Ah," Eryale did not need to say more as they followed Jeremiah into the light of the interior.

Once inside the King's Special stopped and their mouths dropped open. After a short room that seemed to be a sort of lobby and collecting area for the cloak room the atrium opened up. They couldn't help but stand and gorp. Kaelin turned her head sharply as they were about to step through and saw Peter through the cloak room door as the centipede burying his face in a dish of what seemed to be mince, while Weatherall picked a ham apart with delicate motions of his claws, chewing the tiny morsels he fed into his mouth. The goturi were also trying to convince the vigor to eat and were obviously puzzled by its lack of responses.

The atrium was ablaze with light, the shining sparkle of the mass of crystal hanging from the ceiling, bouncing and reflecting from massive polished sheets of metal that were hammered to the wall except for the floor to ceiling mural that hadn't just been painting there but first built up and sculpted from textured clay so that it really was three dimensional.

"I recognize that," Kaelin stated, "That was carved outside that temple place where the spider dragon was hatching."

It was indeed that image of the Ash Elves kneeling before the figure rising from the waves but here it was not just Ash Elves but many different races and peoples. Elves of many different types, humans of multiple hues, orcs and a united front of dwarfs with only minor differences that showed where they might one day divide along the lines of dwarfs and dwergs.

Motion behind them made Kaelin turn to see Quenril and his kin on their knees before the picture.

"The Begetters," Sabal whispered.

"I reckon this city is older, older than anything else we have come across," Ulrich concluded, "Something to tell your grand children then."

"Indeed," Quenril agreed as the Ash Elves came back to their feet, struggling to tear their eyes from the image. It inside of the room was slightly better than the outside for not pulling at the eyeballs with out of level geometry but there was the slightly nagging feeling that it was in fact bigger on the inside than the outside and that the windows didn't quite line up with their other faces on the outside of the building. Round the edge of the room, though a clear space had been left in front of the mural, the goturi had added their own tables. Jeremiah frown, puzzled as to wear they could have possibly gathered the wood from because it was most definitely wood and not that inferior sedum stuff that the dwergs used. The goturi were clustering around the tables, chattering away about the challenge, some with drinks already in hand and the King's Special received may toasts as they crossed the room. The atrium was separated from the main hall by an open arch that once again tested the eyes with that feeling of just being slightly... off, as if there were too many angles in the corners to add up to the whole, like a triangle that added up to a hundred and ninety degrees rather than the one hundred and eighty that it should have been.

The main hall was even bigger than the atrium, as expected but it was also slightly darker, mostly because the large amounts steam and smoke curling through the air. The center of the room was a complicated mass of, well, it would have been an alter, perhaps, maybe, if it had been a single block but instead it was a branching maze of what should have been rectangles if they didn't give the eyes the feeling that they were made out of three and a half sides each. The goturi, in their wisdom had decided to alter these into a collection of work tops and cupboard-less sideboards, brazers and bronze fire pits on sturdy legs dotted at corners with griddles and grills over the top of them, some loaded with long skewers of meat sizzling in the heat while others had pans and pots stood basking in the heat of the flames. Above this chefs paradise a structure that the goturi seemed to have built themselves, barrels and cupboards and other methods of storing food, somehow stuck to the ceiling and forming a ring about the kitchen to capture the smoke and prevent its soot from coating the rest of the room, an impromptu chimney funnel to improve the function of any gap up in the ceiling.

Thorian frowned. It looked like the goturi had stuck the whole hanging mess together with some sort of fabric but that couldn't be right. He peered harder but then there was a grinding noise and a slightly tubby goturi trundled into view, riding a short ladder that slid on a set of railings that ran the length of the top and bottom of the 'kitchen' counter.

"Good day, Lady Eryale," he chirruped, "I hear that we are in need of a feast today. I hear that someone finally broken Matron Lots-see winning streak. Do I hear right?"

"You do," her veil twitched with that hidden smile.

"Oh weeeeeee!" he crowed, clapping his hands before kicking off on his ladder, stirring a pot as he went passed, flavoring a bubbling pan and flipping the contents of a frying pan as he came to a stop, chatting all the time about what dishes he planned to make to make this momentous occasion. The fact that there seemed to be enough food to feed an army already on the go didn't seem to disturb him one little bit as he came speeding back, flicking a ten inch cooks knife that seemed absolutely massive in his hand out of a knife block as he speed passed.

"This is going to be epic!" he concluded as he came to a stop back at where he had begun and started chopping a pile of leeks so fast that it was a miracle that he didn't remove his fingers.

"That is quite a marvelous device," Ulrich observed, looking at the mobile ladder and its rails.

"Oh necessity, good sir, necessity only," the goturi cook beamed, "After all, if the world doesn't fit, you make alterations." He scrapped off the leeks into a large shallow dish and then seized a grater and a block of cheese, scrapping a thick covering of the orange nut cheese all over the top of the vegetables before seasoning with a flourish. Small as he was, it seemed that he was in absolute heaven in the kitchen.

Kaelin meanwhile was sniffing suspiciously at a rake of skewers. Well they were meat and they weren't human at least. She could have told if they were human. The memories that were tied to that knowledge tried to bubble up, making her mouth twist. Her grandfather had a lot to answer for, such a lot to answer for.

Thorian pocked a pot and received a face full of steam for his trouble but then a stream of goturi started hurrying forward and grabbing plates for a pile at one end, one of the many ends of the maze of counter tops, lining up as the cook continued his preparations and started dishing finished food on to the great severing platters.

"Grubs up!" Thorian guessed and grabbed a plate as well. Kaelin snatched the next one, joining the line behind him.

"I'll be leaving you," Eryale inclined her head, lifting a hand to the front of her veil, "Due to this I prefer to eat in private where fewer accidents are likely to happen. I promise that you will be in good hands."

"I do not doubt that at all, my good lady," Ulrich bowed to her, "And may I say again that we are truly grateful for the chance to enjoy your hospitality and the hospitality of your people."

"You are most welcome," she inclined her head, "Although your... large friend maybe not so much so."

"He..." Ulrich struggled to be polite, "He is attempting to earn his redemption."

"If he is worshiping that one then I doubt the attempt is sincere," Eryale said gravely before turning to leave as more goturi crowded in. Ulrich turned to fetch a plate to find that said large friend had already beat him to it, with Estella standing beside Kaelin.

"I am definitely ready for this," Jeremiah grinned, thick fingers holding the plate.

"Well," Ulrich joined the line despite some misgivings, "I'd be called a donkey if I refused."

"You're a donkey anyway," Thorian called back.

"The wrong end of the donkey at that," Kaelin observed, remembering one of the insults from the challenge.

Ulrich rolled his eyes and then started picking over the dishes that were on offer. Once they had a full plateful each they found themselves being guided to the table closest to the kitchen area.

"So why were you not there to help us with the challenge?" Jeremiah asked Estella, insinuating that she had somehow done something that had given her favorable treatment.

"The goturi were born from dragon blood," she replied as they sat down, "Dragon blood and goblin stock, magically combined to try and make a race that were stronger than goblins but easier to control than dragons. It appears that a dragon later released them from the slavery they suffered at the hand of their creator. They do not forget their debt to the dragons so as I have a certain passenger, well, they weren't going to make me go through the indignity of the challenge. Valodrael's a little upset about that, he would have enjoyed verbally sparing like that but I suppose it would have been unfair as the champion wold have been unwillingly to insult him back."

"It seems you had quite a talk with our serpent haired hostess," Jeremiah could some how sneer without showing it on his face.

"It was quite interesting," Estella picked out the first titbit she fancied sampling, "It seems that they were made, most likely by an apprentice of the lich who created the orc-crossbreeds."

"You what?" Thorian asked, while Jeremiah choked into his salad.

"It appears that they were created by an apprentice of the lich who created the orc crossbreeds," Estella repeated, "Yes, according to our 'serpent haired hostess', it appears that all that talk of orc crossbreeds coming from... despicable acts between orcs and human women is just that - talking and nothing more. Bad talk at that. The orc crossbreed forefathers were created, magically, from human stock and orc blood to create a race that were stronger than humans but easier to cow than orcs. Well eventually a tomb dragon noticed that there was a civilization that it could bring to its knees hiding done in the Underworld and it did just that, giving the orc crossbreeds just enough so that they could escape, cutting their way through the dwarfs in the process and setting off the bad blood between them."

"Yeah," Thorian rubbed the back of his neck, "Yeah, that wasn't the best thing we could have done."

"So the big bad evil guys apprentice tried the same trick over but with goblin stock and dragon blood?" Ulrich asked, "Let me guess, he was surprised too when he creations decided that they didn't fancy hanging around?"

"Are you surprised?" Estella asked.

"Not really," Kaelin admitted through a mouthful, "Evil doesn't seem to have much of a brain and its never as clever as it thinks it is."

They dug into the offerings in front of them. There was certainly a fair amount of different meat dishes on offer but there were also root vegetables and pastries and pies. Thorian was half way through a plate of glazed rib pieces before he stopped inhaling long enough to try the fried chips, Quenril favoring a dish of what looked like octopus tentacles and chopped mushrooms. Despite her misgivings over what the meat could be Kaelin found the omelette acceptable, particularly partnered with the dish roast leeks while Estella tucked into what could have been sticky fried jointed chicken wings. Jeremiah besides his salad that he had built up behind a rampart of lettuce leaves, devoured half a roast rabbit without any difficulty, while Ulrich sampled the fish steaks that had been delicately broiled. Sabal settled for a cheese based roast vegetable dish while Tasnar favored liver and onions.

"My compliments to the chef," Ulrich called part way through the meal, "I must say, Mister Nibble and Nee that your cooking is exemplary and I will be more than happy to sing your praises to any others who ask me for advise as to where to eat."

Strangely enough Mister Nibble and Nee laughed as he continued to chop and stir and baste his creations.

"Bless your heart, good sir," he grinned as he tossed the contents of a frying pan, "I thank you for the praise but I am just Nibble, plain old Nibble. Nee is my partner. She handles the stores for me."

"And where is this brilliant partner of yours then?" Ulrich asked, after he had swallowed his mouthful.

"She's up there," Nibble pointed upwards with his carving fork before going back to work on the joint he was slicing, "As I said she minds the stores. Hey, Nee, have you found that stuff I asked for?"

"Just a moment," a female voice called back from within the funnel of storage containers. Ulrich craned side ways to catch a glimpse and then his eyes went wide as he saw her swinging from box to barrel to crate, muttering to herself as she fetched.

"Coming down!" the voice called and then she came swinging down, arms full of produce and back legs controlling her decent, flipping, twirling and swinging her in the tight loops of a high flying rope dancer in the most famous big top in the world as her front legs where also occupied with holding on to the needed supplies.

"There we go," she smiled, hanging upside down above the counter tops, her long, ash white braid inches from Nibbles nose as she set down the bundles and packets and boxes, "More dried giant mushroom, bear claws, thyme, rosemary, eggs, parsnips, turnips, taters, beetroot, flour, kidney aaaaaaand steaks, delicately smoked. The butter and lard you are going to have to fetch yourself from the cold store."

"And I have told you to keep your hair away from the counter tops," Nibble twitched the end of her braid with a smile on his muzzle.

"Oh come on," she flipped herself the right way up on her line of silk, eight legs drawing it tight in a cats cradle design, "How else am I supposed to show off to our guests? I did hear the chatter while I was up there, it wasn't like you were keeping your voices down."

Nee was most definitely short for Arachne and Kaelin did wonder if the Ash Elves were all going to expire on the spot as the half Ash Elf female, half wolf spider centaur thing turned her face towards them. Kaelin was of the opinion that this one was at least half way easy on the eyes as she didn't have the bloated appearance of the one they had come across before, when they had discovered they had spent most of the first day in the Underworld going in a circle.

"Erm, have you ever heard of a friendly one among the Disgraced. I believe you called them that yesterday?" Ulrich spoke quietly from the side of his mouth as Nibble distracted her for a moment with a sample from a dish he was preparing.

Quenril swallowed, winced as it stuck and took a swallow of the drink that had been poured out for them, swilling it around his mouth before he swallowed, trying to wet his tongue and giving himself a chance to think of an answer.

"I suppose there is a first for everything," he admitted at last.

"Never any campfire tales?" Ulrich asked for clarification, "Never any..."

Quenril was shaking his head and Tasnar clutched his brother's arm as Nee wandered towards them, eight furry feet dabbing soundlessly across the pale stone of the floor as she tugged her tight, black leather vest straight and smoothed her hair back. Ulrich stood and bowed from the waist.

"Hello there, Lady Nee," he stated, "May I introduce myself? I am Ulrich Brekka of the House of Brekka and chosen of Lady Silvra. These are the good Lady's brothers and cousin, who have accompanied us under their sister's directions and have granted us their knowledge of the Underworld."

"Oh Snake Clan," Lady Nee smiled, "Oh that explains everything. I will admit that it has been a while since I bothered to wander home. After I found here, I have to confess that I just lost interest in all the nastiness at the Citadel. Just how are the Clans doing these days? Still trying to murder each other when they are not looking?"

The three Ash Elves were mute, eyes wide faces pale, obviously waiting for the pleasant mask to drop.

"I'm not entirely sure as to what you are referring too..." Ulrich hazarded.

"Well you definitely didn't grow up down here," Nee smiled even more widely, revealing the swiveling fangs of a spider but her tone was pleasant, "Trust me, the if the Clans aren't trying to murder each other then they are just scheming up a new plan to score one higher. It's why I left, I got sick of all the back stabbing and having to watch over my shoulder all the time. I've always been too nice for my own good." She shrugged a shapely shoulder and flicked her braid down her back. She saw him looking. "Oh yeah, its also why I wound up like this." She ran her hands down to where her body transitioned to being a spider. "As I said, too nice for my own good, finally saw a male I like the look of, only turned out my sister wanted him as well and she could play the game a lot more nasty than I could. Played her game, cast her net and I'm the one caught in it. Still the one I feel really sorry for was Imbros, sister always threw her toys away after she got bored of them so he's probably not in a good spot right now."

 "I take it Imbros was the male you were interested in?" Ulrich asked carefully.

"Oh yes and despite everything that happened afterwards I get to hold on to one bit of joy," Nee smiled and Ulrich smiled back, inviting her to continue, "I got him first!"

"Oh," Ulrich played along, chuckling, "And I guess your sisters didn't know?"

"Didn't suspect a thing," Nee's smile had a wicked edge, "So one to me."

"Seems a bit of a steep price to pay for scoring that one over her," Kaelin observed.

"Oh come on," Nee rolled her eyes, "Allow me to keep one bit of pride after I lost everything else." Quenril and his relatives stared, obviously expecting an angry response to Kaelin's point, not the half joking shake of the head.

"So how did you find this city of marvels?" Ulrich smiled, back meeting her eyes. She looked at him and an expression crossed her face, very similar to the one that Lady Zilvra had worn the first time he had meet her gaze.

"It seems that people find this place when they need to," she admitted, "I wanted out of a place that rejected me but wouldn't let me go. The goturi needed a place they could call home while they organized their society and learnt how to make a place for themselves without getting stepped on before they even started. Eryale needed people who weren't going to start screaming and running the moment they saw her. The whole place seems to be a city of refugees, even those who are just passing through and need a rest break. I sometimes wonder this place calls them in some how." She pursed her mouth.

"That would be your area of expertise," Kaelin flicked a pea across the table at Jeremiah. He scowled at her.

"Am I missing something?" Nee frowned, causing a very pretty little fold between her eyebrows.

"You mean other than that Jeremiah has the direct line to the Great Hereafter, the afterlife, the occult and the ibbly gribbly mumbo jumbo thingime bobs," Kaelin wiggled her fingers and rolled her eyes. Jeremiah closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. One day he was going to make this pack of ingrates respect him.

"Well, preacher man?" Kaelin asked, "You getting any feeling for something in this city calling people to it?"

He opened one eye and glared at her but after a moment he closed it. Despite his best wishes, her suggestion of something calling people into the city had pecked his interest as it spoke of a power that could be truly ancient, ancient and intoxicating if he could harness it and bend it to his will.

After a moment he sighed and shook his head.

"I sense no power source within the city," he admitted, struggling to hide his disappointment, "If there is any power here it is merely that of location and the personal guidance of the gods."

"I don't know if that reassures me or worries me," Nee admitted and then shrugged, "But never mind, we've managed so far, I'm sure we'll continue."

"It does surprise me that you have so much produce in storage," Ulrich cast a quick eye towards the funnel of the goturi's stores. The first impression had been correct, they were held in place by fabric, a woven net of spider silk, each strand as thick as a cable. The sheer strength was staggering. "May I ask how you manage to grow them without the light of the sun?"

"Oh we don't grow them down here," Nee smiled, "We get them from the surface."

"The surface?" Ulrich blinked, "Your people manage to travel between here and the surface regularly?"

"And that is surprising because?" Nee asked, eight feet fidgeting a little, one leg rubbing her spider back where a bubble bursting in a pot and splashed her fur. Ulrich looked at Quenril and raised his eyebrows. Before he could verbally ask Quenril shook his head slightly, flicking a nervous glance at Nee.

"It surprises me because the Ash Elves had no idea your people were down here in the Underworld," he admitted, "It surprises me that with your bright colors you managed to remain hidden from detection with parties having to regularly travel between the two."

"Oh I see," she smiled again, "And you miss understand, the foraging parties don't go through the Underworld. As you say that would just run too much risk of them bumping into unfriendly parties. They go through the doorways."

"The doorways?" Ulrich inquired.

 "Yeah," Nee smiled, looping a line of silk through her hands and fashioning a knot at the end of it, "The doorways. Their an old artifact that the goturi found in this place. Some how, and don't ask me how because I wasn't there at the time, they managed to activate one without blowing the whole place up and once they had done it once they managed to do it again. As to the places beyond them, well, some are definitely on Hestia as it is how they trade their hunting and crafting skills to gain what they can't make themselves. Others, might be on totally different worlds or maybe they are on this world but in a totally different time. I still can't make up my mind on the that one but the goturi are brilliant hunters so it doesn't seem to matter to them and they are not wasteful so..." She spread her hands.

"Hey Nee," Nibbles called, "I need the ingredients for my extra special, super duper fruit  punch."

"On it," Nee called over her shoulder. Such a shapely shoulder, it was such a shame about what had happened to her below the waist. "Have to go, the help is needed." She winked at them all and turned, whirling her line of silk and unleashing it at the funnel of the goturi's storage area. It struck and stuck and she was shimmying up the line before the eyes were really sure that it was secure, eight legs surprisingly graceful as she disappeared up into the thick atmosphere of the storage area, where smoke and steam hid her.

"Phew," Ulrich said as he sat down again and picked up his eating irons, "Well that's something I never thought I'd see after reading Risgath's book, a friendly Disgraced."

"It seems that even among us we have always assumed wrong," Quenril admitted, "We always thought that they were driven mad by falling so far and to be a male around one was akin to a death sentence as their hatred was driven to a frenzy by a reminder of what they had lost."

"Seems the wheel turns and in turn turns more wheels," Tasnar admitted shakily and then stabbed at something on his plate to distract himself from the fact his hands were shaking.

"Yeah, well," Kaelin was doing a fair impression of a mincing machine on her food, "What happens when you live underground, you forget how to change your minds."

Ulrich winced as she spoke through a mouthful of food and pushed a knife and fork across the table top towards her.

"My dear, could you please avail yourself of the flat wear," he grimaced, "You have no need to prove how depraved your father's house was, we are already well aware of it."

Kaelin swallowed and picked up the fork by the prongs, turning it first up and then down as if studying it. Ulrich sighed and shook his head, lowering his eyes to his plate. The fork whipped passed his ear, liking end over end until it sank, with a sharp thud, the whole length of the pongs into a wooden pillar. Her look was a challenge as she locked eyes with Ulrich.

"Well, that was just rude," a slightly high pitched voice spoke. Kaelin snapped her glance to her flung fork, convinced the voice had come from there.

"My dear Kaelin," Ulrich tried to convince her to at least try, "We are in public. As much as we all know and have come to accept you atrocious lack of table manners, we are with strangers and it would give said strangers a much better impression of the quality of the King's Special if you didn't cover the table cloth with your leavings. If nothing else it is a waste of food."

Kaelin sighed and rolled her eyes, picking up her knife as she gave in just this once. The knife folded in half and when she waved it the blade wobbled like a piece of cooked spaghetti or maybe a length of string. She looked at Ulrich with a cocked eyebrow.

"I trust my hands," she stated, "Bite me."

The knife bit her.

"Yow!" Kaelin squawked, tugging at it and flinging it down by Ulrich's plate when its teeth let go of her skin. It turned into a large, green, speckled caterpillar and trundled off across the table top.

"Oh Kaelin," Ulrich shook his head sadly, "Look at what you have done; you've insulted the knife."

"That was not a knife," Kaelin snapped, nursing her bitten finger, "I've flogged silver wear, I know a knife and that was not a knife." She grabbed her meat with her hands and bit down on it. It let loose a a long, mournful, discordant honk. She stared at it in disbelief. It had turned into a rubber chicken. She looked round to have words with Nibble about the quality of his produce and realized that the Grand Hall was suddenly disturbingly quiet - they were the only ones in there.

"Um guys," she said, looking around at the suddenly empty seats, "We may have trouble."

"Woof, woof," agreed Jeremiah. Everyone goggled at him.

"Grrrrrrrrrrrr, grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, woof, woof, bawk!" he stated.

Kaelin picked up her plate and sniffed. It just seemed to be omelette but she suddenly had a bad feeling that it had been spiced with something other than the usual herbs.

As Kaelin sniffed at her food, Thorian turned his head and stared. A small, pink pony had just bounced through the wall on the far side of the room. Her mane and tail were a startling puff of curls and she had the bluest eyes he'd ever seen in a living creature's face. There also seemed to be some sort of tattoo emblazoned on her flank but he couldn't make out what it was as she bounced towards them. It really was a bounce, all four pink hooves off the floor at once and Thorian's ears twitched as he swore he heard the sounds of coiling and uncoiling springs. She stopped by their table, jogging on the spot as she stared at them.

"Come on silly billies," she admonished them in a high voice, "You're going to miss the party! Come on!" She bounced off across the room and plunged into the other wall, which didn't even ripple. Thorian stared and then sat back. After a moment he tried to slap himself to see if he could wake up. He received a custard pie to the face, a custard pie that hadn't been in his hand a moment before.

"It's Lucy in the sky with diamonds," Kaelin sang off key, leaning dangerously far back on the bench and spreading her arms wide. Estella laughed so hard she had tears rolling down her face.

"That ruddy Nee has poisoned us," Thorian slammed his fists down on the table, his fork stabbing into his wrist. His whole body juddered, his eyes rolling wildly, his teeth clamping shut, the tips of his ears smoking until Estella slid her plate across the table to knock the fork out of contact.

"Wow," Thorian gasped, when he had managed to catch his breath, "That was tingly."

"Do you feel better then," Ulrich stared at him as the pink polka dots dance over his skin.

"No, no Aye don't feel better," Thorian huffed, "I don't feel better at all." He stamped his feet and the loudest, ripest whizzpoppers rang out, making the grand hall ring like a church bell. Thorian looked down to see that his boots had become whoopee cushions. He frowned and screwed up his face, not impressed at all. With a roar he stood and heaved the table into the air, intending to smash it on the ground. It became an elephant that flapped its tiny ears and drifted up into the sky, Thorian dangling below it like the basket of a hot air balloon. He looked down between his feet to see the clouds drifting between him and the multicolored patchwork land below. He decided to hang on.

 "Well hello there, good fellow," a voice said, "You do seem to be rather new here, I must say."

Thorian turned his head and saw something draping itself over the pile of a fluffy white cloud. It was a bizarre amalgamation of several different animals, its stag like head crowned by the curled horns of a ram, its eyes had the slit pupils of a cat, its impossibly long, skinny form rippling through the air as it 'swam' closer to Thorian, its mismatched legs either trailing along its body or drawing invisible symbols in the air as it came closer.

"Indeed, indeed you are new, well this is a turn up for the books," it folded itself in midair like it was sitting on a chair that did not exist, somehow keeping pace with the flying elephant, "It has been quite a while since I've had a new friend. That's the only problem when you are an immortal embodiment of a primeval force; you just get to know someone and puff, they're gone." Six little figurines danced round its claws as it spoke and then with a snap of its fingers they popped into rainbows that wiggled away through the clouds, illustrating its point. It reached inside its ear and pulled out a wand. Jabbing it into a fluffy white cloud it offered it to Thorian.

"Want a taste?" it asked.

"Do yah take me for a fool?" Thorian asked with a grunt. His arms were beginning to get tired.

"Nope," it replied, taking a huge bite out of the cloud, "Just someone with a sweet tooth and I do so love cotton candy that I thought you might like to share." It bite the other half of the cloud and then swallowed the stick for dessert.

"Still no," Thorian grunted.

"Oh well then," the creature swirled in the air, drawing a perfect circle in the air with its body round Thorian so he hung in the middle of it like a picture on the bull's eye, "One has to wonder what do you want, hum?" it asked with its head upside down by Thorian's ear.

"You," Thorian grunted again.

"As you wish," the creature wiggled to an upright position a little way from Thorian and unscrewed its front left foot, the one that looked like an eagle's claw, "Here you are then." It handed Thorian its foot. Thorian took it, looked at it for a moment and then slapped the creature with it. The creature, unattached foot and all, exploded into confetti.

"Huh," Thorian grabbed the elephant with both hands again, "Aye knew he wasn't real." The elephant flapped on, Thorian swinging slowly from side to side below it.

*

 Kaelin watched Thorian swing off below the flying elephant that had been their table half a minute before and sighed. She had actually liked the taste of Nibbles cooking but seeing that it was poisoned there was nothing for it. She gulped a deep breath. She gulped another. After she gulped a third she screwed her eyes shut, clenched her fists, tensed her shoulders and heaved.

She threw up a pack of playing cards.

She tried to speak, she tried to yell but all that came out of her mouth was a load of verbal spaghetti syllables and little white rectangles of card that showered down like a drift of snow. She clamped her teeth together and the blizzard of playing cards stopped. She blinked and felt something in her mouth. She flicked it round with her tongue until it pocked out of her lips where she could see it. It was the ace of spades. She spat it out and tried again.

She threw up a fur-ball.

A great big, brown, fuzzy fur-ball that squeaked and squealed at her, sounding not unlike someone rubbing a damp cloth over a squeaky window, before turning its back and bustling off beneath the grapevines. Kaelin blinked and looked around at the vineyard that now stretched as far as the eye could see.

"Oh I drives my cattle through the vineyard."

 A voice sung in the distance, accompanied by the rattling of cow bells and low, mournful moos.

"Oh I drives my cattle through the vineyard.

Through the vineyard,

Through the vineyard,

Through.

 Oh I drives my cattle through the vineyard,

This here herd of cows,

I herd it through the grapevine."

 Kaelin closed her eyes and lay down on the grass, draping an arm over her eyes, waiting for the merry madness to stop.

"Bah!" the grass told her. Kaelin lifted her arm slightly from her face, looking at the sky.

"Bah!" the grass told her again. She blinked, waiting for it to stop.

"Bah!" it said again. With a sigh Kaelin let her arm drop to her side and looked at the sky. Before the grass could speak again she turned her head and looked.

She was on the back of a white sheep that was so big it felt flat where she lay but its flock mates that flapped around them where most definitely as round as could be. They were almost perfectly round, with four stick thin legs pocking out under neither and a weirdly rounded head with eyes that were definitely off center. It was like someone had taken a child's drawing of a sheep, made it real, made it huge and given it wings, fluffy white wings, so it could fly.

"Seriously?" Kaelin asked, propping herself up on her elbows.

"Bah!" the sheep replied. Kaelin sighed and rolled her eyes but resigned herself to enjoying the view. It was kind of magnificent, the herd beating its way through the sky, apparently eating the wisps of cloud that billowed up from below them, the sun shining in a vault of sky that was a blue so intense that it looked artificial. The breeze blew her hair back from her face.

A shadow crossed over her.

Kaelin looked up in time to see a massive black dragon, who hide was speckled with swirling nebula drop from the heavens, mouth gaping wide.

Valodrael's maw crashed into one of the outliers of the flock and with a startled bah it vanished, Valodrael plunging on into the cloud as the mass of the gigantic sheep rolled down his gullet.

"Did you have to do that?" Estella yelled from where she was crouched on the back of his neck, arms wrapped round the girth of one of his six horns, fingers not able to reach half way round.

"I did mention that  I was becoming hungry, did I not?" his voice rumbled up though her legs, "And you have already had dinner. I have to find my own where I can." What could have been a drawn sheep face bulged beneath his hide but then sank out of sight as he slowly pulled his straight drop dive into a shallower angle, bursting through the cloud base to reveal a rolling ocean, the ripples of waves miles long rolling on and on.

With a whinny the Kirin talisman galloped to join them, only now it wasn't a small carved wood figurine, it was a full sized stallion that galloped at Valodrael's shoulder, its hooves shining in the air and its mane streaming in the wind. Estella stared and smiled as she realize that all her talismans were with them, even the purple frog, kicking its legs in the air as if it was swimming in a deep pool and singing, its voice that sounded like a violin shivering in the air.  The air warmed as they dropped lower and lower until, when she craned to look down Estella could see Valodrael's shadow chasing over the wave tops. The seagulls rose to meet them, crying their haunting call. Valodrael grinned and dove to meet them, his vast size shrinking to something more swift and nibble, Estella now sitting comfortably astride his neck as his wings rose and fell in great sweeps, racing the talismans that rode on his wing tips. Estella leaned forward, opened mouthed as ahead a landscape of white topped mountains, some of them rising directly out of the rolling swell of the ocean came into view.

"Settle back," Valodrael instructed.

"Settle back?" Estella asked. Valodrael turned his head slightly so she could see his grin.

"Settle back and grip with your knees," he instructed.

"Okay," Estella hazarded, sliding further down his short for a dragon neck until she was wedged against his shoulders, "Em if I grip too hard..."

"You can't and I would suggest you hang on," he straightened his neck, still grinning.

"Hang on to wha..." she grabbed two of his horns as he went into a straight up climb, wings thumping with effort, sea birds left far below as they raced for the heavens, clouds coming closer again, talismans trailing behind them.

"Oh whoa hoa!" Estella laughed, "Whoa hoa! This is awesome!"

She lifted one hand, reaching up, stretching beyond his head, trying to touch the clouds.

"Ready?" Valodrael called.

"Ready for what?" Estella asked with a frown. Still grinning Valodrael leveled for a second and then tilted forward, folding his wings.Estella's laugh became a long drawn out yell that was ripped from her mouth and trailed behind them as they plummeted towards the ocean. Estella squealed as the blue thundered towards them.

There was a mountain, rushing up towards them.

"Val?" she asked.

The mountains needle like point surged towards them.

"Val?" she called.

Any second the mountain was going to impale them.

"Val!" she yelled.

With a solid boom, his wings crack wide, membranes straining, the air compressing as white streaks off the wing tips. Valodrael laughed as his wing bones creaked with the effort to take the wicked pressure then he flicked a wing finger and what had been a breaking drive became a thunderous surge forward, whipping them across the wave tops. Estella drew the breath to scream and then they were among the sea mounts, solid rock rushing passed so fast that it was seen only as flickers of grey, the air roaring in the ears as it was compressed by the speed of their passage. There was no time to think, no time to decided, all she could do was hold on and lean with his motion. Right through the gap. Left, skim the rock surface so close his claws struck sparks. Right, through the surge of spray. Left, the air booming as it ripped over his wings.  Left again, Estella hugging close to his neck, gasping, not quite screaming, not quite cheering. Right, solid rock ahead!

He rolled fully over and pulled up and they were over, wings opening into the down beat again to carry them up and now Estella let go that long held breath as a cheer that echoed the roar that thundered up his throat, her arms held wide to the world and the sun and the sea.

She leaned forward again and took hold of his horns, laughing a juddering, gasping laugh as the terror and exhilaration back washed through her, making her muscles twitch. They rose on an up swell of air that carried them up and over the head land and then they were gliding over expanses of green, the ground rolling beneath them with the shaggy look of a forest rather than cultivated fields. Ahead the land rose again, a waterfall spilling through the narrow gap between two hills that had ambitions to become mountains and then they threaded the gap and a high cold lake was spread out below them. Valodrael glided over the water, swooping until his could lower his back feet and drag his talons through the surface sending up a long kick of spray. A school of large fish leapt from the water head of them, chased by his shadow into the shallows and now leaping to avoid the bow wave they felt coming. Valodrael snapped and Estella leaned back, sitting up on his neck so he could flick his neck back and forth until he got the fish positioned right. Its slippery length vanished out of sight.

"I still say your sin is gluttony," Estella remarked. 

"My sin?" he asked, "Just the one? Personally I'm a fan of all seven." He grinned, tilting his wings into the barest back wing necessary to bring them into land as she giggled. With one last boom he folded his wings and rustled them flat, the talismans landed softly around them, some nickering and blowing their disapproval of the risks Valodrael had taken with their mother.

"Still speeding hither and tither," a quiet voice observed, "You haven't changed old friend."

Estella looked round as she stepped on to the back of Valodrael's held up wrist and then to the ground. Someone stood watching them. Estella knew she was short compared to many people, barely making the five foot mark but this one was shorter than she was, yet much wider, barrel chested and girthy as well. His stripped muzzle was smiling at them from beneath his hat of woven straw, walking staff held in one broad paw.

"Sheng Tie," Valodrael bowed his head to the badger standing there in green robes; Estella copied the gesture.

"It has been some time," Sheng Tie bowed back, greeting the Void Dragon as if he was an old friend, "I did always wonder what you would look like as your own person, though you still seem incomplete."

Estella turned her head and stared as Valodrael looked down at his own chest to follow Tie's gaze. Estella put her hand to her mouth.

Valodrael's chest was an empty, gaping ruin, ribs snapped off where they should have rooted to the keel of his breast bone, a dark cavity that seethed with ruinous powers that were not energy but rather their opposite.

"Ah," Valodrael noted, "I've never seen that before but it rather explains why being without a host becomes so painful." He lifted a hand and dipped his fingers into the churning maelstrom. His claws withered and flaked, drifting to an ash that faded from sight. He took his paw away and after a while his claws regrew.

"What was done to you should not have been done," Sheng Tie observed gravely, "But since it has been done we must now learn how to deal with it. Come, the tea is ready."

He turned and lead them across the threshold of the temple that had not been there a moment ago. Out of curiosity Estella followed him, Valodrael pacing along at her shoulder, now the size of a Clydesdale draft horse, the lines of perspective bending around him, still giving the impression that he was a much larger creature seen at a far distance.

Sheng Tie sent down his staff and the pack he'd had slung on his back and then sat cross legged on the mat in the garden, Estella sitting seiza style across from him, Valodrael laying cat style beside her, the talismans exploring the grounds of the temple. Sheng Tie lifted the tea pot off of its little stand and poured tea into the cups that had no handles. Setting the pot back on the stand he waited until Estella and Valodrael had picked up their cups but they waited until he had drank first.

"You have been trained in good manners," Sheng Tie complimented Estella. She looked first at the temple, with its upturned corners and its pillars of cedar wood, its elaborate gate posts standing strong, every joust and beam held together, not with nails or pins but with cleverly carved joints so that when the earth moved below them the roof would not fall.

"I believe that I come from a society that has many of the same values," she said at last.

"Not enough," Valodrael muttered into his tea, tongue lapping slowly at the hot, honey sweetened liquid.

"I see," Sheng Tie observed, his dark eyes gentle, "So you are one of the children of the Astral All Father. I did wonder about trying to visit that land but I decided that I had no ready wish to live the last of my life in a cage as an oddity to be stared at. I had to leave visiting that land to my good friend Valodrael."

"It took a while longer than I had planned it to," the dragon admitted, "But I must say that the company has been worth the wait." He smiled at Estella from the corner of his eye, the gleam of dying supernova shining with something a lot more lively that such things usually are. Estella looked away after a moment, a blush rising in her cheeks.

"So you are another willing host for our strange friend," Sheng Tie smiled, "I am a nosy old badger, would you mind telling me the story."

"I..." Estella hesitated, looking deeply into her tea cup and taking a sip, "It starts with my talismans." She began. 

*

Ulrich sighed as Thorian flew off hanging on to a flying elephant and Kaelin spat a stream of nonsense and disappeared in a storm of playing cards.

"I am surrounded by peasants," he observed as he finished his dinner. Having cleared his plate he pushed back from the table and fall over backwards into water as he chair disappeared below him. For a moment he struggled as the chill closed about him and the bubbles obscured his sight and then the waters cleared as he sank further down and he realized that despite being completely immersed water he was still breathing.

"Well, this is marginally interesting," he noted as he sank further down towards the sea bed that was decorated with branches and pillows of some strange type of tropical plants. Their bright patterns and varied forms gave Ulrich the impression of his father's carefully landscaped gardens. He settled cross legged on the sea bed, looking round at the dancing shoals of sprats that fluttered among the sea flowers like butterflies in the world above the waters. The shoals suddenly burst away as a larger darker shape swim out of the gloom of the sea horizon. Her shoulders were dark blue while her belly was pale, blending into the water around her, eyes as dark as deep, deep pools, the gills running down her sides rather than her neck, the openings through which she took in water in the triangle formed by the base of her neck, her collar bones and her shoulder blades. Her tail was long and flat like an eels with a tall dorsal sail, rippling as it drove her through the water. She turned as she swam passed Ulrich, her webbed hands spreading wide to stop her in the brine, her hair like a mass of dark tentacles, spiraling in the water like the arms of a sea anemone.

"Hi sailor," her voice was low, melodic.

"Well I say, what cheek!" Ulrich exclaimed, "I'll bally well have you know that I am not one of the rank and file!" He sat and pout as she drifted in the water, looking at him from every angle, "If, ma'am, I was so inclined to take to the brine way of life then I would be a captain, a captain and a monarch of the King's Navy! Yes I would, I..."

He stopped as the main sail boomed and bellied above his head, the prow rearing high over a swell to crash back down with a splash of spray. On the deck, sailors in blue and white scurried and hurried to make sure that the deck was swabbed, the rigging clean and the ropes coiled in their proper places. Ulrich looked about himself noticing that his executive officer was handing a matter of discipline in a timely manner, and that the course heading was on being monitored in a timely manner, as the breeze played with the ruffles on his tricorn. All seemed to be in order.

"Land Ho!" the cry came down from the crows nest, "Land Ho!"

There was an immediate surge of activity from the men as they tried to catch a glimpse of the promised land before the bosun had them back to work. Ulrich stepped to the railing and raised his telescope to his eye.

The island with twin peaks loomed out of the mist, solemnly looking back at Ulrich. He frowned, looked at his telescope, shook it and raised it to his eye again.

The island looked back again, its many eyes rolling in the flesh at the edge of its shell, the tendril like feelers between them waving in the air as its shell cracked open further, the ocean roaring into a cataract as it was pulled by the force of gravity itself, pouring down into the clams gaping maw.

"All hands to battle stations!" Ulrich commanded.

"All hands to battle stations!" the bosun bellowed and the crew jumped to work in a blink, their moment of paralyses broken, feet thundering on the deck, the executive officer handing out fire arms, sailors running down the forward hatch to the gun deck, from which rumbled the sound of the long guns being primed and loaded.

"Mister Barrel," Captain Ulrich called.

"Yes sir?" the pilot at the wheel asked.

"Take us in full speed," Captain Ulrich ordered.

"Aye aye Sir!" the pilot snapped and swung the wheel, holding the ship steady as the current took them.

"Hold the fire," Ulrich called as the shadow of the clam loomed over them, its madly rolling eyes watching them in turn.

"Hold the fire!" the executive called down the hatch.

"Hold fire!" a voice echoed up, even as the hatches were pulled open and the cannons heaved into place.

The ship rocked below them as the waves turned white and roared, the lips of the clam towering over the top most spar of the mast. As the gloom of its interior closed about them there came a gut churning rumbling sound that made the deck shiver beneath their feet, the shell of the clam beginning to close.

"Fire!" Ulrich ordered.

"Fire!" the executive officer snapped.

"Fire!" the voice from below roared and the cannons thundered, the sharp crack of the rifles on deck snapping out as well and the clam burned, burned up, burned away, some areas turning dark, others bubbling, some shining through bright white. The white spread, the bubbling running before it until it all turned white and bleed away.

"And that it how the brave men of the HMS Attirement, under my brave and inspiration leadership, defeated the Giant Clam of Agamemnon and cleared the sea passage of the Iliad for the safe passage of trade and travel through the Lazuli Sea," proclaimed Ulrich, standing on the prow of the scenery boat as the gas lights flooded the stage with light, "They held their nerve through thick and thin and responded most fortuitously to my good sense and clear orders, never once shirking their duty as good sailors to the King, while I, with great bravery and stead fast courage lead them through the darkest order and out into the light of success and fortune. Thus did I win myself the name of Baron Ulrich of the kingdom of Portasia and gods bless his Majesty."

The audience of crabs rose to their many feet, crashing their claws together in wonder and awe at Ulrich's skills, his bravery, his abilities, his courage. Lady Zilrva smiled from the royal box and accepted the rose he held up to her.

Quenril hurried through the cramped corridors of some where he didn't recognize. He could hear the voice of his sister's favorite, echoing some where in the building and the rapacious applause that followed. He stumbled to a stop in a irregular shaped room that was more the place where several corridors met than an actual designated room, trying to get a sense of the direction he should be running in. A door opened and Sabal stepped through, sword in hand.

"Have you seen him?" he demanded the moment he saw Quenril.

"No I haven't," Quenril admitted, "I'm not even sure where we are any more."

"When I find him I'm going to gut him for what he has done," Sabal snarled as he let the door swing shut behind him.

"Sabal! We do not threaten the favorite of the Matriarch!" Quenril snapped.

"What?" Sabal looked at him blankly.

"Wait, you weren't speaking of the Matriarch's favorite?" Quenril frowned.

"Of course not!" Sabal protested, "I am not a fool."

They both turned as there was a creak behind them. Tasnar was pushing up a dingy brown painting as if it was a flap.

"Oh hello there," he spotted them and swung him legs through the gaps, letting the painting fall back as he stood, "I don't suppose either of you have seen the old chap." They blinked at him. "Oh sorry, I'm picking up his speech patterns, aren't I?"

"That you are old duckie," a voice called to them, "Annoying little snot nosed brat that he is."

Someone was standing high above them of a catwalk, someone in a sharp suit leaning in a ruby topped walking cane, a glass jar held in their other hand. "Still I don't think the little swot will be causing us any more trouble now that I've sent him back to school." The unknown Ash Elf laughed, his reshaped nose marking him out as a Bat Clan member and shook the jar, causing the tiny figure inside to yell in a barely audible voice and wave its fists, "That's where the jumped up little johnny belongs - in detention."

 "Let him out of there!" Sabal charged up the stairs towards the figure. All three of them plunged through the arch way at the top. Quenril charged along the catwalk and stopped. The Bat Clan Elf had disappeared, as had his kin. He looked around. Tasnar was running along the wall across from him, while Sabal was going up by running down the underside of the staircase above. The three of them saw each other almost at the same time.

"That way!" Tasnar dived through an archway in the floor.

"No it's this way!" Sabal continued to plunge down the stairs. Quenril sighed and ran around the corner of the corridor the catwalk ended at. He plunged down the stairs and then realized that he was running  up the stairs at the bottom of the room, while Tasnar scratched his head in the bottom of a u-shaped trench which was actually the top of an arch and Sabal dived through a doorway that was actually a window.

 There was a strange thrumming and then the Bat Clan member rode passed on, in (?) a carriage that had no animal pulling it but was going impossibly fast, whilst making a noise that could have been produced from a badly played horn but was most definitely rude. The three kin charged after him. The carriage thing drove into a corridor that was made of increasingly smaller black and white squares and cornered to slip through the gap made by two of the black strips. The three kin smashed into the corridor full tilt as it was just a painting on the wall.

Someone cackled with laughter. The Bat Clan Elf was pointing at them and then he shook the jar containing Ulrich at them, turned tucking it into his jacket and took off down the corridor. The three kin scrambled to their collective feet and chased after him, running passed the paintings on the wall without looking at them, which was a mistake as one of the paintings tossed a bunch of bananas into their path. Yelling, they slid down the corridor on their butts, coming to a halt in time to see the Bat Clan Elf jump into one of the black spots that was on the floor.

"Someone care to explain to me what is going on?" Tasnar rubbed his head. They all gaped as they watched Thorian go sailing by overhead, still hanging on to the flying elephant.

Thorian sighed and reached for the speaking tube that was also the elephant's trunk.

"Okay, I'd like to get off now," he called into it. The elephant sailed on but rolled its trunk up and out of reach. "Humph, that's rude," Thorian grumped and looked about him. There didn't seem to be any way down and they seemed to be as high up as ever.

"Oh, oh well," Thorian sniffed and let go.

Five minutes later, Thorian watched the clouds still going passed.

"I'm still falling," he told no one in particular but wondering if who ever was controlling this weird day would hear him and decide to change the scenery because it was becoming really, really boring. His eyes drifted shut. It had been a long day and he could really do with having a nap.

The mushrooms were really tasty, sort of sweet and tangy. He couldn't remember how he'd got here but he hadn't really been full when things had started to go weird so he tucked in with a will.

He woke up in a feather bed. It was literally a feather bed, the mattress one huge feather while another was tucked under his head. It was rather warm and soft and comfortable so he stretched and relaxed into it. Nothing was hurting right now so he wasn't going to put it to the test. After a moment he realized that there was something spinning a web in the top of the canopy, which was also made out of feathers, supported on feathers. Thorian frowned.

The tiny copy of Nee, no bigger than a large grape, finished her web spinning with an elegant flourish and noticed him laying below. She rappelled down a length of silk but halted out of reach, her legs stretching the silk tight to bring her decent to a stop.

"You're not in Kansas away more," she observed, flipping the silk into another configuration, one leg acting as the brake lever.

"Aye don't know where Aye am most of the time any way," Thorian shrugged, not lifting a hand.

"Hum," she flipped over, turning the line of silk into an hour glass shape, "Would you like a map?"

Something roared as it flew over head, the air shaking with its passage. It was long, blunt nosed, metal grey, its wings locked in place. How it flew Thorian couldn't work out 'cause it wasn't a dragon but it was as large as one and made enough noise for one. He shook his head and laid back. He was not going to be worried by anything unexplainable any more. He had obviously eaten something that disagreed with him so, until he was sure that he was fully and completely and really awake, he was not going to worry about it. He shifted again. The bed felt lumpy all of a sudden.

"Ah, a proper bed," Thorian grinned and wriggled again. Maybe things were getting back to normal.

"Speak for yourself," the bed said.

"I am," Thorian observed, tucking his hands behind his head and crossing one ankle over the other. A pair of eyes rose up on stalks and glared at Thorian. The skin around them was white and patterned like the feathers had been but they were definitely not feathers.

"Would you mind getting off?" the bed asked in a dangerously flat voice. Thorian pursed his lips and thought about it.

"No," he said at last, "If I don't move I can't hurt myself." He wriggled deeper into the bed or at least tried to, it was distinctly feeling like the shell of the giant crab dude that Ulrich had added to his zoo.

"Well, if that's how you like to play it," the bed said, still in that dangerously flat voice.

"Yep, that's how I..." Thorian began. The bed bucked and Thorian was falling again. He sighed, resigning himself to another age of boredom then he was sliding down a surface that felt like it had a lot of grooves cut into it. He flung out a hand and then he wasn't sliding down the surface but rather sliding along it, tumbling to a stop on a smooth stone floor. He shook his head and sat up. He seemed to be in a corridor but one not quite like anything he'd ever seen. The floor was so smooth it was polished and rows of red boxes stood, stacked one on top of the other, along the corridors. Thorian rubbed his head and then a voice yelled through the corridor accompanied by a metallic buzzing that grated on the nerves.

Thorian jumped to his feet and stared around but couldn't see the source of the noise.

"Jerry," he cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, "Tell the monks to shut up!" The noise cut off so he guessed that he'd guessed right about it being Jerry's fault.

"Student Thorian," a voice cracked like a whip, "You are later for class yet again!" A tall, blue scaled dragonkin stood behind him, a set of half moon glasses perched upon her muzzle, a dark emerald green scholars robe draping her form and a long pointing stick clutched in her hand. She glared down at him. "Do I need to reminded you that any more of this irresponsible behavior and you will be suspended?"

"No Miss," Thorian sighed and bowed his head before turning and heading towards a door, any door, he figured that it didn't matter. As he went he took his shirt off. He knew how dreams like this went and he might as well lose the clothes by his own hand than suddenly realize that he'd lost them without knowing how. He opened the door and walked through.

It was an ice field. The blue and white ripples of it stretched on forever in front of him, unending and bleak, the whistling wind whipping flakes of white passed him and nipping him in all sorts of uncomfortable places. A big white bear lumbered passed and sniggered as it went.

"Well that's just rude," Thorian planted his hands on his hips and realized that he was wearing some clothes. He was wearing a bright pink tutu, its skirt jutting out from the waist like he was wearing a big pink fan. He sniffed and rose up on his toes. The dance was terrible, even Thorian knew it was terrible because he tripped over and went butt over head into a snow bank. He stood up and ripped the tutu off, flinging it away before sitting down to take off his boots. The second one turned into a blue bunny rabbit that hopped forward a couple of times, stood up on its hind legs, hopped round to look at Thorian, blinked and washed its ears. Thorian laughed in delight and clapped his hands.

"Now this is more like it," Thorian said, "Aye like having new friends. Do you want to be mah friend?" The blue bunny twitched its nose at him. "Hey, what about you? Would you like to be my friend?" he called to the big white bear, which was now, somehow a cactus. "Um?" Thorian turned and looked about at the sound of a bicycle bell to see the blue bunny peddling off on a blue bike that had three wheels, Tri-1 emblazoned proudly down its side. Thorian frowned as the blue bunny peddled its way passed a door that stood in the middle of the desert without any walls to hold it up.

*

Kaelin looked round to see a cute portal standing on the back of the flying sheep's wool. It was a-door-able.  She looked at it and it looked back, blinking its single green eye that appeared to take the place of a window at the top of the door. She rolled her eyes and looked away, ignoring the door's invitation and also ignoring the creeping layer of black that crawled towards her, crunching and cracking as it came. Suddenly it retreated, squeaking and groaning like ice under pressure.

Kaelin lurched, hands grabbing the thick fur in front of her, fingers buried deep in the whirls and blotches of black splashed across its hide, knees gripping by instinct on the silver grey tube she was suddenly riding.

"What the damn?" she breathed as her dress flapped its wings at her. She seemed to be wearing a dress of monarch butterflies.

"Fear not good maiden," the silver grey tube swung its end to face her, revealing the broad face of a cat, "For I, Meowt, Guardian of Meow, have saved you!"

Kaelin yelled and punched it. It flopped over on the floor, revealing itself to be a giant glove puppet with no hand inside. Kaelin stepped closer and pocked it with a toe. It just sagged.

"Huh," Kaelin straightened out of her at the ready stance. Her dance fluttered at her. "Oh get off!" she slapped at them with her hands, butterflies exploding in all directions. Once she was sure she was down to being just her proper clothes she humphed and took a step forward.

"Whoa!" she yelled, arms flung wide, leaning first one way then the other way, trying to keep her balance as she slide over the glistening golden yellow surface, her boots digging runnels in what ever it was. As her forward progress slowed Kaelin sniffed. It was butter, she was sliding on a huge pat of butter.

"Alright!" she yelled, "I've had enough of this. I want out of this and I want out of it now! I don't care who you are - god, demon or primeval force of chaos - I want out now! You hear me?"

There was a greasy sounding splat to one side of her. Kaelin turned her head, corrected for the change in balance and saw a broad set of marble stairs leading up to some where. She rolled her eyes. Not only was this thing incredibly annoying but it also had delusions of grandeur. She turned, slipped, flung her arms out, keep her balance and carefully slide her feet towards the bottom of the stairs. She slid one way, she slid the other, she whirled her arms, she fell... and caught herself on the bottom of the banister as her feet slipped out from under her. She blew a sharp breath of relief and pulled her feet out of the butter. Clinging to the banister, working hand over hand she started making her way up the stairs, grunting and muttering about idiots who leave masses of butter all over the place.

*

 "And that is as far as I have come so far," Estella admitted as the cherry blossom petals floated in the air around them, the orchard where they now sat pink with the drifts of flowers, the beginnings of a new talisman in her hands, "Sinbar was fairly sure that I was on the right path to create the right runic array for Valodrael to help stabilize the energy transfer. I'm know that I can source the talisman wood, Sinbar has given me a reel of silver tap to press the runes into and one of the books I took from Nanny Tatters' lair did have a potion used to increase magically ability, which I was thinking of using as a varnish for the wood because I figure every little helps but my major hurdle is finding a power source big enough to act as the foundation for the whole. After what happened last time, I'm... I'm scared of getting it wrong." She closed her eyes, a tear sliding down her cheek. Valodrael shifted over and brought his wing up, pressing her close to his shoulder, resting his chin lightly on the top of her head as the talismans pressed close, gathering around to comfort their mother.

"You have been good for one another," Sheng Tie observed.

"Pardon," Estella looked up at him with a slight frown.

 "You have been good for one another," Sheng Tie said again, cradling his tea cup in his massively broad paws "I will confess that when I was Valodrael's host I was more concerned with trying to calm the storm that I sensed him to be. I saw him as a force of nature that needed to be calmed, channeled, tamed even. It took me many long years to learn to let go of that ambition and accept that where we civilized people see only the destruction that the storm leaves in its wake, nature sees opportunity. Where we see only the loss of what was burnt, nature sees a blank canvas that she can work her magic upon. Disasters can destroy a culture or it can make it grow. Valodrael is that disaster and it was foolish of me to think I had the right to constrict that disaster. I think you have done something that I, with all my will to tame and decrease, failed to do."

Valodrel looked at him with one eyebrow raised.

"You have made him a friend and that makes him wish to... to narrow the scope of destruction."

Valodrael grinned, a serial killer smile, as the form of a fish thrashed under his hide.

"Oh I am not saying that you are not dangerous, Valodrael," Sheng Tie observed, baring his own sharp teeth in a smile "You are still the storm but I think your are more focused than you used to be. The tornado is brutal for the people caught in its path but it is more focused than the cyclone that flings its destruction wide and you are no mindless air current that gouges the land upon which it walks."

"Want to bet?" Valodrael grinned.

"Maybe," Sheng Tie still smiled as he set down his cup and refilled the tea pot with water, "Maybe I too learnt something from you in our time together. Perhaps I learnt to enjoy the thrill of living dangerously, once in a while." He held the tea pot in both hands. Estella leaned forward as the steam started rising from the spout. She frowned and looked at Valodrael, annoyed with him about something.

"I can't hear you out here," he smiled, "I have many fine and impressive flaws. Being a mind reader is not one of them."

She blinked and then Sheng Tie laughed.

"You are wondering how I make the tea hot with no flame," his rounded figure rippled with mirth as he chuckled, "We will get to that in a moment. But first, you, Valodrael, asked me if I'll bet that you are no longer so mindless about the people you can harm so I ask you, if you and Estella finally settle some where and that country is invaded would you prefer to blow up a mountain to starve the invading army into submission? Or would you prefer to create a tornado and run it over the top of their army?"

Valodrael frowned as Sheng Tie poured the tea and set the pot down and then he snorted.

"I would prefer to create the tornado and run it over their army," he admitted, "And I could say that, as I am the last of my kind, waking a volcano would take too long to do or that I would enjoy watching their general's face as he see all his power vanish in one banshee shriek of screaming cloud more than watching their despair at slow starvation. But the truth is I'd use the tornado because I can control and direct that one so that it leaves Estella untouched, whereas a year without a summer would affect her as well as my targets." His eyes, the color of dying supernova, sparkled with wry humor. "You got me, old badger, you got me at last."

"No," Sheng Tie smiled, shaking his striped head a little, "I did not 'get you' because I could not do so. I was willing to be your host only because I thought that if I was I would be able to cage you, tame you, break you to the saddle like one would break a horse. Yes, I learnt to respect you as a force of nature that cannot be tamed and cannot be averted but my offer of friendship can too late, born out of an acceptance that I would not truly be free of the mistakes of my past. I could not erase them and I could not erase you and I should not have tried to. Our friendship came too late and was built on a foundation of struggle and control and domination. That is not the sort of friendship that could teacher you to want to narrow your focus and limit the reach of the damage you do. You bowed to my requests to restrain the destructive powers you unleashed because you chose to, the tension that you were choosing that path only to make me indebted to you, to make me afraid that one day you would not chose that path, was always there. But with Estella, has she ever had to ask you limit yourself? To consider the consequences of your actions to her? Has she ever asked you to think of judging who deserves to be the target of your need to hurt and destroy? Or do you do that before she asks, just to please her?"

Valodrael said nothing, just blinked at Sheng Tie but then he turned his head as Estella wrapped her arms around his neck.

"I know you," she whispered, "I see you. I know that you are a killer and that you enjoy it but I also trust you to leave that at the door when it comes to me. I trust to you."

"Some would say you are mad for that," Sheng Tie observed as he sipped his tea.

"I know," Estella looked at him, "But I was the prey of men who were monsters. Is it any wonder I now prefer the monster who can keep me save from men?"

"No it is not," Sheng Tie accepted, "But when it comes to that, you have told me that you now have a safe place and a friend in this Seraphar. And yet you have left there, leaving behind your most precious item in the care of another because you fear the risks of this journey. Still you journey, why?"

"Valodrael needs another body, one of his own, his own flesh and blood, one not tied to a parasitical relationship with a host," Estella stated.

"And yet going on this journey puts you in danger, has you facing risks, has you exposed to harm," Sheng Tie observed, "Both from wild beasts and monsters but also from your fellow men. How many times have you run the risk of being discovered as a girl to try and find the knowledge you think you need to restore Valodrael to his own form, something that some will like as not hate you for if they ever know that it was you who unleashed the destruction that is a Void Dragon upon them? How many times have you been afraid?"

Estella looked down as if trying to remember them all but she looked up again just as Valodrael started to shift.

"I don't care," she stated and there was a fire in her eyes, not the wild fire of Valodrael but a deep and well banked fire that could smolder away an eternity, "I don't care how far I have to walk, how much danger I have to face, I will find a way to repair the damage done to him and if he needs me at his side to face the Domilii then I will be there, one way or another."

"And that is why I say that you have been good for each other," Sheng Tie put down his cup, "Could you have imagined saying that when you first left your father's house?"

Estella opened her mouth, her gaze turning inward as she remained silent.

"No," she said at last.

"There you are then," Sheng Tie inclined his head and then rose, "Now to teach you what I know can help you. You have tried the way of the wizard and found that door closed to you but you have found other ways and I think that your idea of combining what you find towards the whole is sound."

"Well you and Sinbar are the only ones," Estella admitted, "Every other Magi I've consulted has been of the one way or the highway mind set."

"If you only listen to one way of wisdom your wisdom will become stagnant and rot into ignorance," Sheng Tie stated, stretching and rolling his arms, "Now I will show you our way of making magic."

Estella stared as she climbed to her feet, leaning on Valodrael while her legs were numb. The cherry orchard was gone, instead her talismans were moving around a wide open plateau of dusty earth, bare and hot under the sun. Sheng Tie turned and walked a little way from them. He pressed his paws together flat and then broke into a series of round house kicks that left fire scorching from his heels. Hands open but the fingers curled and the palms arched back so the heels of his palms led, the fire snapping in waves that roared through the air, he blistered through the moves of a kata, the fire searing sheets that sent heat ripples washing through the air. The fire was part of him , moving with him, bending to his will, to his motion. He flew with the flame, he floated on the air with it but when he planted his feet and stomped, shoulders surging with power as he punched, the air shook with the force of it. He was fire and heat, flowing like water, soaring like air and rumbling with the thunder of the earth. With one final blast he halted, balanced, calm and at ease.

"I was never able to fully teach you how to do that was I?" Sheng Tie smiled at Valodrael as he turned.

"I don't know," Valodrael smiled, "I may have picked up one or two ideas. Had to adapt them to myself though." He crocked his left forefinger and the claw lengthened, pulsing with with a furnace glow that sizzled in the air.

"And that my dear will be your task," Sheng Tie bowed to Estella, "You will have to adapt what you have seen here to your work and blend it with the whole."

"How?" Estella asked, "How do I adapt a magic that is dependent on motion to something that is static and solid?"

"Fire is not the only element Sheng Tie's people can use, though Sheng Tie was unusual for being able to blend the techniques of all the elements and adapt them to his own fire," Valodrael noted, standing beside her, though his head was high above hers, "I think I can share some memories with you, if you would like."

"That would be good," Estella noted, "But again, how does this help?"

"Think of the flow," Sheng Tie instructed, "Think of not the form but the feel, the rush and motion when purpose and direction are united. Here, what is this?" He drew something in the dirt with his staff.

"It's a horse," Estella looked at it a moment.

"Is it?" Sheng Tie asked, "It is a square with a dot inside it, attached to a long line that has a crooked line attached to it and a couple of short lines under the square. How is that a horse?"

"Ah I see," Estella crouched, studying it more closely, "It's not what a horse looks like, it is what a horse is, its speed and its spirit. It's... oh!" She touched the image and it moved with water before settling again.

"Sometimes an image can contain the soul of a thing," Sheng Tie noted, "And sometimes it is the simpler images that contain the most amount of soul."

"So if I carve it as... as a skeleton so to speak," Estella looked at the talisman she had started, "Rather than the outer appearance like this little one. If I look for the inner soul that the elements create and try to carve their image, it might work better?"

"Is it not worth a try?" Sheng Tie asked.

"Yes," Estella said on a deep breath, "Yes it is. Thank you for this lesson Master Sheng Tie. I promise to put it to good use."

"You are most welcome," Sheng Tie bowed, "Now, unfortunately, I think it is time for you to leave."

He gestured to the door that stood in the temple garden, its base buried in the drifts of cherry blossoms.

"Be well, where ever the two of you go," Sheng Tie bowed his head to them. They bowed back and turned towards the door. It blinked its green eye at them as the talismans fell in behind their mother. Behind them the notes of plucked metal strings played out.

"Seeds of the time,

Caught in the flow.

While we cling to the vine,

Scared of what's below.

Little running boy,

Come running home.

Brave running boy,

Can I come home?"

 Estella lifted her hand to the door knob and turned it. The door opened and they stepped through.

*

Jeremiah watched Ulrich disappear below the surface of the water and picked up a cloth. He wiped the table and then settle down to finish his meal. It was so much more pleasant now that he was no longer having to endure the company of uneducated yokels. He enjoyed intelligent conversation, which was why he preferred it when the others shut up.

The food was also very good, when the plate wasn't trying to run off with it.

"Get back here!" Jeremiah thundered but the crockery dashed to the end of the table, jumped down to the bench and then to the floor without really breaking stride, giggle manically as it did so. Jeremiah flung his legs over the bench and gave chase. He had enough missed meals that he wasn't going to miss out on this one. The plate jogged over the floor, shiny white legs pumping and little arms swinging as it laughed at him. Pounding after it, Jeremiah glared as it wiggled its way around the edge of a half open door. Part of Jeremiah's mind recognized that the door didn't seem to belong to the rest of the building, being too ornate in the wrong style and the big green jewel in the top half... Part of him thought he saw it wink at him as he yanked the door open and dived through after his food but he was too focused on reclaiming his dinner to pay it much attention.

"Got you!" he snapped as he seized the impolite piece of ceramic and lifted it into the air. It wiggled its little arms and kicked its little legs but there was nothing it could do as he straightened up.

"It is amazing that you don't seem to understand that the only reason I'm not throwing you on the floor, there by breaking you into a thousand pieces is the fact that you still have part of my dinner on you," Jeremiah observed to it. It ceased its wiggling but wasn't quite done yet.

"What floor?" it asked, its voice surprisingly deep. Jeremiah looked and stepped back from where his foot had been right on the edge. Below him spread a town in shades of red and purple, the houses delightfully wobbly, leaning together for support, even while the people walked around straight and true, people that seemed to come from the fever dream of someone who had drunk too much, with every facial and physical distortion possible but all seemed to be enjoying the day, light up as it were from a sky that seemed more pink than blue. Something huge, with fixed wings, painted in metal greys flew over head, making the world roar with the noise of its passage and scattering the flocks of pink elephants to the skies.

"Humph," Jeremiah groused over the apparent lack of order this place had. There was no obvious sign as to who was high rank and who was low rank. How was one to know who it was that one needed to control if there was no way of telling who held the power?

He turned his back and headed back to the door, which was just in the last moments of folding up and disappearing.

"Humph," Jeremiah snorted again and looked around. There was at least a picnic table near by, which although it lacked the dignity necessary to his station was at least better than having to sit upon the ground. He sat down, the bench groaning beneath him, and finished his meal, making sure to hang on to his plate as he did so. It was rather fascinating to watch the purple clouds go sailing over head as he ate, they were tolerable, if rather slow entertainment.

He was just pushing his now empty plate way, when the picnic table lurched below him. Jeremiah's stomach took a bruising from the edge of the table but he hung on as the tables legs extended and extended until he was uncomfortably high up in the air and then began to stride off, its stride impossibly long and its gait lurching as it strode with one side of feet and then the other side, making its back roll back and forth in a manner not at all like a horse. Jeremiah grunted and clung on but he was not at all happy about being tossed back and forth like a salad in a bowl.

Mouth set in a grim line he clung and struggled and climbed up on to the table top and managed to tug his feet underneath him. He crouched for a moment getting a felt for the tables rhythm and testing his wings before he leapt with a mighty down beat. The walking table fell away behind him almost at once, as did the rest of the land. It suddenly seemed so much easier to fly than it had the first few times he'd tried it. Now he understood why dragons and birds flew so high, much higher than they could ever see prey upon the ground but he would never admit it out loud to anyone. He banked, intending to return to the ground, except there was no ground to return to.

All round him the billows and mounds of a cloud made landscape spread out, its humps and hallows, made from the stuff that appeared to whipped cream. Jeremiah grunted and flew on. Of course this was how it was going to go, this day just wasn't going to make sense, oh no, of course it couldn't just make sense, that would be far to easy. Grumbling and grousing to himself he flew on, soaring through the maze of cloud stuff, which darkened behind him with the pressure of his thoughts. Or was it that his thoughts were calling something to him. He didn't look back.

At last, just as his chest muscles, really were beginning to burn he spotted something ahead of him. It was like  an inverted mountain hanging in the sky and on the flat ground made by its chopped off base, what looked to be a tavern had been built.

"At last," Jeremiah rolled his eyes and flapped towards his new destination. As he came closer he blinked. Surely there was something wrong with his eyes. There wasn't. When he set foot in the yard outside the tavern that was all he could set there - one foot. The tavern didn't even come up to his knee and the door seemed to have been built with mice in mind.

 Jeremiah sighed, fanning his wings to balance while he desperately tried to remember the words of the shrink spell, Gerald buzzing above him to keep his miter in place. After far too long he remembered what he was searching for and chanted the words of the shrink spell.

He groaned and stretched, trying to ease the cramp out of his muscles as he looked up at the tavern. It did seem to be a respectable establishment, at least it didn't smell at first glance. He stepped up to the door and swung it open.

He'd stepped through before his eyes had finished telling him what they had seen. The massive wooden post in front of him wasn't the central support holding up the roof. It was a chair leg. Jeremiah stared up at the table top high above him and looked around for the door, to double check that the spell hadn't go wrong some how. The door had disappeared.

"Oh that's is absolutely fantastic," he sermonized at the wall, not paying attention to the earthquakes set off by a giant walking passed, "Just how thoughtful of you to block up the way out. Far be it for me to want to walk out of the building you tricked my into with the false promise of a hot bath, a decent meal and a soft bed. Oh no, you have to trap me in here now that you have tricked my into shrinking myself down to a ridiculously tiny size. How wonderful of you to be so considerate for my health and well being that you expose me to the risk of being trodden on by over size feet that have nothing better to do all day than stomp around in establishments of ease and let their owners drink more than is good for them. How considerate of you..."

He carried on and on... and on, not remembering the fact the giant feet were not the only risk to beings that were the size of mice, particularly beings that were the size of mice and were doing an awful lot of squeaking at a wall.

The paw descended like an avalanche of white fur on the top of his head, mashing him to the floor and driving the breath from his lungs.

"Get off of me!" he bawled, flapping his wings. The paw let him up. Jeremiah surged to his feet, glaring up at the dragon sized kitten that was looking down at him with the bluest eyes imaginable.

"You fluff brained inebriate," Jeremiah yelled up at it, hands on hips, "You lack luster, moronic excuse for a pest control department. Can you not recognize a proper human being from the brainless things called mice? If this is the state of feline kind, I dread to think what will happen during the next plague of rats. You're useless!"

The kitten sat down and tilted its head over sideways, obviously puzzled by this shouting mouse that had wings.

"Hello," Jeremiah clicked his fingers at the kitten's face, "Anyone in there? Jeremiah to cat brain, come in cat brain? Calling cat's thinking abilities across the miles? You dull witted excuse of a waste disposal bin reject. Perhaps you ought to think of applying to the wizard laboratory guide as a test subject, or did they reject you from there as well? You..." Jeremiah lurched as he tried to step forward and realized he couldn't as he was being held up to his knees. He looked don in horror, realizing that he was sinking into the floor.

"Well don't just stand there!" he yelled at the kitten, "Get me out. Get me out!"

The kitten leaned forward and delicately sniffed at him but kept a wary distance, unsure if Jeremiah bit or not.

"Oh dear Klu'ga-nath help me!" Jeremiah yelled as he sank above the knee, the wood of the floor oozing and flowing like treacle. It seemed to flow quicker in response to the name.

"I said get me out!" Jeremiah demanded of the kitten, "So get me out!"

The kitten sat back and watched as he sank up to the waist. Jeremiah thumbed the air with his wings but the treacle floor was fouling them and weighing them down.

"Damn you!" he spat at the kitten as he sank to the chest and then barked the words of a prayer. Just before his head went under, he shot a bolt of flaming, scorching embers at the kitten's nose but he didn't get the pleasure of seeing whether or not they had hit as his head went under and he was being tumbled along in the grip of a current he couldn't fight.

"Did you hear that," Sinbar asked, looking at one of the black spots that spread like a rash laid out with a ruler as far as the eye could see on both the floor and the ceiling.

"Hear what my duckies?" the Bat Clan member asked, standing on a black spot behind them. He sank out of view as they were sorting out their arms and legs.

"Just what the heaven is going on?" Sabal yelled.

"Situation unclear," Tasnar's voice said from his right. Sabal looked. Tasnar's head and shoulders were dangling from one of the spots on the ceiling while the rest of his body was crouched on the floor behind them, sticking its head into the hole to have a look around.

"I wonder," Quenril jumped, gabbed the edge of a spot and hauled himself into a spot on the ceiling. Sabal shrugged and looked around.

"Over here ducks," the Bat Clan member called. Sabal span and charged. He ran over one, two, three black spots and then yelled as the fourth one turned out to be a hole. He landed with a grunt on the floor of spots again.

"May I suggest looking before you leap?" Tasnar asked, from where his head was now in the floor to Sabal's left while his body was on the right. Quenril landed gracefully on his feet.

"We could try," he said dubiously. They all stuck their heads in a different black spot to the ones tried before.

"I did not need to see that," Sabal said, from where his head was ten feet away from the rest of him. His head had come up looking at Tasnar's feet end where it was crouched, looking into its own spot.

"Just how did we get into this situation?" Tasnar asked as he pulled his head back out of the spot he'd put it into.

"Unclear," Quenril admitted, standing up and lifting the edge of the spot until it stood up on its edge before him, like a portal. "Maybe..." he walked into it. The other two yelped as the spot fell flat on the floor, entrance side down. Sabal reached it first and when he couldn't lift it, he tried jumping up and down on it a couple of times. When that didn't work he looked at Tasnar and shrugged, just before he vanished with a high pitched scream. Tasnar stood at the edge and looked over. He turned as he heard something behind him. Quenril's head bulged through one of the others spots, stuck like the sun coming up through a turtle neck jumper.

"What the..." Tasnar forgot himself, stepped back and fell.

He tumbled into a corridor to find the other two climbing to their feet.

"I'm beginning to se why the fat one goes on about his dignity so much," Sabal was saying as he pulled his clothes straight.

The Bat Clan member came out of door number five and bounced across the corridor on a stick. Door number six opened for him and he disappeared. The three Ash Elves charged after him. A moment later, Quenril came out of door four and ran in at door one. Sabal came out of door three and bolted for door five. Tasnar limped out of door one and hobbled to door four, a crab pinching his toes. Sabal came back through, from doors four to five, screaming as he was chased by a swarm of centipedes, giant centipedes.

Quenril came out of door six and paused for breath. Door three swung up, door four swung down and the Bat Clan member peddled through the corridor on something that was made of one huge wheel and one tiny one, ringing  a tiny bell as he did so. Quenril sighed and chased him again.

Tasnar came out of door one and crawled through door three on his hands and knees. Sabal came out of door six and sprinted for door three, having to leap two or three times to reach the handle and use his body weight to swing the door open. Quenril rolled out of door five and scrambled for door one.

The Bat Clan rowed out of door two and into door four.

Quenril stumbled into the corridor and stood, clutching a stitch in his side. A mouse hole suddenly appeared in door five and both Sabal and Tasnar bolted across the corridor and through the cat flap that was suddenly in door six.

Quenril just stopped and stared as the pair of them ran, sometimes together, sometimes apart, sometimes their proper size, sometimes huge, sometimes small, across the corridor again and again. Door six to four, one to five, three to one, four to six, five to three, six to one.

Quenril stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled, a high piercing note that made the ears ring. Sabal and Tasnar skidded to a halt to look at him.

"Why aren't we using door two?" Quenril asked. They blinked and then they all turned to look at door two. It looked back, blinking its big green eye. Taking a deep breath, Quenril marched up to it and took hold of the handle.

*

 Ulrich turned at the sound of knocking, something banging on the stage behind him. He blinked.

There was a trapdoor that he didn't remember being there a minute ago. It also seemed to be knocking. Now either that was a deliberate attempt to put him off his lines or there was someone in trouble under there.

"What is this?" Ulrich proclaimed for the benefit of the audience, "What manner of beast tries to claw its way out of the underworld. Let us look upon it and if it is a foe, I shall righteously smite it!" Drawing his sword he pocked the trapdoor.

It flew open and a geyser of water shot out of it to plume just below the ceiling and shower the auditorium with water. There was a yell as something dark shot through the trap door and a second later Jeremiah plopped on to the stage, shaking his head as the water rained down around him. He tilted his head to one side and smacked it, before pinching his nose and blowing out his cheeks.

"Well I say old chap," Ulrich noted, "How did you get in there with the contents of the ocean?"

"How did you get so small?" Jeremiah replied, not at all happy about the state of his clothes.

"I'll have you know that I am perfectly formed," Ulrich protested, "I, Captain Ulrich of the HMS Attirement, am made perfectly, as the gods intended." 

"Captain of the what?" Jeremiah spat, looking around, "And where is that blasted cat."

"No cat here old boy," Ulrich informed him proudly, "Just my warship."

"What warship?" Jeremiah demanded, looking around at the trees and the wild flowers nodding in the breeze, "We are in a forest glad. Have you been drinking something you shouldn't have had?"

"What are you talking about?" Ulrich asked back, "I was just regaling my audience with the tales of my dashing daring do as the captain of... Oh. Oh. Oh, you are right. Oh. Oh. Well. Now how did that happen?"

"Yes well," Jeremiah finished wringing his beard out, "Well, we are not all blithering idiots." He climbed slowly to his feet.

The was an explosions of squeaks from the underbrush and a large, shaggy creature waddled out, its large blunt snout lifting into the air as it shifted at them. It bruxed its teeth at them, its stumpy legs making it look rather like a giant, hairy potato that had some how become perambulatory.

"Tell me, Jeremiah," Ulrich looked at it, "Are you beginning to feel peckish?"

The creature squeaked and dashed away through the underbrush. It had a surprising turn of speed, bounding through the bush low to the ground as Ulrich and Jeremiah crashed after it.

Kaelin turned her head at the noise. The stair case had ended in the middle of a forest and she had just been wondering which way to go. The shaggy, button eyed creature that skidded to a stop in front of her reminded her of a certain fur ball she'd seen not that long ago as she was the one that had thrown it up. It also reminded her of the haggises that occasionally wandered down into the lower hills. They were good eating.

The haggis picked up what she was thinking and turned its stumpy tail and dashed back into the undergrowth, squealing as it went. She dived after it, bones cracking into their wolf configuration. The wolf was hungry. It had been through fights, it had been through battles, it had been thoroughly terrified by Jeremiah's shadow beasts but it hadn't had a decent hunt the entire time it had been stuck with the King's Special. It wanted a hunt and Kaelin was of the mind to let it have a hunt.

Ulrich and Jeremiah were just beginning to slow down, wondering if they had lost track of the potential dinner, when it bounded out from under a brush, saw them squealed and dived back the way it came. Ulrich dived after it but missed. Jeremiah burst through the bush but the creature bounded away with a yell.

They charged through the bush. Kaelin charged through the bush.

At the last second Ulrich realized that not all the crashing in the bush was the creature trying to get away. He swerved side ways and stumbled to a halt while behind him there was a resounding smack of two heads meeting in the middle of the bush.

 "My dear Kaelin," Jeremiah straightened, rubbing his forehead, "Was there any particular reason why you felt the need to prevent me from catching dinner by using your head as a battering ram? Or were you trying to knock some more sense into yourself?"

Kaelin glared at him, debating whether or not to bite him again but the wolf had been shocked out of her by the collision and she couldn't be bothered to go through the pain of calling it up again. Instead she surged to her feet and shoved him. Or at least she tried to shove him.

What actually happened was she bounced off, like a rubber ball, though Ulrich wasn't sure which of them was the wall and which of them was the rubber ball.

Kaelin yowled as she rolled through a bush and then held still.

"Oh I say Kaelin, are you alright?" Ulrich called. She didn't move. "Kaelin? Are you okay?" He moved closer to her.

Kaelin got up. She got up very slowly. She got up covered in sticky burrs.

"Oh," Ulrich noted, "Ah." He grimaced. Kaelin glared out of one eye, the other covered by a mass of sticky burrs and hair. "Well, it should be painless enough to get them off your clothes," he suggested. She did not look impressed. "Um, do you want my help?" he asked. There was a slight, very slight, nod.

 "Okay, let's start with the clothes."

*

Thorian scratched his head. He had decided against trying to use that weird door thing that looked back at him and had instead set out to walk across the desert. The only problem was that he had gone all of ten and two steps and the forest had grown out of the desert that fast that he had become completely turned around. He had thought he'd turned around and gone back the way he'd come but he had gone a lot more than ten and two steps and he still hadn't found the desert again.

He scratched his head again, trying to work out which way was best. There was a squeak from the underbrush and a snow pig looked out at him. It squeaked again, blinking its button eyes and then it turned its back and started waddling away from him pretty quickly. Thorian grinned and then uncurled his whip. It cracked most satisfactory and wrapped around the snow pigs back leg. It squeal as Thorian reeled it in.

"I'm going to remember that," Thorian grinned as he grabbed the snow pig's scruff, "And I'm going to remember you. You are so cute!"

The snow pig wiggled, squeaking like an ungreased door hinge.

"Get off me you fool," it squeaked, "I was trying to get you back to your friends!"

Thorian blinked.

"Nope," he said at last, "Snow pigs don't talk so I'm going to ignore that you said that and just give you a hug!"

"Oh no!" it yelled as Thorian's arms closed about it in a steel strong grip. It made a noise of distress and then popped into confetti.

"I knew he wasn't real," Thorian sighed. His little furry friends always did that.

Kaelin twitched an ear as she heard the bang but she didn't say anything as Ulrich worked away on the mass of burrs on the back of her head.

"I'm sorry Kaelin," he said with a grimace, "But unless you are willing to let me cut these out, this last lot is going to have to come out the hard way."

"No to the cutting," Kaelin snarled, "So just get on with it."

"As you wish," Ulrich worked the comb into the hair and started a long, slow pull. Kaelin gritted her teeth. Ulrich grabbed the hair between her scalp and the mass he was brushing out as quickly as he could and gripped it tight, pulling back against the comb to hurry up the process and give her hair roots a little slack.

"Almost..." he said. Kaelin bit her lip, tears starting from her eyes. "There..." he exclaimed triumphantly, "That's the last of them out."

"Argh!" Kaelin rubbed her scalp with both hands, "Thank you, I guess."

"Glad to be of assistance," Ulrich grinned and tucked away his comb, "Hello, what's this." Thorian came blundering and pushing his way through the bushes. "Well hello Thorian, where have you been."

"Oh I've been many places," Thorian shrugged, "I've been in the sky, I've been on the ground, I've been in a desert and I've been in a bed. I miss that last one."

"Well in all your travels have you seen a warship by any chance?" Ulrich asked.

"Nah," Thorian shrugged, "Just confetti."

"Oh well there's no confetti here," Ulrich looked around, "Just a warship that I seem to have misplaced, along with my captain's uniform. Most inconsiderate of it all."

Thorian frowned at Ulrich, the slow gears in his mind turning. Eventually the gears decided upon Ulrich having had the same sort of day he'd been having.

"Ulrich?" he asked, "Would you do me a favor? Slap me."

"I beg your pardon!" Ulrich protested, "Gentlemen done go around slapping people, it is bad form!"

Thorian slapped him for refusing. Ulrich wobbled like one of those punch bags that are on the end of a pole attached to the floor.

"Thorian," Ulrich said in measured tones, "I know you were unset with me for refusing to slap you but I thought I only had to put up with that sort of behavior from Kaelin."

"Charmed I'm sure," Kaelin folded her arms.

"Are you still looking for this ship thing you were going on about?" Thorian asked.

"Yes," Ulrich admitted slowly. Thorian slapped him again.

"Alright that does it!" Ulrich snapped and slapped back.

"Oh for some banged grains," Jeremiah grinned as he leaned back against a tree near Kaelin to watch the slapping competition, which quickly wound up looking more like the batting paws stage of a cat fight. She grunted in reply.

Thorian slapped himself. He slapped himself quite hard.

"You see?" Ulrich asked, immediately stepping back from the slapping competition, "Your uncouth behavior has received its just reward." He grinned and bowed to Thorian.

"This is madness!" Thorian roared, "This whole damn place is madness! I've been flown about by an round thing with a great long nose, had creatures pop into confetti and now you're bumbling about, talking about a ship wot don't don't exist! This place is madness!" 

Ulrich nodded along to Thorian's rant, not really listening because he was too busy watching the lump bloom and swell on Thorian's head. Some how Thorian really didn't notice that he now had a protuberance a kin to the start of a deer's antler growing out of the side of his face where he'd slapped himself.

Kaelin sighed and looked away from all the noise, then frowned and straightened. There was a door in the trunk of a tree that she hadn't seen before. A door that would have looked out of place just about any where as it was too fancy and the large green gem in the top looked rather like an eye. Thorian's ranting faded into the back ground as she stared at it. She walked slowly over, turned her head one way and then the other. The door didn't change. She lifted a finger and pocked the green gem. It blinked and looked back at her. Kaelin tensed ready to bolt. The door swung open towards her, revealing a chamber in the Underworld. Behind her, pain and shock finally caught up to Thorian and he toppled over, face down in the flowers. Ulrich seemed quite impressed by how long Thorian had lasted.

It was a smallish cave, with cot beds arranged around the outside of it and a fire pit in the middle. Kaelin leaned forward and sniffed.

"Smells right," she noted. She crouched down and pocked a finger through the door way to touch the stone floor. "Feels right as well."

"Erm guys!" she called over her shoulder, "I think I've found the way out!" She stepped cautiously forward, into the chamber. Jeremiah watched her for a while and when he was quite sure that she hadn't been disintegrated into ash he turned. Fingers weaving through the mystic symbols, murmuring the words of the prayer to Klu'ga-nath, he half closed his eyes. The dust moved through the blades of grass and swirled up to become three skeletons. Jeremiah smiled, wondering if they were the skeletons of Ulrich's three Ah Elf body guards. What delicious irony that would be.

"Guard him," he pointed at Thorian and the three clustered about him, almost leaning over him. Jeremiah smiled, absolutely certain that Thorian would have a heart attack when he woke up and saw that lot. He turned and stepped through the door.

"Don't you worry chaps," Ulrich waved, "I'll join you in a minute, I've just got to find where I put my ship. I know its around here some where." He turned and wandered off into the trees, muttering about angles and star patterns and date lines. Jeremiah smiled and let the door swing shut.

Kaelin sighed and rolled over. After a moment she frowned and then sat up. The blanket fell away from her, pooling in her lap. She looked around the little chamber. Estella stretched like a ferret and then flopped again over her cot.

"In a minute," she mutter to her unseen passenger.

Ulrich was also sat up and looking about him, particularly his clothes.

"Oh," he said, "Oh botherations. And here was me thinking that someone had finally recognized my worth in the world."

"What worth?" Jeremiah asked, already pulling his boots on.

"Alright, no need to be snide," Ulrich said pushing back the blanket and reaching for his boots, "Did any of the rest of you chaps dream about meeting up in a forest?"

"If you mean when aye got a great big lump on mah head, yes," Thorian noted, rubbing at his jaw where an ache with no source was still nagging at him.

"Did any of the rest of you dream of getting out of it through a door that had a big green gem that looked like an eye?" Estella asked.

"As a matter of fact we did," Tasnar admitted.

"Sharing dreams?" Ulrich raised his eyebrows, "Is that a common occurrence, do you know old bean?" He looked at Jeremiah. He kept looking.

"When a group of people have eaten such spicy food as our little hosts were serving up last night, then yes," Jeremiah answered, tugging his collar straight. Ulrich made an odd noise and Gerald seemed to be buzzing an odd note. As that was just above his ears, it was very irritating. Estella made an odd noise as well. Jeremiah glared at her, holding her gaze, despite only one human eye looked back at him, the other taken up by her draconnic hitchhiker. She made the noise and then gave up.

"Sorry," she mumbled, "I just can't!" She buried her face in her pillow and laughed until the whole cot shook, surfacing to grab a breath and then plunging her face into the pillow once more to muffle the sound.

"Really?" Jeremiah asked.

"Um," Thorian said, pointing, "Wot are those sticking out of your head?"

"Sticking out of my head?" Jeremiah asked in concern and put one hand up to his miter. He put both hands up to his miter. Kaelin worked at keeping her face straight.

Jeremiah now had the impressive antlers of a stag royal.

"Um, well," Ulrich noted, "I don't think that rabbit you partook of last night was just a rabbit. I think you dined on Jackobeast."

"Jackobeast?" Jeremiah looked slightly worried, though he was trying to hide it.

"Yeah, shouldn't be anything to worry about," Ulrich noted, "And one has to say that your new crown does really suit you."

"Look think so?" Jeremiah sounded like he actually wanted Ulrich's approval.

"Without a doubt," Ulrich reassured, "And it is said that those who can catch a jackobeast and eat it gain some of its impressive agility. You should find it easier to keep up the walking pace now."

"Oh well, then that's okay," Jeremiah actually smiled an honest to gods smile, like he really believed what Ulrich said and that it mattered to him.

"Uh oh," Kaelin noted, "I don't think that was fish you were eating last night."

"Oh Kaelin what ever do you mean?" Ulrich questioned.

"That was mermaid," Kaelin stated, "You just convinced Jeremiah in two seconds flat. You've got the siren's tongue."

"Ah," Ulrich beamed, "Well that should be useful, after all, I've won us allies in unusual places before, having a trick up the sleeve that will make it even can't hurt, surely?"

Kaelin fought not to smile back.

"It doesn't work so well on those who know what you are up to," she stated.

"Up to?" Ulrich protested as he started rooting through his pack to find some breakfast. This long sleep lark had made him hungry. "Who said I was up to anything. I was merely thinking out loud that if it wasn't for my already glib tongue then it might really have been poison in the food last night and not a little extra to make us all go nighty-night so they could move us out of their territory with no chance of us being able to find our way back."

"You have a point," Kaelin admitted, stretching again and then wondered if she really did agree or whether it was just Ulrich's new ability affecting her. She was quickly distracted from that thought when she felt the extra weight on her back. She looked over one shoulder and her mouth fell open. The feathery wings shifted and twitched as she looked at them. She closed her mouth and thought of the new feeling, tracing the changes to bone and bone, flesh and muscle with her mind. The wings opened at her command.

"Oh whoa!" Estella stared in admiration at them, "They're beautiful!"

"They're going to take some getting used to," Kaelin gave them an experimental flap and toppled over on the bed.

"Griffon eggs," Quenril observed, "Must be."

"Get them right and that might be the each you need against your grandfather," Estella added.

"How come everyone else gets something shiny and I don't? It's not fair!" Thorian stood up and stamped his feet. "Ea-ow!" He yelled, sitting back down quick. The shard of stone had gone completely through his foot. He gripped his ankle and whimpered.

"Don't worry," Ulrich hurried over, "Kaelin, if you can get the for-healing potion?"

"On it," Kaelin called, digging into her pack. She listened with half an ear as she searched.

"No word of a lie, this is going to hurt so on the count of three, one... two." Thorian bellowed as the shard came free.

"Kaelin, hurry... up..."

Kaelin looked up as Ulrich's voice trailed off. Thorian's foot was already healed up, there wasn't even a scar. Ulrich grabbed a cloth and wiped the blood away. There wasn't a mark.

"Hydra meat," Tasnar nodded, laying a hand on Ulrich's shoulder as he leaned over to look.

"Must have been those chippy things I was eating last night," Thorian mused as he reached for his boots, "I didn't think they tasted like root veggies."

"My lord!" Tasnar suddenly exclaimed. Ulrich was sagging sideways. Quenril and Sabal dashed forward and half lifted, half pulled him back on to his cot.

"What did you do to him?" Sabal snarled, rounding on his cousin, eyes glowing.

"Nothing, I swear," Tasnar threw up his hands, "I just touched his shoulder. I..." He looked at his hands. "I... My hands are cold."

"Shite," Quenril whispered, "Basilisk! You were eating basilisk."

"I didn't know!" Tasnar protested, "I..." His voice trailed off.

"You damn idiot moron!" Sabal advanced on him, eyes still glowing, "You could have killed the Matriarch's favorite and damned us all to the forfeit! Of all the stupid things to do!"

Tasnar was frozen to the spot, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to blink.

"Enough!" Quenril roared, a red flush shifting over his skin, stepping between them, "You will not harm my brother and Tasnar will learn to be careful with his hands in future, while you will learn to control those eyes of yours."

"What?" Sabal asked, looking at him but Quenril immediately dropped his gaze to Sabal's chest.

"Your eyes, cousin," he said, "That cheese was chimera curd. Any that meet you eyes now will run the risk of you draining their energy. Learnt to control them."

"How do you know?" Sabal looked down at Quenril's boots.

"I could feel it," Quenril stated, his skin flushing a darker blue than its natural blue grey, "You were leeching off my brother without even touching him."

 "Oh dear gods," Tasnar said backing away from him. Sabal stepped back as well, one hand covering his mouth. He looked like he was going to be sick any moment now.

"What?" Quenril looked from one to the other, the blue shade in his skin increasing as his frustration grew.

Kaelin stood up slowly, staring at him.

"I don't think those were octopus legs in that fry up you were having last night," she said.

"Pardon?" Quenril queried and then the blue dropped from his skin and pulsating green took its place.

"The Begetters were mind readers, weren't they?" Kaelin asked, "And you can now hear people's minds, can't you?"

Quenril stared at her and then crumpled to the floor, his skin turning yellow, as he very nearly heaved.

"No," Ulrich stepped in, "No we are not going to have that. You didn't know because none of us thought to ask what the meat was, we just helped our selves. It was bad timing and worse luck, nobody is at fault here. And when we make it back to the surface, we will tell Lady Zilrva that Quenril was blessed by the Begetters during our travels, won't we?" Nobody answered. "Won't we?" Ulrich repeated, raking his gaze round the chamber. One by one they all nodded.

"Yes, my Lord," Tasnar nodded, meeting Ulrich's eyes.

"Yes, my Lord," Sabal muttered, nodding, looking at the floor.

"Very well then," Ulrich nodded, "Let's get some breakfast inside us all and then we can press on to the surface. The sooner we are back up there the sooner we can deal with Kaelin's up coming deadline on the forfeit and send the werewolves and who ever else is their allies back to the wilds where they belong."

"I'll do the tea," Estella offered, jumping up and digging through her pack. She stopped and giggled.

"Look at this," she waved her hand again. The sparkles hung in the air, before slowly beginning to drift down and fade out of existence as they did so, "Now this is cool!" She concentrated and it looked like the teapot poured itself into the first of the cups.

"Why thank you muchly," Ulrich picked it up and went to drink, only the cup was dry.

"Just an illusion," Estella smiled, "Now this could be useful." She waved her hands again, leaving the sparkles in the air.

"Sprites," Jeremiah observed.

"Your meaning sir?" she asked as she filled the teapot.

"It wasn't chicken wings you were nibbling on last night," Jeremiah smiled and it was his usually not nice smile, "You were eating sticky fried sprites. How does it feel to know you've eaten some of the fairy folk, my dear?"

"Ha," Estella smiled, "I've had run ins with sprites and I'll count last night as a chance to bite back so no discomfort here. Sorry to disappoint you and all that."

Jeremiah smiled sourily and sat back on his cot.

"So chums," Ulrich smiled more naturally as he sat down on his cot, "Any idea where we are pointed after breakfast?"