Draconnic Shenanigans - Episode 33

Chapter Thirty Three: Spitting Scales

 

 (Artwork not mine, full credit to Starscourge April)

Thorian watched the wall of water surge towards the King's Special, slapping the rock faces of the pillars of stone, its dark bulk seeming to gain speed as it came closer. He pushed his lips out as the water round his legs dropped, sucked into the mass baring down on them. He turned his head as a chunk of wood knocked into the back of his legs drawn that way by the suction of the water. With a grin he grabbed it. Swinging it around in front of him, he lunged on to it, paddling with his hands to drag himself up the face of the water.  As the wave started lifting him higher, he seized the front edge of the wood, pushed off with his legs, bring them up underneath his belly, slamming his boots down on to the chunk of debris, meaning to stand tall and ride the wave...

 The wood shattered in two, splintering and splitting underneath him, dropping him into the roiling mass of water below. Bubbles erupted from his mouth as the grip of the wave squeezed the air from his lungs seconds before it mashed him to the floor of the pool. On instinct he grabbed at the stone that bruised his ribs, fingers finding a snag and holding on as the surging mass stomped on him.

Not far from him but unseen in the deep, dark green, Weatherall flared out his claws, eyes rolling in distress as he tried to spread his legs into the water wing formation he'd used before to rid the wave but he couldn't because Marmaduke was still hanging on to some of them. He made a weird grinding noise in his belly then the wave reached them. Kaelin curled her claws round the edge of Weatherall's shell, years of climbing work giving her the strength to hang on, even as her two companions were swept off into the raging water.

"Marmaduke! Catch me!" Ulrich yelled just before his head disappeared under the water and the automaton's arm shot out, seizing him by the lapel of his great coat moments before he disappeared below the surface. "Thanks awfully, old chum." He grinned as the water fell away from him, Marmaduke standing like a rock against the flood, solid and unmoving. Above them on the cave wall, Peter whistled and clicked, antennae waving in distress, half of his chatter sounding like concern for Ulrich's well being, the other half sounding like admonishments against Marmaduke's lack of care for their master, as if the automaton's lack of expression had somehow caused all of this mess. Thorian burst out of the water not far from Ulrich coughing and spluttering, shaking his head to dash the water from his eyes as he tried to find the footing needed to stand.

Estella bowled in the whirling water, her world a rolling mass of bubbles and chaos, the weight pressing the air out of her but then her left eye turned cold in its socket and a second set of senses opened up to her as Valodrael stepped into duel control. She felt his knowledge of direction in the three dimensional world, up and down as certain as her knowledge of her left and right hand and it was her left hand that led as she flipped, using the currents in the waters body to maneuver in the same way that Valodrael had once used air currents to ride the breezes of the sky. She felt them as if they were her own, her body describing a graceful arch in the churning chaos and she landed, feet braced against the flow, firm against the rock of the floor, body locked against the water's power even as her lungs screamed for air. Against instinct, she waited, waited until she felt the water's bruising might slacken and then she pushed off, head bursting through the surface, an explosive breath bursting from her mouth followed by the grateful suck of air into starving lungs. She pushed forward, arms sweeping to either side of her as her legs kicked in the style of a frog, her eye warming again as Valodrael stepped back, assured that she could handle it herself now that the immediate danger had passed. Even as she gasped breath after breath to refill her burning lungs, she smiled, his level of trust warming her through, despite the frigid water surrounding her. Above her the Talismans whirled through the air, cheeping and nattering with worry. One her shoulder the purple frog, fountained a thin stream of water into the air and then croaked with dismay as it rubbed its hands over its head, blinking dolefully against the cold drips falling from her hair.

 Quenril and his kin managed to yell as the water closed over them. Quenril bent and then pushed off, arms locked above his head, diving into the wave, arrowing through it, bullying his way through the reeling water like a pike through a rapid, head breaking the surface beyond the break waters. Sabal rolled under the wave, arms and legs flaying in the churning mass. An arm smacked against the wall of one of the pillars and even as he bit down on the instinct to yell and lose valuable air, his fingers, though numbed with the impact, were worming into a crack, holding him against the torrent. Tasnar disappeared, vanishing below the surface, his hat bobbling to the surface after the wave had smacked up against the far wall and forced its way into the tunnel mouth with a solid sounding crash. The cousins looked at each other in horror and then started towards the spot.

Tasnar surfaced underneath his hat, jetting a stream of water from his mouth as the item settled at a rakish angle on his soaked hair. He floundered for a second and the forced his way back to the surface.

"I wouldn't come any closer," he called to his family as he doggy paddled towards them, "You are right on the edge of the sink hole. I'm not sure how deep it is but I advise against finding out the hard way." He dogged paddled some more, obviously struggling with pack weight and lack of experience. Quenril and Sabal reached out their hands to him and he gratefully grabbed them, shivering and shaking as they helped him back into the depths where he could put his feet on the bottom and still have his head out of the water. He stood gasping, shivers racing through him as water drained out of his clothes.

"Really people?" Jeremiah's voice called.

They looked up to see him sat, regally regarding them from the top of Nanny Tatter's head as she paddled round in a slow circle in the mouth of the under water tunnel, tail trailing behind her as her legs dog paddled with slow sweeps.

"If everyone has finished playing, shall we carry on?" Jeremiah called and Kaelin gritted her teeth with the effort of not snapping at him. It would do no good as he would only enjoy the knowledge that he had succeeded once again in getting under her skin.

"I don't know," Thorian grinned as he fully stood up, "I was rather enjoying mah self. It isn't often that we get a beach episode."

There was an explosion of laughter that ended in bubbles even as Jeremiah glared, trying to hide the edge of confusion in his expression.

"You what?" Kaelin looked round at Thorian, her expression so confused that it almost looked like disguised. The bubbling laughter sounded out again and then Estella rolled over on to her back, star fishing her limbs so she could laugh uninhibited without risk of drowning herself, floating on the surface as she cut loose.

Thorian frowned, looking away from them all.

"Sorry," he said, "I have no eye deer where that came from."

This time Estella's laughter rippled with a second voice, Valodrael joining in the merriment. She laughed all the harder for having someone to share the joke with. Jeremiah rolled his eyes to the ceiling, pressed his hands together and started muttering, apparently asking his god for strength as Nanny Tatters took another turn around the pool.

Weatherall twitched his eye stalks, rotating on the spot, aware that the weight on his shell had decreased. Spotting Ulrich hanging from Marmaduke's grip he rubbed his mouth parts together, claws lowering and limbs stilling. He spun suddenly, aiming for the distant reaches of the pool.

"No!" Kaelin commanded, her voice whip cracking through the air as her hands closed around Weatherall's eye stalks, "Bad crab! Stay!" Weatherall lifted one claw and then froze as his eye stalks stretched. His claw lowered after a moment as he realized the likely effect of having his eye stalks tided in a great big bow.

"That's better," Kaelin grunted but she didn't relax her grip any. She frowned as Nanny Tatter's dog paddled passed, sending chopping waves their way.

"People, if we are not going to spend all day being utterly ridiculous," Jeremiah called, now holding a light stick as the glow of the chemical ball of fire began to fizz and go out above their heads, "I have observed a beach to the left of your position, your left that is. Perhaps we could see about scouting it and making a proper camp for longer that just a overly short meal stop?"

"You might have an idea there," Estella called up to him, "Don't know about anyone else but I am becoming really rather tired."

Quenril and the other Ash Elves wadded towards Ulrich and Ulrich hastily told Marmaduke to put him down on the floor. He just had time to tug his clothes straight as the Ash Elves reached him.

"We could potential swim across the pool to discover if there is a different way out of here," Quenril informed his sister's favorite, "But your heavy weight companion might not make it."

  "Now, good chap," Ulrich observed, "It is not nice to talk about Jeremiah that way."

"That's not a nice way to talk about me!" Thorian protested, hands on hips, mouth pouting, getting in before Jeremiah could open his mouth.

"I say old boy," Ulrich frowned, "What do you mean?"

"I'm the heaviest out of your friends and I can swim that piddling little pool," Thorian jabbed a thumb at his own chest, chin jutting forward, "And it would have been nice if yah pointy eared buddies had asked if I was going to have problems with having a quick dip instead of just assuming I was going to have problems."

"Actually I think that Jerrry's pet has you out weighed on that score," Ulrich smiled holding up his hands to placate the situation, "And I do not think that Quenril was talking about a member of the King's Special but rather referring to one of my collection of mounts that I have gathered over our travels, in this case our rather metallic friend here."

"Indeed," Quenril inclined his head to Thorian, "I meant no disrespect of the living members of the King's Special and I meant no disrespect to the non-living members. I merely wished to make our Lord Ulrich aware of the possible danger to this most interesting machine."

"Oh you mean Marmalade," Thorian fell into to the truth with a resounding clang, "Oh sorry about that."

"It's Marmaduke," Ulrich corrected with a long look at Thorian, trying to judge whether the orc cross breed was making a joke out of him.

"That's what I said," Thorian agreed, "Marmalade."

Estella lay back in the water and laughed again.

"It's Marmaduke," Ulrich repeated, a little more forcibly.

 "As I said," Thorian nodded, "And you are right, he is going to have trouble swimming across as he is the heaviest out of us lot."

"Are you sure of that?" Ulrich smiled as he got Marmaduke to crouch so he could climb up on the automation's shoulders, "I still say that Jerry's pet out weighs him in her current condition."

"Yeah but she floats," Thorian noted, "Don't think the tin pot here will." Up on the wall, Peter hissed a chuckling sound.

 "I'll have you know that Marmaduke floats as well," Ulrich protested, "Though I will admit that it is in a straight down direction." He added that last part as he saw Kaelin open her mouth a guessed that she was about to demand that he prove how good Marmaduke was at floating. As he didn't want to lose his mechanical servant that wasn't a challenge that he was comfortable in accepting.

"That's just sinking with style," Thorian waved a hand dismissively

"It counts," Ulrich protested.

"You sure if he steps off a cliff he won't make a crater?" Thorian asked, rubbing his chin.

"I'm fairly..." Ulrich began and then thought about it, "Oh. Hum. Okay, fair point." He conceded the point and turned his attention to trying to work out how to get Marmaduke to the beach without sinking him faster than a ship labelled 'unsinkable'.

Kaelin watched his efforts with a cocked eyebrow and then settled herself more comfortably on Weatherall's shell.

"Crab go!" she commanded, "Now forwards!" Weatherall's eye stalks twitched in her grip and then he rotated on the spot and scuttled into the pool, legs going out sideways and flat, water wings to keep him afloat, then the back most pair started flipping in the water, driving him forward with a jerky, almost comical motion.

Estella hung in the water, watching them pass and then she shivered, a deep voice in her mind warning her that she was losing too much heat too quickly. Gritting her teeth she struck out into Weatherall's wake, arms reaching forward and sweeping back.

"Any chance of a lift?" she called as she swam. Kaelin looked back and pulled on Weatherall's eye stalks to slow him down.

"Yeah sure," she reached a hand behind her and helped Estella pull herself up and out of the water on to Weatherall's shell.

"Thank you," Estella nodded as she tucked her hands into her arm pits, realizing just how cold she had become. Weatherall skittered on, his back legs flipping. With a sigh at just how undignified his companions were being, Jeremiah directed Nanny Tatters to follow along behind them.

Seeing that he was being left behind Thorian waded to the edge of the tunnel opening, peered across the water until he was sure he could see the beach Jeremiah was talking about and then threw himself into the water of the submerged tunnel entrance. A second later he surfaced with a gasp and swung both arms forward at once, crashing back down into the water, sending his own waves racing across the water. He surfaced and crashed over and over again, making his way rapidly but noisily across the water by main strength, bullying his way through the pool, demanding that it give way to him. The pool decided that it was best to surrender to Thorian's demands, there were already enough ghosts in the Underworld, it did not need the newest ghost to be haunting it.

"Marmaduke," Ulrich called, "Follow that crab."

Ever obedient Marmaduke stepped forward, following Weatherall in the most direct line, heedless of the fact that the deep pool was directly in front of him.

"Don't drown me!" Ulrich yelled. Marmaduke stumbled to a halt, his metal joints whirring as he tried to process the conflicting instructions. Peter whistled what was unmistakably a snigger at him.

"Find the shallow route," Ulrich told Marmaduke, ignoring his bug's unkind streak. Marmaduke swayed from side to side, struggling to understand what Ulrich meant. He could see Weatherall getting further and further away and wanted to follow him as instructed but his master had also yelled something that seemed to mean stop, which was a conflict and he also couldn't computer what his master meant by find the shallow route. To him all routes were shallow, even when the water was over his head. He didn't know what 'drown' meant, he'd never had to consider it before. His cogs and gears ground, his outer casing warming as he tried to understand what was wanted of him, the sound of tortured springs rending the air. Ulrich rolled his eyes to the ceiling and took the deep breath of the long suffering.

"Marmaduke," he stated, "Cancel three previous instructions and about turn." That Marmaduke understood, his overheating core settling as he now had a clear and defined goal to please his master. He swung round until they were facing away from the pool.

"Now," Ulrich instructed, "Hold your arms out straight before you, palms up and do not let them drop." Marmaduke complied. Again, here were instructions that he understood, this was something he knew how to do.

"Right," Ulrich walked his hands out along Marmaduke's arms until he was laying along the metal limbs, "Now, without lowering your arms, take three paces forward." Marmaduke did so and Ulrich praised him, making Peter grump about the whole thing, banging his feet as he rippled along the walls of the cavern, spiraling up towards the ceiling of the cavern. Ulrich frowned but disregarded the distraction, concentrating on learning the length of Marmaduke's stride and noticing the pitfalls in front of them before Marmaduke could stick his foot into them and plummet straight to the bottom. Quenril and the other Ash Elves turned and followed him as he guided his mechanical servant back along the path they had taken earlier and then, slowly and carefully, navigated them up the left hand route towards the beach. He was so busy concentrating on the task in hand that he was pretty much deaf to all other stimuli, which was probably why he didn't hear the conversation of the others.

Kaelin grunted as she felt Weatherall's pointed legs touch down on the rock shell below the water and he twisted sideways to scuttle the way that was most comfortable for him up on to the beach. Once there, he halted and crouched slightly. Kaelin frowned as she saw his arm moving up and down and could hear something grinding below her but couldn't see what was going on.

"What are you playing at?" she muttered. Estella shivered and slid down from Weatherall's shell, wandering round to the front of the crab. After a moment she nodded.

"He's eating mud," she reported.

"Seriously?" Kaelin asked.

"Yep," Estella nodded, "He's eating mud... Oh yuck. He just spat a load of it back out."

"Seriously?" Kaelin sighed, "I've heard of 'go eat mud' being used as an insult but literally? This place is just a fricking head job."

"Now, now Kaelin," Jeremiah called down to her as Nanny Tatters stumped up out of the water, "Travel should broaden the mind. You should embrace the customs of other peoples, not pass judgement upon them."

"Look who's talking," Kaelin muttered.

"I don't know," Estella observed as she plonked her pack down and rooted through it, looking for a light stick that was dry enough to ignite, "I could thoroughly embrace the Ash Elf custom of a woman being fully within her rights to murder any male that displeased her. It would have made my life so much easier."

"You have a point there," Kaelin agreed after a moments thought, "But do you think you should let your boyfriend in on that secret?"

"Who says he disagrees with me?" Estella grinned as she straightened up and swung her pack back onto her back, "If nothing else Val rather likes taking risks." As if to prove a point, she stepped out ahead as Thorian pulled himself up on to the shore, light stick raised high but she did it more to hide the fact that she was blushing, an internal voice having asked her if he should take up that challenge and the roll of heat that had burned through her belly had muted her instinctive protest. Bad enough that someone had suddenly started taking advantage of every phrase she hadn't fully thought through before she said them but having... something inside of her agree with the offer was just disconcerting. She was seriously wondering if entertaining the thought that maybe she wasn't as unfit for marriage as she had believed was a good thing. It was unnerving and distracting and... and... and part of her was enjoying the new experience. Was this what they meant by flirting? She wasn't sure but part of her wanted to explore it more and that was even more disconcerting. Having the object of her distraction sitting in a ring side seat in her own head was making this even more... interesting. Interesting was definitely the word for it. The red cardinal chirrup in her ear.

"I'm fine," she reassured it, "I'm just a little... distracted." The purple toad ribbitted in agreement and Estella felt her face heating up again.

Kaelin gazed at the massive tunnels that lead off into the dark, one branching to the light and curving out of sight, the other opening up to the right.

"Left or right?" she asked no one in particular.

"Left," Thorian stated as he stepped up beside Kaelin, watching the dark ahead of them.

"Are we going to wait for our dear, dear companion Ulrich to catch up with us," Jeremiah said sweetly from where he sat on Nanny Tatters head.

"It would be a good idea to," Thorian nodded as he thought about. For a moment everyone just gazed into the dark.

"Last one to the surface is a rotten tomato!" Thorian bellowed as he charged into the dark. Kaelin's hands tensed reflexively on Weatherall's eye stalks and the giant crab scrabbled after Thorian, afraid that he'd missed a command and was about to have his eye stalks tied into a bow. With a shrug, Estella broke into a dog trot after them.

Jeremiah looked round at where Ulrich still looked ridiculous, directing his menagerie around the pitfalls hidden under the surface of the water. The traveler born mongrel still hadn't seen them leaving the beach. Jeremiah turned back to face the dark, stabbed as it was by Estella's flickering light. One down, three more to go. The only real hurdle would be that eldritch dragon thing but he was sure that he's only need one moment of distraction to end its host's life and after that he could just leave it with whimper in the dark, his god would keep him safe from its touch.

"Forward," he commanded Nanny Tatters quietly, "Follow the light." She paced into the dark, leaving the beach empty.

As the tunnel bent round Kaelin was busy trying to work out how Ulrich had controlled his over sized crab mount and so had no attention spare to look at their surroundings. Jeremiah on the other hand, from his lofty perch, could see that the way ended in a pool of water and nothing much else. He sighed, they would have to go back and that would mean that they would undoubtedly mean that they would bump into their erstwhile companion, meaning that he wouldn't remain lost in the Underworld. Sometimes life just handed you lemons.

Thorian stumbled to a halt at the edge of the pool, the water lapping his boots. Estella stepped up beside him, swinging the light back and forth slowly.

"Hum," Thorian grumped, "It's a dead end."

"You what?" Kaelin asked as she struggled to stop Weatherall from skittering straight into the pool.

"It's a dead end," Thorian repeated, "Unless you want to try climbing up there." He pointed to the opening high up in the rock face.

"Must be a seasonal river," Estella noted.

"And your draw that conclusion because?" Jeremiah called down to her.

"Look at how smooth that rock face is," Estella waved the light stick to make the light shine and flow over the rock face below the opening, "That is water worn. Must be a seasonal river and at the moment it isn't flowing."

"Well that would explain all this wood stuff," Thorian grabbed a branch and started breaking it into rough lengths, "Aye wondered where it was coming from." In a few minutes he had a cone of wood set up and was doing his best to light it up. It wasn't being co-operative.

"Hell's fectating balls!" Thorian exploded as the pile of wood fell apart.

"Here, letting me try," Kaelin pulled a couple of pieces of wood towards her, fetching out a wad of tinder as she did so, "You put the pile back together." She started trying to light the tinder.

Estella watched the performance with growing interest, even as Jeremiah directed Nanny Tatters to lower her chin to the floor so that he could regally step down on to the ground again. Granted, Estella looked a little shocked when Kaelin suggested that the tinder might like to do something with a chicken if it didn't get its act together. Still, her increasingly graphic cursing seemed to have the desired effect as the tinder gave up the fight and ignited. Then she had to convince the wood to join the party.

Ulrich finally relaxed as Marmaduke stepped out on to the beach, water pouring from every joint.

"Well done old chap," he congratulated as he walked his hands back so he remained balanced as he inched back into a kneeling position on Marmaduke's shoulder. Peter came rippling down the wall, hissing and bubbling like a kettle on full boil.

"You did good too," Ulrich smiled at the irritated insect as Quenril, Sabal and Tasnar climbed up on to the beach and started tipping water out of their boots for the second time that day. Off in the dark Ulrich could hear Kaelin's dulcet tones roundly cussing someone out, suggesting unflattering things about the eighteen generations of their ancestors. As much as Ulrich prided himself on his performance, he decided that, for his health, he would not volunteer to help with that particular project. Instead he instructed Marmaduke to genuflect so that he could swing down from his should with more dignity than that move would have done.

"And who's the good boy?" Ulrich leaned towards Peter, ruffling the centipede's antennae, "Who's the good boy then? Is it you? Is it you?" Peter buzzed with the attention.

"Right then," Ulrich sat down on Peter's shell, "Which way now?"

Quenril stepped forward and lifted the end of a light stick as Sabal and Tasnar rooted through their packs, searching of a replacement that wasn't too soaked to work.

"Ah well, why not?" Ulrich shrugged, "Let's see where this goes." With a tap on his chitin, Ulrich guided Peter into the right hand way. It was fairly disappointing, revealing itself to be nothing more than a cavern without any exit and more importantly, without any of the others of the King's Special.

"Now that's odd," Ulrich observed.

"They must have taken the other way," Tasnar observed.

"No, not that," Ulrich shook his head, "That." He sniffed. "Can you smell that?" The three Ash Elves started turning their heads from side to side, sniffing as they did so, puzzled frowns on their faces.

"Black stone smoke," Sabal said, "It's faint but it is there. Where any of your companions carrying back stone, favored of the Matriarch?"

"If you mean that stuff you burn in that traveling stove of yours, then no they weren't," Ulrich said, guiding Peter towards the smell, "Which means there is someone else down here." The smell led them deeper into the cavern. After a while Sabal licked a finger and held it up.

"There is air movement," he stated after a while, gazing in confusion at the solid wall of stone in front of them, trying to spot where the holes were. Ulrich frowned, following his gaze, as Peter rippled further forward.

"Look at that!" Tasnar exclaimed, pointing at Peter's head. Ulrich looked and blinked. Without vanishing it appeared that Peter's head had plunged into the rock wall, some how further away from Ulrich's eyes than the depth that the rock sat at. He blinked, his stomach feeling suddenly queasy as the distortion of the lines of perspective pulled at his eyes. Quenril stepped forwards and spread his arms, palms slightly higher than his head and slightly forward of the rest of him. He stepped forward, patting slowly at the air before him. He stepped into the area that should not have been there and stepped again. The third time he stepped forward his hands smacked down on the rock face. He turned his head to the right.

"There's a tunnel here," he stated. Ulrich kneed Peter forward and the centipede rippled eagerly into the opening, halting half in and half out when Ulrich asked him to. The insect hissed in frustration, guessing who Ulrich was stopping for. He was right.

"Marmaduke, come here," Ulrich called and the automaton stumped over. Ulrich looked at him and looked at the width of the tunnel, coming to the conclusion that Marmaduke was too broad across the shoulders to fit. Front to back though, he might just make it.

"Right Marmaduke," Ulrich stated, "You are going to have to learn how to crab walk." Marmaduke whirred, his noise of confusion. "It is fairly simple, all you have to do is copy me," Ulrich explained, "Now copy me."

It took ten minutes, maybe quarter of an hour for Marmaduke to master the side ways shuffle, or crab walk as Ulrich called it, Peter grumbling all the time but the giant insect perked up as Ulrich walked back to him and settled on his back again.

"Right then people, follow me and we should catch up with our friends in a jiffy," Ulrich called, "Marmaduke, you follow Peter and start crab walking at the opening of the tunnel." Marmaduke rattled, which Ulrich took for consent so he tapped Peter on the chitin and the insect rippled into the tunnel. Quenril looked back towards the beach, a puzzled frown on his face, about to ask a question but Ulrich was gone with Marmaduke behind him so, with a shrug, Quenril and the other Ash Elves followed.

At the fire a row of socks were laid out to dry, while Estella repeatedly stuffed their boots with wads of cloth and then started back at the beginning of the row, pulling one wad out and replacing it with a dry or semi dry one to wick the moisture out, hanging each piece of cloth over a convenient stick of drift wood so that the warmth of the fire made them steam into the cool air before moving on to the next shoe.

"Why do you do that?" Kaelin asked.

"It's what Quenril suggested," Estella noted, "I figured that if you keep replacing the cloth with a warm, dry one then it would speed up the drying out process but not enough to crack the boot and I don't know about you but I'm tired of having shoes that squish at me."

"But why do it for all of us?" Kaelin asked, mumbling round a mouthful of jerky, "Why not leave the rest of us to work it out for ourselves?"

"Ah you see, my dear Kaelin," Jeremiah smiled from where he sat, the arches of his new wings casting unnerving shadows, "Lady Estella here was brought up to be a proper woman, subservient, considerate, quiet, hard working and dutiful to her men folk and those unfortunates who haven't been trained to realize their true purpose."

"Bug dung!" Thorian spat before Kaelin's ire could rise, "You don't help each other out 'cause that's all you're good for, you help each other out 'cause that's how you all stay alive. So some are better at some jobs than at others, so what? If you have a tribe who were all only good at making kefir you'd wind up with a tribe that starves. It's a stupid tribe that doesn't recognize the gifts everybody brings to the tribe."

"Says the orc who had to leave because he was too smart for his tribe to understand," Jeremiah smiled but it was not a nice smile.

"I didn't say my tribe weren't stupid," Thorian noted, "And I might be able to talk some sense into them when I go home. I'm learning how to talk good so I might be able to get them to think some big thinks. And any ho, that's not what is important right now, what's important is that Estella here is helping us out because she is our friend and she wants to help us out, not 'cause some stupid, old man told her that was all she was good for. You need to do some big thinks, god boy, about how you think about people, if you think about people."

Jeremiah smiled but it still wasn't nice and the way the fire light danced in his eyes was disconcerting.  The Talismans crouched on the other side of their mother, watching him with wide eyes.

"Thank you," Estella said quietly to Thorian. Kaelin swallowed her mouthful of jerky and reached to put another piece of wood on the fire but she paused before she did so.

"Where's Ulrich?" she asked, "He should have been here by now." Thorian turned his head and sniffed at the air currents.

"That's... odd," he noted, "Ulrich's smell is going away from us. It shouldn't have taken him this long to find us, you would have thought his pointy eared friends would have pointed out our tracks. Weren't like I was trying to hide them when I came this way."

"Bother it," Kaelin threw down the stick and reached for her socks, "Just when I was getting comfortable. Still I prefer him to his largeness and his pets."

"Yeah," Thorian noted, also reaching for his socks, "That and he has the pot of unending drink and I don't mean the sort of drink that gives you a headache after you have drunk it." Estella noted her agreement and started putting the wads of material out of people's shoes and handing said shoes back. The foot wear didn't squish quite as much as it had done.

"Tis a shame," Thorian pouted at the fire, "We only just got that going but aye think we'd better go find him."

"Now friends," Jeremiah smiled, "Surely you are over reacting. The air currents here under ground are unpredictable so Ulrich may not be going away from us at all, in fact in a few moments he may well coming walking around Nanny Tatters' tail and ask why we are off again in such a hurry. We have been going for a long time today without a rest and it can hardly be a good thing to be traveling in the Underworld while we are struggling with fatigue and the pain of over worked feet. It would be better by far to rest here and wait for our friend to catch up. And if he doesn't catch up, well such things will happen in the Underworld, as he himself warned us, and it is not to be unexpected when his friends all ran off and left him behind while he was struggling to guide his metal man through the pool. I'm sure we will all mourn for the friend you abandoned. Better by far to rest and be ready to face the dangers of this place, now that we have a depleted team."

Kaelin stood as she swung her pack on to her back and gave Jeremiah a long slow long before she quite deliberately raise her middle finger at him in the same gesture that she had used at the ghost of the werewolf back in the dwerg's city.

"That's strange," Thorian said as he hefted his pack, "I thought I heard something really unpleasant making noise just then but I guess I was wrong."

"Seems that some of the tunnels down here make a lot of noise when something large moves through them," Kaelin observed as she climbed on to Weatherall's back and cast off the rope she's used to tie his eye stalk to a near by rock, "I guess it is one of the risks that comes with the terrain." Estella fell in beside Weatherall without a word, the Talismans peeping with concern, several of them keeping an eye on Jeremiah behind them.

After a while Jeremiah heaved himself to his feet and after lighting up his own light stick, he looked at the fire for a minute. He smiled.

Jamming the light stick into a crack so that it would keep burning, he picked up a branch and swept the entire mass of the fire into the pool, its light and warmth going out with a hiss and a flurry of steam. There, see how they like that after they had ignored and ridiculed him. They were standing at the edge of the beach like a line of ducks when he caught up with them, although standing might have been an overly optimistic description in Kaelin's case as that ridiculous over sized crab jiggled and jittered underneath her, trying to communicate something that the mongrel was too uneducated to understand. Jeremiah looked around and picked a boulder at the point were right and left tunnels divided, dusted off the top of it and settled himself down to watch the show.

"Welp," Thorian stated, "He's not here." He gazed over the water, puzzled as to why Ulrich wasn't out there either. Weatherall nearly span on the spot, waving his claws around without snapping them. Kaelin frowned as she tried to control the over size beast.

"Estella," she called, "Any chance of a hand here?"

"Sure," the younger woman stepped up, "What do you need?"

"You up here taking my place," Kaelin admitted.

"Okay," Estella said more slowly but she scrambled up on to Weatherall's shell and took hold of his eye stalks. Weatherall paused, eyes rolling and lined up for a sideways dash into the pool. Estella looked down at him and her left eye turned totally black, a light less pit carved through reality in which dying stars gave up their final glow. Weatherall froze and began to respond to Estella's gentle commands. Kaelin, meanwhile, was busy, sniffing around the ground, following the smell of centipede and Ash Elf and Ulrich.

"That way," she pointed to the right hand way.

"Oh great," Thorian rumbled as he started following Kaelin, "You would have thought that my great big clod hoppers would have made him a trail that that he could actually follow. You would have thought that he could engage his mark one gogglers to have a look for us."

"Ulrich is one of the noble classes," Estella pointed out, "They tend to be very good at organizing what needs to be done but not actually very good at doing them."

"He actually admitted that over the whole fire lighting fiasco," Kaelin observed as she sniffed her way, bent almost double into the right hand way.

"Even with their sports, they tend to have someone else do their heavy lifting," Estella pointed out, "Take hunting. They are all for the last chase down and the kill but it takes the Master of the Hunt to actually track down the beastie and lead them to it."

"Nobles have a habit of being cruel," Kaelin observed to no one particular, still walking forward.

"Friends," Jeremiah called, "Why all this fuss? It is true that Ulrich has managed to wander off and get himself lost and it must be said now that it is particularly his own fault if he cannot follow the foot prints of such large being as our friend Thorian and his own pet crab, but if we keep wandering after him then surely we will face the same threat? Wouldn't it be much better to come back to the fire and rest? Then we can start the search tomorrow when we will be much fitter for the task in hand?"

"Um?" Thorian wavered. What the god man was saying did have a certain amount of sense, he was becoming very sleepy himself and he was fairly sure that Estella was beginning to droop where she was crouched on Weatherall's shell. A sit down and maybe a nap would be comforting right now and his boots were still rather damp and cold round his toes...

"I'm touched by your concern for our party member," Kaelin growled, "It really shows how much of a team player you have been come but some of us want to know for sure that our comrade is still alive and breathing and isn't in trouble, especially seeing as he's the one who gained us the slew of allies that have actually made sure that we're made it through this land without dropping down dead umpteen times over."

Thorian frowned as he tried to process what Kaelin had said and what her tone felt like.

"Oh," he said at last, "You were doing that sir-chasm thing you humans do. Oh, I get it, you mean that Jerry's being sus-pit-ious, right?"

"Right," Kaelin nodded as she straightened up and stepped out more freely into the right hand way.

"Oh friends," Jeremiah smiled disarmingly, "I am merely trying to make you realize that doing this on an empty stomach is foolishness."

"Someone wants his dinner," Estella noted to no one in particular.

"Well he's going to have to wait," Kaelin replied. She stopped in the middle of the cavern and looked around. She could smell Ulrich, she could smell his centipede and she could smell the grey trails of the three Ash Elves but she couldn't see any of them. She jammed her fists on her hips, looking around in frustration.

"He's vanished into mid air," Thorian stated, stepping up to join her. Kaelin rolled her eyes but didn't correct him. He was trying his best and there were more important things to concentrate on. She wandered round in a circle, trying to pick up Ulrich's trail. It had become really rather tangled at this point.

Thorian suddenly lifted his head and sniffed. He sniffed again, picking up a scent Kaelin had missed.

"What is it, good sir Thorian?" Estella asked.

"I smell something funny," Thorian closed his eyes, following his nose, "Smells like... smells like..."

He walked into the wall but kept trying to walk through the wall, even as he muttered and mumbled about things being inconsiderate.

"You see Thorian," Jeremiah leaned back and began lecturing, "This is why you should leaving the thinking to those of us more qualified to do it. It is the duty of the feeble mind to submit to those blessed by the gods to be more able to use the brains that they were blessed with at birth."

Kaelin rolled her eyes and let Jeremiah ramble on, doing her best to tune out his bigoted monologue. Some people were just that closed minded that you couldn't jemmy open their minds with a crow bar. With Jeremiah you wouldn't be able to open his mind with a battering ram. She turned her back on the priest as he closed his eyes, lost in his dogma, and walked closer to where Thorian was trying to walk through the wall, still mumbling about being able to smell something. She frowned; there was something off about the lines of perspective around Thorian, something that was making the wolf inside her stand up and growl.

"Oh, ow." Kaelin looked round to see Estella looked off to one side, squeezing her eyes shut repeatedly and shaking her head.

"Sorry," Estella said, "There's something wrong with that wall and it's making my eyes ache."

Kaelin looked at it again and nodded slowly. There was definitely something off about that wall and it could even be why Thorian had walked into in the first place. It occurred to Kaelin that humans always assumed that other people saw the world exactly the way they did but maybe they didn't. Just like the world of scent color that opened up to her when she went wolf, maybe Thorian saw the world in a different way, a way that interfered with his depth perception. It suddenly struck her that the orc crossbreeds had been breed down here in the Underworld, it was possible that they saw the world in shades of monochrome, as monochrome was better for low light conditions but it was also terrible at depth perception. Without saying anything about his stubbornness in trying to make the wall yield to his efforts, she stepped forward, closing her eyes to mollify the wolf but letting it stay high in her system so that the shades of her scent sight built a picture in her mind of her surroundings. He was right, there was a scent that was out of place here, the smell of the black stone that burnt in the traveling stove of the Ash Elves and it lead to that area of wall. Kaelin stepped forward, hands raised before her face, unknowingly echoing Quenril's gesture from earlier that day. She frown as she blocked out Jeremiah's rambling and stepped forward. One hand slapped down on a surface but the other passed further away, unable to find a surface even at full stretch. She opened her eyes and craned round the edge in the wall that her eyes tried to tell her was not there. She turned round, hanging on to the edge with her right hand and caught Estella's eye. She pressed a finger to her lips and then beckoned her closer with a wave of her arm. As Estella guided Weatherall closer, Kaelin reached out and tapped Thorian on the shoulder. The orc crossbreed looked round and his mouth dropped open as he saw what Kaelin had found. Kaelin pressed her finger to her lips again before he could say everything, then with a mischievous twinkle in her eye she stepped into the tunnel, beckoning Estella and Thorian to follow her. They looked at each other and  then they beamed. Thorian followed first and then, with a quiet skitter, Estella guided Weatherall in behind them.

"And that is why it is only right that lesser beings accept their place graciously and submit to the proper guidance of those the gods created superior to them," Jeremiah concluded and opened his eyes. His audience chamber was empty, the other three and even that ridiculous giant crab having apparently vanished into thin air.

"Why those inconsiderate... Ungrateful... " he stood up, at a loss to describe his traveling companions, "Short handed, pudding brained proofs that not all adventurers should leave the tavern! If they spoke their minds they'd all be speechless! Just when I think I have their measure they prove how difficult it is to underestimate them all! If they ate soup they'd have to wear water wings or wait for the life guard! Do you hear me?" He bellowed into the dark and was even more annoyed when nobody replied. Cupping his hands round his mouth, he bellowed, "The day you were all born none of your parents could be bothered to show up!"

The was a resounding crack and a second later something splashed down in the small lake of water, sending waves rippling across the surface. Jeremiah watched them and humphed, noticing something approaching the beach underneath the water.

"Find them," he snapped at Nanny Tatters, watching the thing gradually rising out of the water. He glared at it as he realized that it was his pack and tottering along underneath it was the glow eyed vigor. Up on his miter, Gerald covered his eyes with his two front legs, waiting for the blow to fall.

"You... You..." Jeremiah seemed in danger of bursting a blood vessel, "Pig! Pig! Pig!Swine herd of Greater and Lesser Egrit. You great unholyed brow, you couldn't even herd pigs for a peasant! You..."

Gerald suddenly jerked his miter right off his head, backwards.

"Why you..." Jeremiah swung round and saw Nanny Tatters wandering off towards where the camp fire had once been. Gerald replaced his miter with an apologetic buzz.

"Get back here!" Jeremiah roared, the veins in his temples throbbing.

"You great worthless lump of hide less meat!" Jeremiah harangued Nanny Tatters, "Let me make this completely understandable to a dull minded cretin like you - you only exist because I allow it, you only remain on this plain of existence because I allow it. I let you exist, I do and no other. Justify the space you take up or as Klu'ga-nuth gives me strength I'll put you so far down in the depth of Hell even the Fallen himself wouldn't be able to bring you back!"

She stared at him dully with her one great eye and then swung her head towards the right hand chamber, shifting her bulk round towards that cavern.

"Follow me," Jeremiah instructed the vigor, "By all means, follow me." He stumped after Nanny Tatters.

In the tunnel, Estella cocked her head.

"Came you here that?" she asked. Kaelin listened a moment.

"Must be air movements," she said, "You know they can be unpredictable down here." 

"Hum, I thought so," Estella agreed, "But I just wanted to make sure." She grinned as the laughter of another rolled through her belly, a certain dragon ever so proud of her growing vicious streak. Not being in the know about this conversation, Kaelin peered into the dark ahead. If she wasn't much mistaken there was a light up there, bobbing and weaving as it moved in the dark.

"Step it up," she said quietly, "I think I see them."

Back in the cavern Nanny Tatters lowered her massive head towards the floor and sniffed at the dirt as Jeremiah stood, arms folded, foot tapping, glaring as his undead pet took her time tracking down where the others had gone. Ungrateful ingrates, they had no idea who they left behind. He would make them all pay for this, some how he would make them pay for this. How dare they leave him behind to cope on his own with all the dangers of the Underworld. He would have to think of suitable ways to punish them for this.

In the tunnel Thorian peered ahead, spotting what Kaelin had seen, that fleck of light wobbling along in the dark, only as he watched the light steadied and something about its quality changed, a slight color shift that told him he wasn't just looking at the light from a light stick any more.

"Aye think our friend may have found the way out," he said out loud, "If you can go a little faster Kaelin..." Something snagged at the back of his heel. "Oy, duh yah mind, these boots are new, I don't want them mucked up."

"Sorry," Estella said, "Weatherall here seems to enjoy going down tunnels."

"Probably reminds him of home," Kaelin observed, "Most crabs like to burrow."

"Either way," Thorian said, "Let's speed it up."

Jeremiah tilted his head. He could have sworn he had just heard the orc crossbreed's irritating voice sounding out of some where. He glared at where Nanny Tatters trundled rolled and round in a circle.

"Do you suppose that you could get on with it sometime today?" he growled.

In the tunnel Kaelin held up a fist, her gesture silhouetted against the light now framed by the tunnel exit. Ahead of her she had seen Ulrich and his companions standing still, gazing at something that seemed to have their complete and undivided attention. Kaelin turned her head and pressed a finger to her lips again and then started creeping towards Ulrich's back. Ulrich didn't notice a thing, apparently frozen by the view in front of them, a view that had oddly enough completely captivated Quenril and his relatives, even their hyper awareness of what moved within their home apparently dulled by the sight before them. As Ulrich didn't more neither did his mechanical servant, Marmaduke standing as still and as unrelenting as ever but Peter began turned his head around, antennae waving as he picked up a scent and again it struck Kaelin that different beings may have different ways of seeing the world. It was possible that Peter couldn't actually see the wonder that had enthralled his rider. She froze but as she did so a rock went skipping and bowling passed her, rolling to a stop at Peter's front most feet. The centipede lowered his head to inspect the rock, waving his feelers over it as if puzzled by a stone that could apparently perambulate of its own accord.

Kaelin looked back to the tunnel exit. Thorian stood in the exit and raised his thumb to her, a huge grin on his face. Kaelin almost smiled and raised her thumb back before turning to continue creeping up on Ulrich.

"There you are," she slapped her hands down on his shoulders, "We've been simply looking all over for you old boy."

Unfortunately, Ulrich's attention had already been pulled away from what he'd been goggling at by Peter's movement so there wasn't the leap of heart stopping shock she'd been hoping for but he still seemed surprised to see her behind him.

"Kaelin, waited, how did you... get behind us?" he stumbled over his words, the first time she's ever seen him do that, "You should be ahead of us."

"We went left back there and you went right," Kaelin admitted.

"Why would you do a thing like that?" Ulrich asked, "It was the wrong way entirely."

"An you're are sure of that because?" Kaelin asked.

"See for yourself," Ulrich waved an arm at the sight that had so arrested him and the Ash Elves. Kaelin looked.

"Hey Kaelin," Thorian called after a moment, "You alright?"

"Uh huh," Kaelin managed to nod, "Hum. Huh. You have got to come and see this."

Frowning, Thorian stepped out of the tunnel's exit and stepped over to where the group were still gawking, Estella guiding Weatherall along behind him. They both stopped in stunned amazement at what was laid out below them.

"Well I'll be jiggered," Estella said slowly and quietly.

Back at the cavern Nanny Tatter's suddenly swung her head towards the wall and started sucking in great hoovering breaths through her nose, sounding like an industrial sized extraction fan. She lunged forward, neck crocked at an angle and jammed her head into the tunnel opening, snorting and sucking for all she was worth. Jeremiah stomped forward to see what she had found, his undead vigor porter stumping along in his walk, pack still held over its head, water dripping down its arms as the soggy load unburdened itself of its dampness. Jeremiah glared as he had to work his way round the outer side of Nanny Tatters' legs as she doing that stupid piaffe again. Then he saw that the whole of the tunnel's mouth was blocked by her head.

"If I didn't know better I would swear that I smashed a clay pot to find you, or maybe I won you as a prize in a county fair," he swore, "This is exactly the sort of work I would expect from such a paragon of mediocrity such as you! I keep wondering why I keep you hanging around, most great beings have minions that are useful."

It took him a moment to realize the noise he could hear was an extremely fruitsome release of wind from Nanny Tatters. It stank like something in her digestive tract had died and indeed it had, the whole of her.

Jeremiah went to yell the words that would undo her and then something shifted in the dark. Jeremiah swung round and realized as he did so that his light stick was beginning to burn low. He glared at it and then a look of horror crossed his face. He looked at the pack that the vigor was holding a loft, trails of water still running down its arms. His mind swiftly calculated the chances of anything in that pack to be dry enough to use and came up with the number of zero, with the potential of several percentages of chance being further subtracted from that. The light stick died.

"Gerald! Light!" Jeremiah yelled. The moth buzzed his wings, powering up the generator. Something moved in the pool again, a faint splash rippling over the surface. Jeremiah turned back to where Nanny Tatters claws ploughed at the ground, gouging up great gashes in the stone with the sound of iron nails dragged down slate. He quickly framed a prayer to his deity to reduce her size.

With a sharp pop, Nanny Tatters burst into the tunnel, even while she continued shrinking down to the size of a small pony. Jeremiah would have taken her to task for being undignified but with a backwards glance towards the pool he hurried into the tunnel after her, calling for the vigor to follow them, Gerald hanging on to his miter and glowing hard, trying to light the way before his master. Jeremiah grunted as his new wings scrapped against the tunnel walls. It had so better be worth this pain and indignity.

Kaelin, Thorian and Estella stared down at the scene sprawled at their feet. The rock fell sharply way into a nearly perfect circular depression roughly a hundred and sixty feet down, a circle that had to be miles across. There were buildings in there that would dwarf King Tatsuya's palace and Kaelin tracked her gaze back and forth across the districts. She couldn't see a single building less than three storeys high and most of them seemed to be higher. Lines of blue glowing beads were stretched in a web over the city, gently illuminating the streets, clustering in open spaces that seemed to resemble markets or meeting places.

"Have..." Kaelin started and cleared her throat, "Have you ever seen any where like this?"

Quenril shook his head slowly, Tasnar and Sabal gazing with wide eyes at the city below.

"Never, good lady," Quenril said, "This is unlike anything that we had knowledge of."

"So you haven't ever tried to enslave any of the people in there?" Ulrich jested.

"We can't enslave those we have no knowledge of," Tasnar admitted ruefully.

"You... You don't think could be one of the hidden cities of the Begetters?" Sabal asked his relative, a slight tremble in his voice.

"Would it upset you to discover your creators again?" Estella asked from where she crouched on the back of Weatherall.

"I..." Sabal croaked on it, "I am not worthy." He was wringing his hands, twisting the skin over the joints until it showed white as he stepped back, "I am not worthy. I... I doubted. I doubted. When we found our people destroyed and the Matriarch slain and the nursery and..." He couldn't finish, the tears starting to slid down his face.

Thorian turned and laid a hand on Sabal's shoulder. He didn't need to say anything. Sabal's pain was obvious. He had truly believed in the Begetters, in their power, in their authority, in the rightness of the life they had dictated to their followers and it had been quietly falling apart on him ever since Lady Zilvra had come marching home in triumph only to find their world in ruins and blood. His world was ending and he didn't know how to deal with it.

"Come on old chum," Ulrich said as he turned Peter's head in the direction of the downward slope that lead towards the city, "We can't stay still. You can't stay still." After a moment Sabal bowed his head and turned to follow his cousin's favorite.

Ulrich slowly guided Peter down the slope, thankful that despite his many, many legs he was surprisingly quiet and worried about how soon Marmaduke would give the game away with his...

Thorian tripped and knocked into Sabal with a yelp, stumbling to regain his balance. He managed to catch one hand against the wall, halting himself just in time to stop himself from falling on to the tumbling Sabal. Sabal slid on his front for a couple of feet and then came to a stop, wincing as he put weight on his skinned hands to lever himself upright.

"Squeak! Squeakkkkkkk! Squeak!"

Sabal froze, staring at the thing that squalled at him.

"Squeeeeeeeaaaaaaak! Squeak! Squeak!" It was small, so small that it could have sat in Sabal's palm with probably two or three companions easily, the same greyish black of the surrounding limestone, its slightly protuberant eyes and down turned mouth giving it the cutest, yet grumpiest face ever.

"Squeeeeeeaaaaaak! Squeak!"

Ulrich turned Peter round to see what all the noise was about. The centipede waved his antenna at the small thing as if wondering how something so small could make a noise that echoed around the cavern.

"It's an angry avocado," Ulrich observed.

"What is?" Thorian asked as he leaned over and seized Sabal by the back of his jacket, pulling him up right again. He noticed the small ball of squeaking aggression as it swelled up, raised itself on to the tips of its toes and unleashed what it imagined was pure sonic hell.

"Oh, is that tasty?" Thorian asked, leaning forward to have a closer look at it.

"That is horrible," Ulrich noted, "It makes you a bully to pick on something that can't fight back."

"Tell that to a pig," Kaelin observed.

"I'll have you know that pigs can do a lot of damage to someone who is unprepared for them to charge and even the tuskless breeds have more teeth in their mouths than you want to come across."

"Okay which would you back in a fight?" Kaelin asked, "Me or a pig?" Her grin had fangs in it but Ulrich smiled back.

"Okay," he replied, "Fifty stone of ticked off pig that has the bite force of a large guard dog and the dentistry of a human and when it is scared it doesn't run away, it puts its head down and charges towards you, fully intending to smash you off your feet and then chew at least a lump or two out of you. How does that sound for defenseless?"

Kaelin stared blankly at him.

"You might want to ask yourself how many pig farms your grandfather's pack has raid, old bean," Ulrich smiled at her. Estella nodded her head in agreement and then her face to one side and looked to one side as if listening to a speaker no one else could hear.

"I like the sound of these... pigs," Valodrael purred, "I wonder what they taste like."

"You are such a glutton," Estella murmured.

"Contrary to that, my dear," he replied, "I haven't had the chance to have a good meal since we had our little tift with Lady Kaelin's pack in the Endingborough. I am becoming hungry." She could almost feel the flex of his taloned fingers on her skin.

"Not just hungry," Estella observed.

"Hum?" Valodrael would have cocked an eyebrow at her if he could have done.

"Nothing," Estella denied she'd said anything, even as the blush crawled up her neck.

Meanwhile, Thorian had changed tactic with the squeaking amphibian, clearing his throat.

"Squeak!" he rumbled at it, "Squeak! Squeeeeaaaaak!"

The frog seemed unnerved by the noise Thorian was making and the others stared at him in wonder, wonder as to whether he had gone absolutely cracked. The frog wiggled backwards until it was halfway into a hole at the bottom of the wall.

"Oh," Thorian noted, "Did I say something wrong? Um. Squeakkkkkk! Squeak! Squeak! Squeeeeeeaaaaaak! Squeak!"

The frog, its face already stuck in a permanent expression of grumpy disapproval, glared at Thorian and hissed out its breath in final squeak and a burp before disappearing backwards into its hole.

"I think you insulted it," Estella nodded, guiding Weatherall closer to him.

"What did I say?" Thorian questioned.

"Something along the lines of," Kaelin cleared her throat, "Your father was Curdain and your mother was a monkey."

"Oh that doesn't sound good," Thorian admitted, "Um, what's Cure-dan?"

"In this instant," Ulrich called as he started guiding Peter down the slope again, "It is the people of the country of Curdain, a people who have a very interesting culinary tradition."

"You what?" Thorian asked as he started after Ulrich.

"They like to eat frog's legs," Ulrich informed him, adjusting the tip of his hat.

"Oh!" Thorian said and then frowned as if he still didn't quite understand what was going on, "Do you suppose it is dangerous? That little thing Aye mean?"

"If Jeremiah was here he could trip up in front of it to see," Kaelin observed as she started following them down.

"That's a point," Thorian paused and looked back, "Where is Jerrers?"

Estella turned Weatherall back, or rather got him to walk side ways in the other direction, until she could have a listen at the mouth of the tunnel entrance.

"He's coming," she reported, "Shall we wait for him?"

Ulrich and Thorian looked at each other and then Ulrich tapped Peter lightly on the shell to speed him up. Thorian bundled past, getting out in front, making Sabal mutter something unflattering as the push made him stumble into the wall.

"Well one should have an underling clear the way before one," Ulrich turned the pomposity on again.

"First one there get the throne!" Thorian bellowed back, pounding down the slope.

Ulrich kneed Peter in the chitin and gave chase, the Ash Elves breaking into a trot behind them.

"Seriously?" Kaelin rolled her eyes and followed them, Estella bring up the rear but at a slower pace as she made sure that Weatherall kept his footing on the narrow pathway.

Thorian and Ulrich barrelled down the slop, laughing and beaming as first Thorian and then Ulrich pulled ahead.  As they bowled down the path stones clicked and clacked and sometimes dropped of the edge, disturbed by Ulrich and Thorian's break neck pace. Bonging like a kettle Marmaduke thumped along behind them, huge feet leaving giant circular prints in the dirt as he bounded along behind them.

"That's cheating!" Thorian protested as Ulrich guided Peter up the wall and over the top of the out crop that narrowed the way.

"All's fair and all that," Ulrich grinned as he put himself solidly in the lead. Thorian grunted and put on an extra burst of speed, reaching for Peter's back legs. Peter pulled ahead just out of reach. Thorian panted and glared at Ulrich's back and then realized that the path switched back ahead and before it did so the side of the cavern started sloping down, not falling in the sheer drop that it had previously.

Ulrich lend forward, laying himself flat along Peter's surging back so he flowed with Peter's movement as the giant insect took the switch back at break neck speed. His neck still spasmed with the force of the turn but it wasn't the muscle tearing whip crack that Weatherall had given him earlier. Ulrich smiled and then opened his mouth in protest as he saw Thorian finish his slide down the cliff face, boots kicking up dust clouds, left hand helping to balance and slow him ever so slightly, to land on the path well ahead of Ulrich.

"That's cheating sirrah!" Ulrich snapped.

"All's fair and all that," Thorian called back cheerfully as he took off running again. Ulrich kneed Peter in the chitin again, now struggling to catch up with Thorian.

Up above them, Jeremiah emerged out into the cavern. He gazed his fill at the city, marveling at the wonder of it, a whole new civilization that he could plunder for their knowledge, this trip was just becoming better and better. Eventually he noticed far, far down the tiny specks that were the hurrying forms of the rest of the King's Special. It seemed that they were once again wasting their energy and abandoning their dignity for a moment of juvenile 'fun'. They really were pathetic.

Jeremiah looked round as the vigor stepped out of the tunnel. Nanny Tatters now stood to one side of it, having come to a stop the moment she had exited from the tunnel. Jeremiah narrowed his eyes. He had told her to find the rest of the King's special so why hadn't she started off down the path after them. There again it did mean that he was spared the indignity of having to hurry after her as if she was the master and he was the servant so he brushed the concern aside.

"You," he pointed an imperious finger, "Carry that and fly down there."

Nanny Tatters blinked her great black threaded blue orb of an eye at him and then reared back on to her hind legs so she could wrap her front talons round the vigor's chest and lift it from the ground. She stepped, unsteadily, to the edge of the path, her wings flaring out to keep her balance.

Jeremiah ducked as the tip of a wing speared overhead, knocking Gerald and his miter flying. He straightened up to chastise her but the air thumped to the mighty down beat of her wings as she launched herself into the air, pushing off into the cavern, one beat, two beats and then she folded her wings and dived towards the gates of the city. Gerald fluttered back to his master, carefully settling his miter back into place. Jeremiah humped and then opened his own wings. Trying to hold his dignity in place he leaned towards the drop but at the last second he closed his eyes and flinch. His wings cupped the air and his was suddenly gliding, gliding into the cavern. He opened his eyes and Gerald buzzed with the effort of holding his miter on his head as his forward speed increased. Jeremiah never admitted that he took a deep breath before closing his wings and tilting into the dive.

Thorian stumbled to a stop at the bottom of the slop, mouth dropping open, Peter and Ulrich nearly crashing into the back of him as Jeremiah back winged as hard as he could. Granted he still had to perform a skipping little run to prevent himself from tipping on to his face but he straightened quickly and turned to face them.

"Well my friends," he beamed, "So nice of you to finally catch up." Behind him Nanny Tatters sniggered, the vigor standing impassive where she'd dropped it. Jeremiah frowned at the sound but concentrated on the faces of the others, wanting to remember every detail as Kaelin's sour continence joined them at the back and Estella, that unnatural girl child, shuffled that ridiculous giant crab down the last of the trail. Granted the two women didn't seem to be fazed by his sudden appearance but Ulrich and Thorian were suitably stumped by his appearance. It was gratifying to see their gormless aspects hanging there like pieces of a peasant's washing blowing in the breeze. He smiled more widely as he hammered ever detail of this moment into his memory. It was worth every twinge of chest muscle to see this.

"Welp," Thorian turned to Ulrich, "Looks like Jerras here beaten us good and proper. What say you?"

"All's fair and all that," Ulrich repeated with a nod, "He had the advantage over both of us and used it to perfection. I bow to the skill of the winner." And he did so.

"So gratifying that you could finally admit defeat," Jeremiah beamed and then turned to look at the city gates, "Well, well, well what have we here?"

"It's a city," Kaelin stated stumping forward, rolling her eyes.

"That is most obvious," Jeremiah's smile soured a little, "But what I meant, my dear Kaelin, is why are the gates wide open but unguarded, the streets light but not occupied. Does that not strike everyone as a little odd?"

They all peered into the city more closely, noticing that Jeremiah was right. The city was eerily quiet, its blue glow now disconcerting. The source of the light was even strange. Instead of flaming torches or oil powered lamps, boxes of glass and silver stood at the tops of tall posts of metal, full of glowing insects feeding on a fungus that grew on an organic mulch of the bodies of insects that had gone before, casting their bioluminescent shade over the street, painting it in the shade of slowly flowing water.

The silence was shattered as Thorian rapped his large knuckles against the gate to the right.

"Hello?" he called, "Anyone at home?"

Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!

Thorian turned his face and saw another of the rolly-polly frogs squeezing itself backwards into a little hole at the bottom of the door frame. It let loose one finally high pitched squeak before disappearing entirely.

"A civilization of frogs?" Ulrich asked no one in particular.

"My dear Ulrich," Jeremiah smiled, "Would that not be the height of delusion? Just how could a race of frogs build something this impressive?"

"Well I don't see any one else round here, do you?" Ulrich asked. They looked at each other and then looked into the city through the gate. The streets glowed with their blue shine, brilliant light bugs dancing slowly round their glass and silver cages, casting their light over the empty street.

Thorian quietly stepped up behind Ulrich and then tapped, a little bit forcibly, Peter on the rump. The centipede whistled and lunged through the gate, galloping several paces down the street then coiling to a reared stop, glaring back at Thorian, antennae slashing through the air like swords. Thorian plastered an innocent expression on his face and held his hands wide. Kaelin shook her head and stepped passed him.

"Yes well, let's be getting on with it good chaps," Ulrich straightened, trying to make it look like he had done that deliberately, "No point in hanging around here all day. Let's have ourselves a decko and then we can see if any of these buildings are safe enough for camping out in."

"Sounds like sense to me," Estella nodded and then yawned hard enough to crack her jaw, "Ow!" She rubbed it until the pain eased up. "I don't know about you guys but I think we have put in a double shift today, maybe even a triple and I for one, am not used to working the clock fully round."

"Er, what's a clock?" Thorian asked, his face puzzled.

Jeremiah rolled his eyes and strode passed them, Nanny Tatters and the vigor on his heels, letting them bring up the back of the group as they walked on into the city. After a while their voices fell silent, too distracted by the buildings around them. They weren't like anything they had ever seen before, even the organic stone of the Wizard's Tower was somehow different to this. Though the buildings were several storeys high they were not straight. All the walls were plum line straight but they didn't line up at the corners, either misaligned or at a different rotation to the layer below. Arches supported upper storeys that jutted further across the street than the layer below them. Lower rooms were apparently open to the street but when Estella tried to guide Weatherall into one of them the crab clacked off of an invisible barrier that shivered in the air a moment.

"It's glass," Ulrich exclaimed in surprise, his palm pressed against the barrier.

"My dear, Ulrich, as much as I appreciate your patriotism of our country you of all people should know that even the greatest glass craftsmen cannot forge a piece of glass that large and certainly not of that clarity," Jeremiah corrected, his voice dripping oily.

 "I don't care what our craftsmen can produce," Ulrich objected, making Peter step back from the invisible wall, "I know glass when I see it. This is amazing."

"I haven't seen glass like this since I left the land of my father's," Estella admitted, "But even there you wouldn't have found a sheet this large." They pressed on into the city, having to remind themselves constantly that they needed to keep their mouths shut, broad paths and the smoothness of the road the very least of the things stunning them. Stairs and raised walkways were edged with railings of silvery metal that showed no sign of rust, the stone used for the buildings of a paler color than the surrounding cavern and yet there seemed to be no seam between the two but rather that grey limestone merged into the paler stone without any crack between them. And still the houses continued that odd, off center geometry, some building appearing to have been constructed out of rooms made out of different sizes, stacked together like a child would stack toy blocks, with steps that lead up and down and around them, some stairways apparently branching at random.

They came to the end of the street and what appeared to be a market place opened up before them, though there were no stalls and the stone of the ground was swept and clean. It had been inset with lines of paler and darker stone, with one or two of either red or yellow rock crossing it as well. Ulrich was fairly sure that if he could get up high enough then the lines of other colors would create some sort of design on the background of grey and white.

"What do you think the pattern is for?" he asked Kaelin.

"Hard to say," she admitted.

"I think that it says we're in trouble!" Thorian bellowed, sword whinging from its scabbard but he held his ground instead of charging in.

"I concur," Estella gasped, eyes wide, guiding Weatherall to stand back to back with Ulrich, the Ash Elves curving shoulder to shoulder on his other side, making a line that bent round, Thorian on the end. Kaelin spun round and then fell into line with them, curving the line round further. Even Jeremiah joined the rest of the King's Special, Nanny Tatters at his shoulder, closing the circle and leaving no one's back exposed as they faced down the horde that was swarming out of every crack and crevice in the city.

"Oh, by the Lord Harry!" Ulrich exclaimed, trying to not let his mouth hang open.

"And I thought there were a lot of those one eyed rat things Nanny Tatters sent after us," Thorian nodded in agreement, shifting his feet nervously as the flood closed in on them, every way out of the market square blocked by scampering bodies and flapping wings.

With a hissing, clicking, rustling noise the swarming tide came to a halt, surrounding the King's Special and their allies in a shifting, twitching circle, a solid mass of bodies, the air crackling with the stridulation of wing edges and tail lengths rubbing together, scaly snorts twitching and sniffing at them, bows held aimed and ready. Thorian swung his sword and let loose a bellow but the flood merely hissed back, forked tongues flickering, short fangs glimmering as the threat challenge raced round and round the circle.

"I know I said I was becoming hungry but this is a little over generous," Estella flinched as Valodrael bulged to the surface, her left eye going cold. It was noticed. The creatures aiming their bows cried out and stepped back, pressing the swarming mass back on that side, their chirping language racing round the circle, the ring expanding slightly and the creatures quietening, their yelling chatter calming to a steady hiss that traveled and traveled round the circle. Kaelin straightened slightly, exhaustion pushing the wolf back down as the immediate threat seemed to be decreasing but the arrows were still on the bow strings and the creatures watched with nervous eyes.

"How many do you think we could take old bean?" Ulrich asked from the side of his mouth. Thorian sniffed and looked at the swarm that filled the market square to the brim.

"Not enough," he admitted at last. Through the creatures were small, barely coming up to Kaelin's waist she couldn't see the floor for their numbers and the similarity between them and a bee hive struck her. She had once watched a giant hornet try to sneak inside a bee's nest and the bees had let it, melting out of its way, disappearing into cracks and crevasses of the comb until it was too far in to run back out. The moment it crossed that invisible line the bees had swarmed on it, piling on their fuzzy, bumbling, swirling bodies until the hornet vanished under their weight. They had swarmed and swarmed and swarmed until, suddenly they lost interest in the invader and scurried back to other jobs, leaving the giant hornet bent over and petrified until a couple of workers dragged it to the opening and tipped it off the lip of the nest. She felt cold as she came to the conclusion that this time they were the hornet. The short bows the creatures held in their hands where not as intimidating as a long bow until you saw that they had three arrows already notched on the sting and a further three clenched in the blue scaled fingers of their bow hands. If someone tried something now they were going to go down in a hail of arrows that would reduce them to pincushions. There would be porcupines that had fewer quills than they would do in the next few seconds if this went sour.

"Just what are these... beings?" Jeremiah asked, looking down at the creatures threatening them. Scaly muzzles tipped with purple nose horns looked back up at him with green eyes, ear fins waving in and out below their pearlly goat like horns. They rustled, their wings rubbing together with their neighbors. Over their blue scales they wore fringed trousers and cuff less loose shirts, if they were wearing shirts.

"They are goturi," a voice spoke from out of the crowd, "And who are you, strangers and why do you come here?"

The little bodies stirred, some further back from the front ranks turning to look at something or someone now approaching.

 "Jeremiah is here to steal your throne," Thorian boomed, grinning like and idiot as he put his sword back in its scabbard.

"What are you doing?" Sabal hissed, trying to not take his eyes from the shifting forest of bow strings in front of them.

"What?" Thorian asked with a shrug, "It was getting heavy. We don't want a fight with these people and if we did, we'd lose."

"Yeah, we tried to tell Jerras that when he came up with the stupid idea of nicking a big old heavy lump of furniture from you," Kaelin called out, "But he won't listen."

"Do you mind, my dear," Jeremiah grated through clenched teeth but a laugh cut him off.

"If he came looking for the riches of mineral wealth then he came to the wrong place," the voice called, "We have no such things here though for some reason adventures such as yourselves do keep trying to convince us that we must have riches of some sort down here. But I sense your statements are not the truth but rather a cruel jest at a companion who you do not like much, so I say again - why are you here strangers?"

"Good people," Ulrich called, sliding his swords away and holding up his hands to show his good intentions, "Good people, we are lost in the ways of the Underworld, not being natives of this realm and those of us who are familiar with this land having been taken far out of their known territory. It was by blind accident and chance that we came upon your most amazing city but we have no intention of bringing trouble to your realm. All we ask is that you point us in the direction of the surface world and allow us to go unharmed, although allowing us one night to rest and eat would be appreciated. We have supplies so we would not deplete your stores and we would be happy for you to blindfold us and guide us out of your land so that we cannot inadvertently reveal your location to anyone else."

"Speak for yourself on that last bit, sir," Jeremiah grumped, not relishing the prospect of being unable to see these little monsters and having them guiding him. He could just imagine them guiding him off a cliff to have a snigger. The wings at his back twitched, reminding him that such a nasty little trick wouldn't be much use now.

Ulrich made a small noise in his throat. He had seen the figure approaching them through the horde of goturi. She, for the figure was most definitely of the female bent, moved down a pathway made by the movements of the goturi that opened before her and closed behind her, her grown, that left her shoulders bare, fanning and falling to the grace of her movements, her heavy veil obscuring her features. Ulrich would have wondered how she could see through it but he had the distinct impression that she could not see through it with her human eyes. However, her human eyes were not the only eyes that she possessed. Like a bridal veil her covering was secured to the front of a circlet but it only hanged over her face and enough of the side of her head to make sure that someone could not accidentally peak beneath it. Her golden tresses fell unimpeded but they didn't fall at the same time. Ulrich swallowed through a dry mouth and tried to control the clenching in his bowels.

"That's Methusa," Thorian stated.

The serpents that made the woman's hair coiled and some of them focused their unblinking gazes upon the orc cross breed, tongues flickering, tasting the air. Her dry, metallic laugh rang out again.

"Good lady," Ulrich bowed low, keeping his face lowered to Peter's shell. Marmaduke copied his master. Methusa paused, the tilt of her head saying that she was flattered and intrigued by his actions.

"I say again, strangers," she spread her hands, a gentle invitation, "Why are you here?"

"Well, good lady," Ulrich smiled and jogged Peter forward a couple of steps, pretending to ignore the tightening bow strings, "I suppose it starts with the closing of the trade routes across the lake to Nether Wallop. We are a team composed by our King, the King's Special of King Tatsuya, to discover and correct this strangulation in the flow of trade goods through the kingdom. I am Ulrich, this strong specimen is Thorian, the lady is Kaelin and our priest is Jeremiah." He thought he saw the veil change as if the face underneath it was smiling and he knew that she had recognized that he hadn't revealed their whole names but wasn't going to call him out on it. "We traveled to the lake and killed the Kraken that was destroying the shipping and pushed on to Nether Wallop. Once there we discovered that the Kraken wasn't the worst of the problems. A renegade clan of the Ash Elves, having allied themselves to a werewolf pack, were attacking the town and killing the outlying settlements. We tracked them to the Underworld and there we discovered that they had been making trouble for their own people. Having made and alliance with the Lady Zilvra we were guided to the Snake Clan hold, only to find that it had been destroyed by the werewolves allied to the renegade clan. It..." He stumbled, the memory of what had been in the nursery raising up to make his stomach turn over.

"Is this why you travel with these without enslaving them?" Methusa asked the Ash Elves.

"This is the favorite of our sister, Lady Zilvra," Quenril confirmed, "And he speaks the truth. The world has turned and we have found that we must turn with it. The Snake Clan... the Snake Clan isn't the only clan to have fallen in the most recent time candles and it is not just the werewolves and this... renegade Clan who are doing this. That...that thing there." He pointed at Nanny Tatters walking corpse, "That thing was letting the werewolves in, she was opening the hidden ways to strike at us. We took the forfeit from her but we took it after she was already dead so she did not scream, she did not even feel it." He glared at her, hatred wracking his expression, "She serves another now but we would still have destroyed that wrenched thing. But there is no point. There is no point in abusing a thing that cannot bow before your hatred. This we have learnt in the turning of the world."

"The last of our party is the Lady Estella, who..." Ulrich went to explain but stopped as a whispering started up in the goturi. This time he could hear the words.

"Dragon touched. Dragon blessed. Dragon maid."

Methusa bowed her head, her veil hanging loose and drifting in the slight air currents of the cavern.

"We welcome you, Lady Estella," she stated, "We recognize a fellow creation of dragons and we will not harm you."

"I thank you for that," Estella inclined her head in return.

"Since leaving the citadel where we formalized our alliance with Lady Zilvra and met Lady Estella," Ulrich continued, "We, as Quenril here told you, dealt with Nanny Tatters as she was the one opening the magical doorways to unleash the werewolves inside the Citadels of the Ash Elves. However, that has not completely stopped the attacks. While we were in the realm of the dwerg's they were attacked by the werewolves, who were gathering supplies for an all out war upon the surface. We are trying to make it back to the surface so that we can stand beside what is left of our people before the werewolves either kill or turn everyone that they can. Would you help us in this? It would help protect many who do not need from dying and it could go some way to rehabilitating the perception that may have of you, good lady Methusa."

She inclined her head to match Ulrich's gesture and laughed again that dry, metallic laugh.

"As much as it is tempting to once again walk in the light of the sun," she said, "I will decline your invitation. I learnt long ago that no matter how much good I try to do, no matter how many monsters, human and inhuman like, that I petrify so that they can do no more harm, no matter how many blind orphans I take under my wing, I will never be accepted among those I once called my people. Humans only remember the ugliness that we were cursed with, not who created that ugliness in the first place."

"I confess that I did not expect to meet you, Lady Methusa," Ulrich smiled, trying to show that he meant no insult, "Our legends say that you met... an unfortunate situation some years ago."

"That is putting it mildly, Lord Ulrich," her voice showed that she was still smiling, "But the truth is that I am not Methusa."

He frowned, unwilling to question a lady at the best of times and not wanting to provoke an unfortunate lifting of that veil.

"I am Eryale," she informed them, "Sister to the unfortunate Methusa and cursed with immortality where as she was not."

"Forgive this poor unfortunate one but I do not understand," Jeremiah said unctuously, "Because I was not aware that the unfortunate Methusa had any sisters. There is certainly nothing in the records to show a family to that effect."

"That is because we were not her sisters by birth," Eryale informed him, "Methusa, Sethano and I were sister priestesses in the temple of the virgin goddess Nemmay, she of wit and wisdom. When Methusa was violated on the very steps of the temple and cursed by the goddess for defiling the sacred space with her lust, Sethano and I stood by our sister and told all, mortals and gods alike, that it was not our sister's lust that defiled the temple but the judgement of a goddess who would blame the victim rather than act herself to protect her Holy Place. For that our sister's curse was spread to us as well and was increased because we had defied the goddess and called into question her judgement. Thus we were cursed to carry on after our sister's death to forever bare the memory of everything we had given up to defend her broken honor."

"The gods can be baskets," Kaelin agreed, "I don't have much time for them myself."

"Indeed, Lady Kaelin," Eryale's veil twitched with that hidden smile, "And in a way we had our revenge. Once my sister realized that there wasn't a weapon in the world that could destroy us, she returned to the temple and drove all before her, leaving the sanctuary a wind swept shell and pulled the statue of the goddess down and broke it upon the steps where our sister once screamed for an aid that never came. I believe she lives that still, slaying the monsters who come to slay her and making sure that the worship of Nemmay can never begin again, leaving the goddess as an impotent spirit, condemned to whine upon the wind."

"When will people stop it with the Lady Kaelin stuff," Kaelin muttered but she kind of like the fact that the sisters had given that witch of a goddess her just desserts. Now that was appealing. Thorian was also nodding.

"The humans don't much like my people either," he admitted, "And I don't know why."

"Er Thorian," Ulrich turned to look at him, "The way I heard it, you crushed someone to death."

"I did not," Thorian protested, "And I was pushed!"

While they had been talking with Eryale the goturi had started whispering and jabbering among themselves, their voices growing into a swell where it was impossible for the King's Special to pick out enough to know what they were saying. Eryale knelt to listen move closely to those around her, her veil pooling over her knees. After a minute or two, she straightened.

 "My people wish of you to face the challenge to prove that this 'King's Special' is worthy of being sheltered within their midst," she reported to them.

"Sounds fun," Thorian grinned, "Go on."

"Do you accept?" Eryale asked and one could almost hear the smile.

"It's a ruddy terrible idea," Thorian admitted and then beamed all the more brightly, "Let's do it!"

"We should know what we are getting into!" Kaelin protested.

"Well I say we go with Thorian's idea," Ulrich supported the orc crossbreed, "We need a rest, we need food and we need some where we can all sleep easily for at least eight hours straight. Let's go for it. How hard can it be?"

 "You only live once," Thorian fist bumped Ulrich.

"That's the problem!" Kaelin snapped but her words were drowned out by the cheer of the crowd. The goturi surged forward but this time bows had been slung and arrows stowed. Hundred of little hands started hustling and bustling them across the square and when Thorian tripped he was held up by wiry limbs that seemed to have a strength that defied their small size. Most of the King's Special wound up being carried, despite their protests and the flood surged onwards, flowing down street after street until the curved wall made of hundreds of arches soared above them. Peter, carried aloft by a crew of dozens, whistled with distress as they were ferried through one of the arches. Kaelin's eyes barely had time to adjust to the dim light within before a huge set of double doors swung open before them and they were propelled through, Ulrich being physically lifted from Peter's back and Marmaduke also separated from his master. Gasping and staggering the King's Special and most of their allies were deposited on the flagstones of the arena. Kaelin looked around with foreboding as the goturi flowed into the seats lining the stands that rose from above the arena's walls. Built for much bigger beings, it seemed the seats were capable of holding the entirety of the city's population of little dragon folk.

Eryale and Estella walked into the stands as well, leaving the royal box empty. Eryale seemed to prefer a closer relationship with the people she apparently lead than many nobility but the goturi around her all seemed to be older and wore long knotted neck clothes so where likely of a higher rank, the fronts of their shirts beaded in striking patterns and voluminous over coats. Estella smiled at the King's Special nervously and waved before spreading her hands, obviously at a loss as to why she'd been singled out for preferential treatment. Jeremiah glared but there was nought he could do as the crowd settled down and a hush descended.

Across the flagstones a set of double doors swung open. 

Ulrich reached for his swords and clashed the blades together, ready to take on anything that came through the doors.

"I am Thorian the Terrible," Thorian bellowed with a grin, "Who dare challenge me?"

Kaelin rolled her eyes at the boys' antics but shifted her feet wider and crouched, spreading her hands wide. The wolf came slowly, reluctantly. It was tired. She was tired, her brain slow and her body slower. She hurt, a bone deep ache that was building in every tissue and organ. She wasn't going to be able to keep this up for much longer. They had been on the road for far too long this day and the nap over the crab leg lunch had not been enough. She needed a stop and she needed a rest, preferably one that involved at least eight hours sleep,if not ten or twelve. Twelve would be good.

She focused on the open door. The sooner they clobbered whatever came through that door the sooner she could find a bed and... 

A small figure waddled through the door.

Quenril, Tasnar and Sabal lowered their weapons, confusion turning their faces into its stomping ground.

The goturi champion was matronly. Decidedly matronly. She was short, even for a goturi and had the same fervor for the lunch buffet as Jeremiah did, given as she was nearly as round as she was tall. She wore a cream colored, knee length dress with wide sleeves that ended at the elbow, its fringes heavily tasseled and its bodice pattern in bright blue bead work, through the belt marked more of her circumference than a waist. Under one arm she carried what looked like a lobster trap covered with cloth to make a carrier for some sort of animal . In her other hand she carrier a tankard.

She put down the animal carrier and plonked her tail down on it, took a drink from her tankard and put it carefully down on the floor beside her and folding her hands in her laps she looked at them. She looked at them good, sucking her teeth as she did so.

"Ack," she finally exclaimed, "Well, you're a wee collection of yella milksops, aren't yah? I've seen cream cheese that's scarier than you. I could knock yah all out with mah little finger and have enough left for mah brekka, indeed I could."

The audience howled with laughter, obviously expecting this opening exchange. Ulrich lowered his swords and frowned, approaching her carefully.

"My good lady," he explained, "Honor demands this battle but please believe me that I have no wish to harm you. Among my people it is considered dishonorable to harm a female and especially a female that is carrying no weapons. I wonder if you would consent to allowing us to call this battle forfeit?"

The audience booed and howled. Around Eryale the goturi of higher status held up little red paddles. They would have been useless for paddling a boat but they didn't seem intended for boating. Instead at the other end of the oval arena a goturi on their own raised a long pool and hooked the mouth of a decorative fish, tilting it until its tail was raised proud in the air. The goturi champion nodded to her leaders and beamed.

Kaelin straightened, eyes flicking from the champion, to her leaders, to the crowd in the stands.

"I think aye know wot's going on here," Thorian also looked like the gears where turning over in his head, "Aye really do think aye know what's going on here."

"So do I," thought Kaelin, fighting not to show a grin a Ulrich fumbled and mumbled some more. She stepped back, leaned up against the wall and folded her arms, perfectly content to let Ulrich make a complete and utter fool of himself.

"Erm, ma'am?" Ulrich questioned, "Do you not have a weapon?"

Thorian rolled his eyes, stomped up behind Ulrich and slapped him up the back of the head before Quenril could stop him. Ulrich stumbled forward, nearly pitching on to his face.

"Use words, not yah strength," Thorian barked, "Tis a battle of wits."

"Well that depends on whether he has any," Jeremiah smiled spitefully.

"Oh right," Ulrich put his swords back in their scabbards and then frowned, rubbing the back of his head, trying to think of something that could count as an insult without being an insult, not wanting to be as crass as insulting an elder. It was bad form to insult an elder but the crowd was grumbling, waiting for him to get on with it.

"You wizen old scaly newt, I've seen twigs with more muscle than you!" Kaelin yelled, fed up with waiting for Ulrich to get his act together.

The crowd laughed as the champion patted her girth and winked at the audience, not at all upset by Kaelin's efforts.

"So says yee," she smile amiably at Kaelin, "Butcher's Dog." She scrolled an eye over the rest, alighted on Thorian, "Pig's snout." He frowned and touched his nose. "Goat herd of Katamite." Was the title she bestowed upon Ulrich before finally turning to Jeremiah, "And you, yes you, the great serpent takes a dump and you eat it!"

"I have to agree with her!" Kaelin yelled before Jeremiah could get a word in edge ways. He glared at her as the crowd erupted in laughter. This time more blue paddles were raised and a fish tail flipped on the other side of the score board. The goturi champion inclined her head but that didn't stop her from being completely savage with her next sortie.

"I was going to cast reduce on you but you're already so under whelming," she grinned with savage amusement.

"Reduce on us?" Ulrich draw himself up, his pride stung, "Judging by the fact that you are as round as you are tall cast it on yourself first, ma'am!"

The crowd laughed but the vote swung just in the goturi's favor.

"That's what you get when you fight like a chicken but without the courage," she observed.

"I'd call you a plucked chicken but you are so under cooked!" Kaelin yelled back, coming forward off the wall, something inside her peaked by this exchange of words. Something told her it was the verbal equivalent of rolling in the dust, play fighting with her better siblings but making it loud and noisy and appear like the real thing. Her sudden fire appealed to the crowd who roared their approval of her shot and a fish tail rose on their side of the arena, bring them neck and neck with the champion again. She narrowed her eyes, reassessing how much of a problem they were going to be.

"You!" she snapped, jabbing a finger, picking on Thorian, "You! Yes you! What kind of a warrior are you? You couldn't slay a hedgehog with your naked backside!"

Thorian however, seemed to have found a skill for this slinging of insults.

"Your scales are so dull, you're so tiny, you're easily missable and no one likes you," he roared back. The crowd cheered but it seemed to be in favor of the goturi champion that time as another fish tail dipped on her side.

"Dear, oh dear," she shook her head, commiserating, "You must have rolled a natural one on your personality check."

"Yeah, well, guilty as charged and when you were hatched everyone thought your egg had gone rotten," Kaelin returned the serve with flare, earning a yell of approval from the crowd and they were level once more. Kaelin span on her toes and bowed to the crowd who yelled even more.

"Where did that come from?" Ulrich stared at her.

"I worked the crowd at a carnival once," Kaelin admitted, doing more fancy footwork and bows, "There was this magician called Hocus Pocus, he was working the crowd almost better than I was. I swear that some of his tricks really were magic but his set was the easiest time I had because the crowd was totally enthralled by him. I'm just trying to channel some of what ever he had 'cause I beat yah that the more we have the crowd on our side the more the vote will go in our favor."

It certainly didn't seem to impress the goturi's champion that much.

"You have as much grace as my grandmother's missing leg!" she snapped at Kaelin.

"Now if you will look around you," Ulrich stepped forward, gesturing large to the arena and the crowd, "Delicate stonework, refined carvings, glass in abundance, glass with a clarity found now where else. Delicate patterns, refined statues. Every where the signatures of a refined civilization. And then there's you. Short, dumpy, mean worded. Anyone else see the difference?"

The crowd quietened at that one and then roared with laughter as the meaning of his words collectively dropped and the King's Special pulled ahead again on the poll board again. The goturi champion rose to her feet and smoothed down her dress, settling the fall of her sleeves. The crowd muttered and murmured, obviously believing that she was passed the warm up stage.

"Is your armor enchanted? Or are you naturally resistant to intelligence?" she opened her round with the double barrelled question, verbally shooting from the hip, "I've seen better moves on a puppet on a string and your wits? Your wit is as sharp as a dull knife."

"The grandest of dragons would not consider you worthy to clean out its chamber pot," Kaelin fired back but cut a little to sharply with the insult, the crowd booing that one.

"I think these people revere dragons as some sort of deity, old bean," Ulrich told her as a fish tail was raised on the goturi's side, "If I'm judging the preferential treatment Lady Estella is receiving correctly so probably a good idea to keep the insults about dragons to a minimum."

"Well how was I to know?" Kaelin asked with a frown but the goturi champion was winding up her next insult.

"It's not my fault the succubus told you she just wanted to remain friends," she waggled her head, planting her hands on her hips, "I guess she didn't want the fur stuck between her teeth." The crowd 'ohed' with the sheer nastiness of the shot.

"Ma'am! You're father was a donkey and your mother smelt of cowslips!" Ulrich shouted back, the years of breeding and training in his father's house falling away in defense of a lady's honor. The crowd cheered and laughed in appreciation and the King's Special pulled ahead on the score board again.

"Your face," the goturi straightened up as much as her diminutive height let her, "is so hideous that, if someone were to paint your picture, you'd need not hammer nor nails as the painting would hang itself!"

Jeremiah grinned and clapped at that on but Kaelin had a come back already.

"Your breath could knock a troll off its bridge!" The crowd loved that one, cheering and stomping and even the champion inclined her head, obviously impressed with the speed of the come back.

"Do you use your right or your left hand when you wipe your bum?" she asked conversationally, "'Cause I use loo roll."

"Your presence is less welcome than a rust monster in an armory," Kaelin replied, just as conversationally, folding her arms in reply. The crowd laughed and Kaelin could tell that the champion was filing that one away for future use. She'd obviously just added to the little goturi's hoard of insults and rude remarks. Ulrich noticed that too and decided to get in first on this round.

"If we were to take all the witty remarks from your entire life you'd be in debt," he told her firmly.

"The bar was so low it was practically a tripping hazard in hell, yet here you are limbo dancing with the Devil," she demonstrated what she meant, showing that despite her age and portliness she was still very flexible but Ulrich's comments carried the day, meaning that the King's Special carried double the number of points compared to the goturi champion.

As the champion was getting up off her knees, Thorian stepped forward and proved why his family had considered him too smart to stay with the tribe.

"Your belly wobbles, your weapons shake,

Your courage? Gone! A big mistake!

You'd flee in fear, you'd run and hide - 

If only you could fit outside!"

He turned and did a clumsy half bow to Eryale, who did applaud his verse. The champion on the other hand didn't seem so happy about it.

"Muckish devil!" she started, "Damn devil's kith and kin! Babbling scullion, Massaristic wheelright, brewer of Jarisium, goat licker of Arseamonia! Pantidonium thief, bend over of Tartar sauce, hangman of camels! Moron of all the oceans, idiot before god, fool of all the world and underworld, grandson of the serpent and the crick in our dick!" She was panting by the time she delivered the last bellowed insult, her cheeks wobbling with the effort and the crowd was on its feet stamping. After a few minutes of discussion an equal score was shown and the total stood at nine-five to the King's Special. It was so noisy that both sides had to wait for the crowd to quieten before they continued, giving the goturi champion a chance to find her tankard and have a pull.

"Your face is the reason they invented disguise kits," Kaelin called before the goturi had finished her drink but if she'd been hoping the champion was going to choke herself then she was disappointed. Instead the goturi looked at her over the rim of the tankard and said quiet clearly:

"You, sister, are so ugly that goblins break into your house just to close the curtains," her tone was back to being almost pleasant, even while she was burning Kaelin's pride. Kaelin had to remind herself that it was impossible for these people to know about Stink of the Midden but she felt her hands ball into fists and had to fight to keep the wolf inside.

"What's the matter my dear," Jeremiah said quietly behind her, "Remembering your little pet."

"Shut your worthless mouth," Kaelin ground out as a fish tail was raised for the goturi nd stepped forward instead of turning on him.

"Your sense of direction is worse than a blinded bat!" she accused the champion. The little creature looked up at her.

"I would be afraid to do your husband and I'm more woman than you and his four current mistresses combined," she stated unafraid. Kaelin's eyes narrowed at the cat calls and whistles.

"If I had a coin for every time someone complimented your face I'd be in debt," the goturi champion continued, "You're like a cursed item - annoying and impossible to get rid of."

"Well, you have been to the healer so many times for the clap, he's now treating you for applause," the crowd howled itself silly at Ulrich's come back and the champion seemed taken aback by its savagery.

"If I paid for twenty idiots and all I got was you, I'd still have my money's worth," Kaelin backed it up but the champion rallied and folded her arms with a wry expression on her face.

"It's funny how you think I need your approval when I've met mushrooms move captivating than you," she stated, "You're all just background characters in your own lives." It was good, Kaelin admitted it but the King's Special still carried the day. Thorian stepped forward again, another whopper prepared.

"Oh mighty goturi, small yet stout,

A rollin' mass of fear? No doubt!

You fight with pride? You charge with grace?

Then why's your shield stuck to to your face?

A dragon's kin? A war born breed?

You look like butter mixed with greed!

Go take a seat, go take a rest,

For fighting's hard when pants don't stretch!"

However, the champion was more prepared this time.

"You're green, you're small,

You're little at all.

Out of mind, out of sight,

'Cause you have no might."

 The champion took her bows to the cheers of the crowd for that one but Ulrich affected to be unimpressed, walking forward to perform a full circuit round the goturi champion.

"You know," he observed, "I bet you'd make a terrible coat."

She raised an eyebrow at him.

"And you're face is about as divine as a centipede's rear end," she replied and Jeremiah sniggered at the mention of Ulrich's favorite mode of transport, "Although, no centipede is wrong. Tell me, just why did the gods curse you with a donkey for a face? The wrong end of a donkey at that and those cloths, what kind of a dump did you pull that fashion attire from? Not even a beggar would wear that."

The gothuri roared their approval and Ulrich scowled. He did not appreciate fine craftsmanship being called into question. Kaelin looked at the score board.

"Eleven to nine to us," she muttered, "But she's catching up. Any ideas?"

"Yeah we come out with some ring dingers," Thorian nodded.

"Agreed," Ulrich said, "So people, wrack your brains, we need some insults that are utter fire."

The goturi champion smiled and cocked an eye ridge. This was going to be fun.