The Grey Clerk Archives - Jeremiah Maat

 Due to appointments in the extended family we didn't have a game session this time round to inspire the next chapter of Draconnic Shenanigans. Therefore we are going to dig into the dusty stacks of the Grey Clerks for some of the information that King Tatsuya is privy to. There is one in every team, the one who really did deserve to be in jail and who has no intention of reforming. Read on to discover the many sins of one Jeremiah Maat.

Personals of Interest

 (Art not mine, all rights to the creator/owner)

Name: Jeremiah Maat

Age: Thirty nine

Birth Place: Unknown

Race: Human

Family:  Father: Unknown, Mother: Unknown. Jeremiah Maat was raised in the Abbey of the Divine Mercy, having been found as an abandoned infant on the door step of the Gate House. Why he was abandoned will never be known as he was as hail an infant as could be wished, with no obvious birthmark or defect that would have set him apart from any other infant of his age. The best understanding for this early misfortune is the possibility that he was either abandoned by parents who were in abject poverty and therefore feared that they would not be able to raise him on their merge income or that his mother was unmarried and feared reprisals if she kept the infant.

Profession: Jeremiah Maat was raised to be a cleric of the Order of Divine Mercy, channeling the Will Hetur, the god of Healing, to relieve suffering, cure the sick and heal the wounded. However, the Abbey also housed a restricted section of tomes, books of ancient knowledge, forbidden texts, diaries of heretical magic users, the records of questionable cults and other such materials that are too dangerous for common circulation but are too valuable to destroy as the ideas they contain are likely to rise again and the knowledge of how they were torn down last time will be needed once more. It appears that unfortunately, Jeremiah has a tendency to disobey signs that give instructions along the lines of 'keep out', 'do not touch' and similar injunctions against meddling in things that should only be approached under the most dire of circumstances. As such his abilities seem to have expanded far beyond what is correct for a cleric of Hetur.

Location: The Abbey of the Divine Mercy is located about twenty miles east of Condessa and is south of the River Nayen. It is well appointed with a large church, rectory, kitchen, stores, buttery, fish tanks, mill,brewery cellar, weaving loft, infirmary, library, herbal garden, orchard and three hundred acres under cultivation. It also reserves the rights to cut lumber and herd pigs in the forest north of the river in an area of two hundred acres. It is also known that novices are sent into the forest to pick mushroom and seasonal wild food at the correct times. As such the Abbey also provides and controls a ferry service between the two banks of the river. Despite the apparent opulence of the Abbey, the Order of Divine Mercy holds their doors open to any and all that need help, with many of the farm hands who share their Abbey being the poor and dispossessed who were taken in for shelter. Indeed the Abbey is so large because it has expanded over many years to become the support system for those who have been struck by tragedy. This does not mean that the Abbey will tolerate idle hands, only the most disabled and infirmed are allowed to rest without productivity, even those of feeble mind being found tasks that are suited to their abilities. However, there are no time limits on how long their may resided within the walls of the Abbey, with may of the disabled residing there for life, doing what work they are capable of in return for shelter and protection.

Skills: Jeremiah can read and write several languages. He shows great aptitude with the esoteric arts, being named as cleric fairly young. He is skilled in the healing arts of Hetur but there seems to be a price tag attached to his abilities for those that he 'aids'. One of the first signs that all was not as it should be was when those that Jeremiah treated in the Abbey infirmary began complaining of mental disturbances and waking nightmares, of being plagued by visions of destruction and people being transmuted into unnatural crystalline statues that were all the more horrifying for the perfection of their details. However, Jeremiah also has a persuasive way with words and has a knack at rabble rousing and controlling crowds, often bending peoples perception of him in his favor. There has also been questions raised about certain financial events while he was at the Abbey. These are pending investigation but progress has been hindered by the recent fire.

Appearance: Jeremiah is a large man in every dimension. He shows the favoritism of the trencher and plate but the distaste of the more strenuous activities. As such he has more of an equator than a waist. He has a large, thick beard of black and beetling eyebrows. Recently he has been seen wearing the robes of the Abbot and carrying the mace of office, though he was not confirmed in this position and indeed, he was supposed to have been disqualified due to the nature of his secret studies and subsequent arrest. The robes are noted to be rather strained across the front.

History: As mentioned before, Jeremiah was left on the Gate House step of the Abbey of Divine Mercy and due to the Order's vows and beliefs he was taken in and raised as one of the foundling youngsters of the Abbey. Had he not been so dependent on the Abbey for his survival then it is doubtful that they would have kept him. As the child of a patron of the Abbey being schooled there, he would have been sent home in disgrace many times over, the childish vices of petty theft, lying and bullying unresponsive to the more gentle methods of correction. Gentle words and lessons in empathy and care went unheeded, the removal of privileges and increases of responsibilities where likewise ignored. In the end the Abbot himself resorted to caning the young Jeremiah after a 'prank' resulted in a fellow novice losing a leg, to try and at least make him nervous enough of punishment to obey the laws and strictures of society.

 Then, in his teenage years, Jeremiah suddenly became the model student, throwing himself into the life of a brother with an eagerness that had been totally absent only months before. Some of the novice masters wondered what hidden transgression he was trying to evade, his fellow novices were nervous, the Abbot breathed a long over due sigh of relief. Jeremiah began to practice his public speaking with a will, swiftly swaying other novices to becoming his staunch supporters, some would say his cult members, even manipulating the opinions of some of the Elders of the Order. Though not all were convinced by his sudden change, as he practiced and gained experience, Jeremiah became better and better at influencing others. It was as he entered his twenties that Jeremiah's dedication became a fervor, with him often working long hours in the infirmary, especially with those that were only visiting the Abbey to have their hurts healed. That was when the first signs that something was seriously amiss began to show up.

 The first was one of the traveling folk. Due to the nomadic life style and the time, the connection to the Abbey of the Divine Mercy and Jeremiah's care has only recently been established but the time line has now been established that six months after receiving care from Jeremiah at the Abbey, one of the members of the caravan slaughtered the other adults in a night time massacre that left the caravan as a battle field and the only survivors, the children, unable to speak. Most have become completely unable to communicate, locked into a world of horror and fear that defies any attempts to break them out of it. They are being cared for at the Abbey of Grace Haven where one of the girls has developed the talent for drawing and sketching in charcoal. It was her drawings that revealed the connection to the Abbey of Divine Mercy and Jeremiah. The level of realism with which she sketches the shadowy figures lend her drawings a disturbing quality.

The incidents of unfortunate 'madness' and 'hysteria' began to grow among those that came to the Abbey for healing, a strange malaise that afflicted some but not others, leading to some who would usually turn to the Abbey for care to avoid it. Some who were healed at the Abbey came away changed in other ways, a strange darkness growing in their eyes and a desire to 'prepare the world', though what they are preparing the world for is difficult to extract from them. Though they seem to remain productive members of society, their change demeanor has lead many to become estranged from their families, some even leaving their communities and disappearing into the wilds. If all of them are still alive is unclear, although some seem to have founded their own community, away from more cultivated lands. The area around the hills were they have settled is gaining an unsavory reputation for night time raids and dismembered cattle as well as human disappearances. Whether a purge is going to be necessary or whether their savagery can be harnessed to more productive results is yet to be seen.

Despite the unsettling events happening among those that left the Abbey, Jeremiah's rise amongst the Order continued, with him swiftly moving from Lay Brother to Choir monk. Those that questioned his dedication to the life of the Abbey were either swayed to his cause or suffered unfortunate accidents. Despite thorough investigate, none of these accidents appeared to be anything but a series of unfortunate events. The group of Novices that had gathered around Jeremiah also experienced rapid ascension in their careers, while those that later experienced doubts as to their affiliation with him suffered stalls in their progress.

It appears that Jeremiah's influence had dug deep into the structure and hierarchy of the Abbey of the Divine Mercy. As he moved from Monk to Heiromonk his power and abilities with the healing power just seemed to increase as did his ability at turning undead and the laying of restless spirits, with him being directly asked for in several incidences of necromancy activity. As Jeremiah's abilities blossomed the aging Abbot took him under his wing, relying on him more and more in the running of the Abbey and letting it be known that Jeremiah Maat was his preferred candidate for his replacement once he died.

Again, open voices of decent were silenced one by one, with unfortunate accidents now being joined with several scandals involving rival members of the clergy, one of which resulted in the rival being defrocked and exiled from the Order. However, by now, the pattern of mental disturbances in people Jeremiah had once treated was being recognized and the way that fortune seemed to favor Jeremiah and his circle of 'friends' was also drawing suspicion. Quietly and carefully investigations were begun, with no outer sign of the activities as Jeremiah worked his way from Sub-prior to Prior of the Abbey. If the Abbot was ever aware of this scrutiny on his chosen favorite is unclear but it is probable that he did not, especially as his health continued to fail.

It was after the Abbot finally succumbed to his last illness, that the concerned members of the clergy approached the secular authorities to deal with the rot in their midst. Thus it was that Jeremiah was only weeks away from becoming Abbot of the Abbey of Divine Mercy when the guards of Condessa kicked his door open in the middle of the night.

Since becoming a member of the King's Special it appears that Jeremiah has dropped all pretenses of being a loyal servant of the Order of Divine Mercy. The Abbey where he grew up was ravaged by a fire the night after the King's Special passed through the area, a single tome was stolen from its library and Abbot Julian Peer, a one time friend of Jeremiah who had suffered for leaving Jeremiah's circle, was found murdered within his own chambers.

Though some would call this circumstantial evidence, one must also take into account that Jeremiah has since been seen wearing the robes of the Abbot, items he has no right to be wearing and that were not in his position when he was arrested. Added to this is the fact that during the King's Special visit to the Wizard's Tower in the Dead Swamp Jeremiah has gained a highly unusual pet, though it is also speculated that 'familiar' might be the more correct term. He now has a giant moth that rides around on the pinnacle of the Abbot's miter that Jeremiah is wearing. This insect does not appear to be of natural origin as it is not of a species noted among the giant varieties of insects on Hestia and it also glows with blue patches of light down its sides under its wings. Its wings are thread through with lines of this light and its eyes glow constantly with it. Speaking to experts in the field, it unfortunately appears that, as Jeremiah no longer has any chance of truly becoming ruler of the Abbey of the Divine Mercy, he has decided to fully embrace the darkest aspects of the secret studies he has been pursuing and openly practice the necromancy associated with the god he now worships. The tome that was stolen from the Abbey's library was 'The Chaos Dragon Klu'ga-nath' (the report was seriously smudged here as if the writers hand had suddenly spasmed) a singularly dangerous tome that had been put under greater security after Jeremiah's arrest. It is most likely that this is the source of Jeremiah's power and corruption. He will bare careful watching and it maybe best to have his possessions searched at the earliest opportunity. The Chaos Dragon is known as one of the deities that encourages malice, murder and mayhem, gifting his followers with unnatural powers over the dying and the dead, as well as the ability to distort the minds of the living. Many races refuse to speak his name and his worship is an immediate death sentence in several countries.

It is the opinion of your agent that it will be necessary to keep Jeremiah as an active member of the King's Special for a prolonged period of time, until he either renounces the god he is worshiping or definitive proof of the danger he poses is forth coming.

Draconnic Shenanigans - Episode 32

 Chapter Thirty Two - Chunky Dunking

 

(Art not my own, all credit goes to the artists of Savage Worlds)

 The water did not improve as the march continued on, its icy touch pinching and nipping at the toes and shins and calves of the party as they pushing on. Kaelin muttered a stream of quiet cuss words as the water deepen up over her knees, soaking through her clothes, the close rock walls on either side trapping them in the flow of water with no way out. Even the Ash Elves struggled, panting as they pushed on, hands grasping at the wall of limestone, their skinny flesh struggling to retain their warmth. Strangely enough Estella seemed absolutely fine, peering up at the shifting rock shadows about, gazing at the drips and runs of stone, fingers trailing over the smooth rock wall.

"It's amazing," she murmured, "The stream must have carved this passage through the rock and now the rock is trying to fill it up again." She ran a finger tip over the spill of calcite trailing down the left hand wall. "It is so smooth, it almost feels like wax." She peered at a rock formation the twisting way revealed ahead. "It almost looks like wax," she noted.

"Yeah, fine, lovely," Kaelin gritted out, clenching her teeth to stop them chattering.

"Ah have to say," Thorian said, pushing forward, the water bunching up round the top of his shins, "I'm not liking the way this is making my boots feel. I'm not sure I can feel mah toes any more. I know they're there, at least they should be there, but I don't think I can feel them that much any more."

 "And we are so pleased that the worse you are suffering is that you have wet and cold boots, my dear Thorian," Jeremiah grunted, "We are so pleased that you are not more inconvenienced by this experience."

 Kaelin glanced back at the priest and noticed that, though his mass of beard, his lips seemed to be turning blue and she could hear his teeth chattering above the rattle and gurgle of the stream. She gasped a breath herself and watched as the fog of it spiraled up towards the ceiling so far above them. She did a double take as she realized that Jeremiah's pack seemed to be levitating along behind him, then she saw the stick thin arms holding it up. Jeremiah's vigor pet was fully submerged under the water, the flow rising up over its head. She could just see its glowing blue eyes pushing along under the surface of the water as it trudged along under the weight. Behind it Nanny Tatter's plodded along, her blue veined black eye blinking slowly as she waded along, totally unaffected by the cold, the flow of the water along slowing her down as she passed through it, the flow bunching up round her legs, her stump of a tail wagging back and forth to keep her balance. Kaelin snorted and turned back to face the upstream battle, hitching her pack a little higher. So blasted cold. She pushed herself, trying to make her legs warm up with sheer effort. Ahead, Ulrich perched on Marmaduke's shoulder, holding the light stick high, its light shining off the damped stone, shards of light reflecting from the surface of the water dancing across the walls in a shifting pattern that was almost hypnotic. Ulrich watched the depths of the water, marveling that he could clearly see Marmaduke's feet even through the surface disturbance.

"Quite amazing," he murmured, "Quite amazing."

"What is?" Kaelin grunted.

"The clarity of the water," Ulrich replied, "I've never seen anything so clear. There's no sediment but there is a definite greenish cast to the water."

"That would be a copper deposit," Jeremiah forced out between clattering teeth, "Don't drink the water, it will be poisonous in high enough doses."

"Well, my dear Jeremiah," Ulrich beamed back at him, "I didn't know you could be that concerned about our well fair."

"My dear Ulrich," Jeremiah's smile was more a grimace, "I am a man of god, it is beholden to me to be concerned about the souls of all the party."

Kaelin snorted.

"Did you have something you'd like to say, my dear?" Jeremiah grated out.

"Nothing that you'd listen to," she said, pushing on through the icy water.

Scuttling along on the wall slightly above the King's Special Peter the centipede kept up a running commentary of whistles and clicks, antennae waving over the stone, his many, many feet scraping and scratching over the drip stone of ages. Every now and then he'd turn his head and let out a particularly vehement hiss at Marmaduke as the construct clanked along, carrying his master above the current of the stream.

 "Oh dear, oh dear," Ulrich noted, "I do say, old bean, do you think you could keep it down? Such descent between the ranks is unseemly don't you know, wot?"

Peter swung his head in Ulrich's direction and whistled a whole series of clicks and hisses that did not sound at all happy about the situation.

"Yes I understand that you feel that I am favoring the... what did you say? Tin Pot? Unnecessarily, but I am afraid that I do find it some what difficult to hold on to you when you are scuttling sideways like that," Ulrich admitted, "Also I don't think that you would like to fall into the water if my weight shifts wrong and we wind up falling off of that wall."

Peter clicked and crackled for several minutes as they walked along, still annoyed that Ulrich was favoring someone else but he was less vocal about it. Marmaduke marched forward without pause or distraction. 

"Oh hello, what's this?" Ulrich said at last, swinging the light stick to the left.

"Can it be a get big soft feather bed and preferably a grand fire place already roaring?" Jeremiah stuttered from the back of the group, some how making himself understood through the chattering of his teeth. He now had his hands jammed into his armpits, trying to hold on to warmth that was rapidly seeping away from him.

"Well its not a feather bed but there is the chance of a fire," Ulrich noted, "To the left, chaps, to the left. Comfort awaits, or at least some dry feet." Marmaduke swung to the left as Peter crawled round the corner into the cave's mouth. Water cascading off him, Marmaduke marched up the stone embankment and gently lowered Ulrich to the ground.

"Thank you muchly good chap," Ulrich smiled as he dug another light stick out of his backpack and pulled the short cord to activate it. The light swelled, spilling over a wide shelf of rock that made the floor of the cave, the stone undulating with the marks of having been water worn at some point in the past. Ulrich slowly swung the light stick back and forth as Quenril, Tasnar and Sabal pulled themselves out of the water and knelt, the cold having sapped their energy and left them knackered. Estella stepped out next with Kaelin and Thorian scrambling out after her.

By the time Jeremiah was stumping up on to the dry ground, shivering and shaking as he did so, which was an impressive sight to see as there was a lot of Jeremiah to shake, Ulrich was already pocking and pulling the structure of a camp fire together from the mass of drift wood that was bundled at the back of the cave. He gave the tunnel at the southern end of the cave a glance, frowning slightly as he thought he heard something shifting down there but then shook his head and continued with building the fire. The tunnel to the north also seemed to be empty so he shrugged and started having a go at lighting the fire while the others pulled off their boots and tipped out copious amounts of water. Nanny Tatters paced to were Jeremiah directed her to the wall and settled down but her head turned to gaze at them, a strange level of intelligence in her magic gaze. Kaelin shuddered and made sure that the fire was between her and Jeremiah's puppet. There was something singularly disturbing about that puppet and part of her seriously wished he'd get rid of it.

"Don't put your boots close to the fire," Quenril advised, pulling some spare cloth out of his pack and stuffing it into his boots.

"Er, why not?" Thorian asked, "We want our boots to dry out, don't we?"

"That is true," Quenril admitted, "But the quickest way to the surface is to stay with the water and therefore they will get wet again just as fast, won't they?"

Thorian thought about it for a while.

"Oh yeah," he nodded, "Yeah, I guess you're right."

"That and if you dry out your boots too quickly they'll crack up faster than the good lady can grow her teeth," Tasnar grinned as he saluted Kaelin.

"Watch it buddy," Kaelin growled, flat dislike in her voice.

"Good lady of the moon," Tasnar bowed to her, "Please accept that I meant it with the highest amount of respect." There was a definite spark of mischief in his eyes as he looked at her. Sabal glared but Quenril looked away, obviously troubled and torn.

"Just when are you going to get it through your heads that I'm not a lady?" Kaelin asked.

"You'll have to forgive my friends," Ulrich grunted, still trying to light the fire, "But, born under the ground and among the Ash Elves you would be considered a highly sort after lady. You're strong, vicious and can kill as easily as you breath. Given a little polish to your skills in politics and you would have made a powerful mid-tier lady of the clan easily and could go higher if you wished to."

"You what?" Kaelin demanded.

"Our sister's chosen speaks correctly," Tasnar pressed a hand over his heart, "Among us, as one of us, you would have been considered a lady to seek to please. We men need the shelter of a strong women, we must twine our fate round hers to survive like the tunnel hopper lives in the shadow of our pets and you are a strong woman. Any man with an ounce of will to survive would try to please you."

Kaelin frowned, trying to work out what it was he was after and therefore didn't see Ulrich wink at Tasnar behind her back.

"Now, with the old rules failing and dead, you as yourself, well, again any man would try to please you," Tasnar smiled at her, meeting her eye. Sabal looked scandalized but Quenril kicked his ankle. Sabal and he started one of their silent conversations, all gestures and expression, a conversation that Sabal apparently lost as he turned his face away and folded his arms. Quenril shook his head and went back to trying to rub some warmth back into his feet. It seemed his cousin was struggling to accept that the world had turned and that they needed to turn with it.

Kaelin frowned some more, still confused, stepping back without knowing it. There was a sharp crack behind her and Ulrich bit a curse short.

"Oh for pity's sake," Kaelin was actually glad to have an excuse to turn away from Tasnar as she still couldn't work out just how she was supposed to respond to his held out hand, "Let me do it."

She pushed Ulrich away from the pile of drift wood and set to work on lighting it. She succeeded and the merry flame was soon dancing up through the bleached wood, crackling and popping as it devoured the kindling.

Noticing Estella sliding up to Tasnar with a determined expression on her face, Ulrich decided to keep Kaelin distracted.

"That is excellent work," he congratulated, "I doubt that I could have done it so well."

"Of course not," Kaelin grunted, "You're a nobb."

"She's been threatened with it being forced all her life," Estella was explaining quietly to Tasnar, trying to get through his horror that a women could be treated as such, "I'm not sure whether it went to whole way but even if it didn't she doesn't know what to do when it is honestly offered. I can relate."

 "Do you know why I'm not good at this sort of thing?" Ulrich asked, to cover up the other conversation.

"Maybe because you were born with a silver spoon stuck up your..." Kaelin said.

"Chaps like me aren't breed for this sort of thing," Ulrich interrupted, turning on the worst of his father's pomposity. Well it seemed to be keeping Kaelin distracted from the fact that she was being talking about and the conversation the Ash Elves were having now might help smooth over potential faux pars in the future. Quenril and his kin were, after all, approaching the process of trying to earn relationships with potential partners from a totally different culture, a little instruction now might go a very long way.

"So what Hestia born good are you?" Kaelin asked.

"Style, my dear, style," Ulrich struck a pose, "I bring the flair the party needs to be the stuff of legends."

"She is unsure whether she can trust you to be there for as long as she needs you to be," Estella explained, "It is not a matter of how good you are at killing her enemies, her family was good at killing after all. It is whether you are going to take off one day and not look back. She is not sure whether you are going to become disinterested in building a home with her and move on, leaving her with all the work and the risk of being mother to your children."

 "Do the men of humans behave so?" Tasnar asked.

"All to often," Estella admitted, "But it is more than that. Lady Kaelin has no clan or even any family. If a woman of your people gets bored with her mate is she left with all the work of raising their children or does she have the support of family to aid her?"

 "Huh," Kaelin snorted at Ulrich, "You're more like the back up if tripping Jeremiah up in front of the monster doesn't work."

"Now, my dear Kaelin," Ulrich admonished, "That really is unfair to our esteemed colleague." Jeremiah preened. "After all, it is not his fault if his gods decreed that he should be the living embodiment of monster bait." Jeremiah's face darkened and he grumbled an inarticulate noise in his throat.

"We must all serve as we are created," Ulrich continued before Jeremiah could break in, "Thorian is the muscle of the team, ready to stop the monsters in their tracks with sheer strength."

"Thank yee," Thorian grinned, "It's nice that someone recognizes how good I am at what I can do, instead of always trying to take the mike out of me for the stuff I can't do."

"Just give her time," Estella advised Tasnar quietly behind Ulrich's conversation, "It will probably take you making the offer several times over for her to make up her mind that she is willing to even consider courting you. Among humans and wolves the path to choosing a mate can be a long and careful road, especially when they have been as badly hurt as Lady Kaelin has been."

"It is different among our people," Tasnar admitted, "Among us if a male makes the offer to a woman who does not think much of him she is within her rights to slit his throat and leave him to bleed out."

"Well at least you won't have to worry about that being the result among humans," Estella smiled, "If anything human women are going to be scared that the throat slitting will be your reaction to being rejected."

"Your kind is very confusing," Tasnar admitted and then they turned their attention to the conversation happening round the fire, drawing closer the to heat of the flames.

"Jeremiah is the dangerous one that makes sure that we all stay aware and don't get complacent," Ulrich nodded to the priest, who smiled back, not entirely sure if Ulrich was trying to insinuate an insult or not, "You, my dear, are our resident kitsune, our fox, the trickster who can gain more for us out of mischief and trickery than brute strength."

"Yeah right," Kaelin grumped, "I'm a wolf, not a fox."

"Maybe, maybe not," Ulrich smiled, "I have to admit that you have surprised me in these last few weeks. Your ability with those bagpipes of yours are quite impressive."

"Parp, pah, purp," Haggis commented.

 "Quite so my good sir," Ulrich continued, warming to his subject, "We all have our places within the King's Special and our tasks to fulfill and for the greater good we have to part our parts. By doing this we will grow our strength and find the weaknesses of these perfidious villains who let their selfishness and malice rule them and seek to spread their poison to the rest of the world. If we continue to work together and guard each others backs with all our skills and abilities we will be over come their scheming and treachery and cast their grand schemes into the dust. We are the King's Special and though others my think of us as worthless criminals we will prove that, given the chance to rise up and use our skills in the way we truly wish to use them, we can be the best that the world have to offer."

Even while Thorian cheered and the Ash Elves chorused their own ascent to Ulrich's words Kaelin rolled her eyes.

"Look, if you don't want to admit that you were scared shatless by that ghost just leave it alone and we will do the same," her disdain was obvious.

"Puff, nothing of the sort, wot," Ulrich assured, "That was merely a show to give everyone else in the King's Special the chance to feel brave and prove to them that we can over come even the most supernatural of foes. After all, once you had over come your fear I was able to negotiate with the second ghost so that we could leave without further difficulty. It was an exercise in team building, trust and morale. That is the service I provide to the King's Special, recognizing when the team needs a bounding exercise and providing it, as one born of the noble class should do."

Kaelin was singularly unimpressed.

"Do you like your spleen where it is?" her tone was dangerously level and Jeremiah sniggered as he fed more wood into the fire and sat back to watch the show.

"Now, old bean, would you really?" Ulrich protested but took a step back any way.

Kaelin thought about it.

"No," she admitted, "I have better taste." She turned back to the fire and laid out her socks to dry.

As the fire popped and crackled, casting its liquid light over the walls and ceiling of the cave, the King's Special and their allies gathered near the fire, warming their feet through and drying out their socks.

"That is probably a wasted effort," Jeremiah noted, nodding at the steaming tubes of material.

"Probably," Estella agreed sleepily, nibbling on a chunk of cheese lifted from her pack, the talismans clustered in her lap, "But it will make getting them back on easier." She yawned. "What say you people? We've been traveling a fair time, I don't know if it is night or day but does any one else figure that here is as good as any to make a night camp and get some sleep in?"

"That sounds like a great idea," Kaelin noted and stretched out on her side, ready to soak up the warmth from the fire. She sighed as her muscles started to unwind. She would not have admitted it but part of her urge to pick a fight with Ulrich had come from the fact that she ached all over, ached to deep in her bones. She'd lost count of how many times she'd shifted back and forth already since they had their proper night's sleep after they had taken on the octopod things. She shuddered at the memory of the smell and the taste! She tensed up as her stomach rolled for a moment and then she managed to push the memory away from herself. Yes she had managed that nap after they had munched on the crab legs for lunch but that hadn't been a real sleep, although she had dreamed, it hadn't been long enough. She shifted as she started to drift, the feel of a butterfly's wings beating against her palm. A butterfly and the blue of the ocean that has no memory. She hoped that one day she would see the ocean, she hoped. The ocean that had no memory. Maybe if she stepped there she wouldn't have to have a memory either, maybe she could let the sound of the waves carry the memories she didn't want away from her. She hoped that it was so. She hoped. The edges of the dream drifted up under her and began to lift her away from the aching mess that was her body, Haggis humming a quiet, droning note that soothed her nerves. She felt movement next to her and slitted open an eye. A black cat with bat wings had settled down by her face and was watching Jeremiah across the flames. Kaelin closed her eye again. Estella was right, it was comforting to have someone watching out for her while she slept.

Ulrich frowned looking down the tunnel at the southern end of the cave, the one behind where they had set up camp. He was sure he was catching the echoes of something shifting down there.

Thorian also didn't answer Estella's suggestion, frowning instead at the northern end of the beach.

"What's that in the water?" he asked with a frown.

"The bottom of stream?" Kaelin muttered, refusing to open her eyes.

Jeremiah looked over.

There was definitely something there, the same spot in the water kept rising up and sinking down, as if something was rising up to just under the surface and then sinking back down.

"My dear Thorian," Jeremiah leaned back on his hands, smiling, "Surely there are enough monsters down here to satisfy your need to beat things up without having to invent imaginary foes. If we keep chasing after these shadows you are making up, why, I doubt we'll ever make it back to the surface in time to rescue anyone up there."

Thorian frowned at him, knowing that Jeremiah was taking the mike out of him again. Estella sat up and frowned as well before reaching out and laying the ends of some unbroken long branches in the flames, where they started to smoulder and catch.

Ulrich also noted that Jeremiah had the fire between him and the water. Deciding that the priest was trying to turn the tables on them and use the rest of the King's Special as the monster bait, he stood up and picked up a long, stout branch from the drift wood pile, activating a new light stick to carry in his off hand. He cautiously approached the north end of the beach, eyes focused on the water where it was rippling and then not and then rippling again.

There was definitely something under the surface of the water but through the glare cast by the light stick he could quite make up his mind as to what it was.

"Everyone," he called, "Don't be alarmed but the river is acting... odd." Quenril and his kin frowned as they realized that Ulrich was putting himself in danger again. They yanked on their boots and stood to join him.

 Kaelin groaned and rolled back to a sitting position, twisting round so she could peer over, her ears caught the sound of splashing. She narrowed her eyes. Something was breaking the surface of the water near where Ulrich stood, something pale that twitched back and forth, rippling and breaking the surface of the water, sending small waves splashing at Ulrich's toes.

"Something's waving to you," she said, picking up her still damp socks and pulling them on, squishing her feet into her boots a moment later.

Ulrich tracked his gaze back and forth, waving the light stick to and fro over the water, totally missing the moving thing in the dazzle of reflected light he created. Still he took a step back as Quenril and the others stepped up beside him.

"Having give this moment my full and undivided attention," he proclaimed, "I here by decree that Jeremiah should go first."

"I'll back that," Kaelin called over as she stood up, Estella pulling on her shoes and calling the Talismans back to her satchel.

For once Jeremiah didn't verbally rise to the bait but instead he straightened up, folded his legs lotus style, folded his arms inside his sleeves and closed his eyes, grandly ignoring the provocation but internally he was muttering a pray to his god for great misfortune to be visited upon the rest of the King's Special, preferably in the most embarrassing way possible.

Thorian frowned, not sure what to do as he couldn't decide whether he should be putting his boots back on or not as nobody had said whether or not they were going to come back to the fire. Still trying to decide he pulled one sock and boot back on.

Ulrich turned and looked back at the stream, finally spotting the thing that was waving at him.

"Well hello there," he smiled and waved back. For several minutes they waved at each other, neither willing to stop apparently. Ulrich began to frown as it waved and waved and waved and waved some more.

"I do say old chap," he observed, "I know it is impolite to be the one to stop waving first but this is beginning to become a little ridiculous."

It waved some more.

"Now look here, old bean," Ulrich said, "This is beginning to slide from the sublime to the ridiculous."

It waved at him, stubborn in its determination at it was not going to be the one who stopped waving first.

"Alright, under duress and at the risk of being rude," Ulrich lowered his hand and shook out his wrist, "Now could we move on to the introductions?"

It waved at him.

"Very well, my good sir, you asked for this," Ulrich took his long, stout stick and pocked the thing that was under the water. Something grabbed the end of the stick and yanked.

"Uh oh," Kaelin backed up, seeing at last the pale, oval shapes moving under the water.

Ulrich pulled back on the stick, the thing under the water pulling as well.

"Now there, good chap," Ulrich grunted, "There is no need to be unpleasant about this."

He grunted again, widening his stance and lowering his center of gravity.

"Out you come!" he commanded.

"Good Lord..." Quenril queried stepping forward.

"Wahhhhhhh," Ulrich yelled as the thing suddenly changed its tactic, going from pulling to lifting, Ulrich's feet leaving the ground.

"What the Grod?" Thorian started to his feet as Ulrich whipped round in a circle in the air, feet flailing around, a long, drawn out yell rising and falling as he passed and passed by them once more, hanging on to the end of the make shift staff as the crab waved it a near perfect circle as it scritched and scratched it's way on to the bank of water worn stone.

"Wahhhhhh," Ulrich yelled some more as he hung on for dear life, whipping through the air as the crab continued to wave the stick in a circular motion.

Jeremiah watched with smug approval as the crab sized itself up to Quenril and the other Ash Elves, who backed off in fear that if they struck now it could result in Ulrich being loosed, to fly into the nearest wall at terminal velocity. The priest felt a glow of pride. He had asked his god to visit misfortune on the King's Special in the most humiliating way possible and he obviously had his god's favor again as his prayer had been answered almost immediately. Ulrich continued to yell as he was whirled through the air like a lasso. It was almost enough to make Jeremiah forget his dignity and laugh out loud.

"Oh I say good chap?" Ulrich yelled, "As much as I am enjoying this exhilarating ride do you think you could slow it down a little so we can talk like civilized men?"

The crab stopped waving the stick and Ulrich yelped as his grip nearly slipped as he jerked to a stop.

"Thank you muchly," he smiled down at the crab, his tanned skin a little grey with motion sickness, "Now can we have a discussion about this?" The crab's eyes wiggled at him and the look in them wasn't comforting. The crab seemed to be considering whether or not it could eat him before its friends could scrabble out of the water and steal him.

Thorian also saw the approaching mass of crabs, their eye stalks now above the surface of the water as they approached, not bothering to try and hid now. There were a lot of them. Thorian tried to count them up but gave up when he realized that they were going to reach Ulrich before he could finish.

"I'm coming buddy!" he yelled, barreling forward, reaching to grab Ulrich's feet... He sailed passed and sent up a sheet of water as he crashed into the stream. The scuttling mass surged, the surface of the water chopping and shifting as the crabs charged.

"Oh cack!" Kaelin yelled as she realized just how many of them there were.

Estella lifted one of her small axes and threw it but it fell short, pinwheeling over the floor and splashing down in the edge of the stream.

"Oh for pity's sake!" she snapped.

The crab turned in her direction, eye stalks flicking, Ulrich still held a loft. He swung with the motion but then swung deliberately and dropped on to the crab's back. It reared, claws held out in shock, mouth parts clacking, the impromptu staff swishing through the air. Quenril took aim and swung. The length of wood cracked as it bounced off the wall and span into the stream, bubbling downstream with the current, leaving the crab holding on to a shorn off stump.

It had bigger things on its mind as it span and turned, trying helplessly to shake Ulrich off its back as it couldn't reach him with its pinching claws.

"Not today sonnie jim!" Ulrich yelled and seized its eye stalks, squeezing until the crab froze, its eyes going pale, giving it an expression of worry. "I don't like having to use pain to tame my mounts but if that is what gets through that thick shell of yours, I'll use it. Now to the right." He tugged on that eye stalk gently and when the crab rotated that way he relaxed his grip slightly but it was still firm, a warning that the pressure could come back at a moments notice if the crab decided to do something funny. Peter whistled and clicked, letting his length hang down from the ceiling, snapping his mouth parts at the eye stalks of the crabs still in the water.

"Marmaduke," Ulrich called, "Front and center, anchor the line for our Ash Elf comrades." His automatic clanged up to his side, Quenril and his kin standing on the other side, ready to deny the crabs a beach head.

"It's Thorian time!" Thorian burst back up from the water, soaking water, shivering cold and thorough ticked off!

The first blow met the crab coming up and crack it clean in half. The second blow shattered the next crab, its shell bursting in all directions, pieces and chunks raining down across the stream and bouncing off the wall across the water from Thorian. The third crab dashed frantically side ways, desperate to avoid Thorian's blow and so it only lost a couple of legs, the limbs sinking beneath the surface of the water as it flared its claws, splashing up gouts and sprays as it beat the stream in its agony.

The swarm was most decidedly divide in two but half of it grabbed the idea of getting out on to dry land to close with their prey.

"Sharp as daggers that cut through night!" Quenril bellowed, elven blades ringing off of shells as the Ash Elves ducked and wove, always a hair's breathe away from being grabbed by those pinching claws that looked big enough to sheer them in two. Marmaduke swung and swung again but hard shelled bodies rammed into him and knocked him off of his balance, forcing him to turn and stumble, trying to find his feet again. By main strength the half swarm was on the beach, pointed feetless legs scrapping over the stone with a noise that put the teeth on edge.

That wasn't the only noise Kaelin heard. Her ear swiveled, tugging at her to pay attention to what was in the south tunnel. With a growl of irritation she seized a burning brand from the fire and tossed it down the tunnel. The branch bounced and rolled, spraying sparks into the air as it tumbled into the dark.

"Oh hell!" Kaelin yelped as she saw what was crawling towards them in the flaring light of the brand as it came to a stop. Bubbling and plopping, flat surface glistening with a faint greenish tinge, the brittle remains of a bronze shield and a corroded sword suspended in the translucent jelly of its mass. The holes that had been eroded in the forehead of a helmet stared at her like the eyes of the soul that had once worn it.

Kaelin's yell of fear was twisted and distorted as the wolf took control, the change ripping through her limbs. Turning, she dived at the stream. She slashed out at the crab Thorian had wounded but she didn't try again after she missed, pounding on instead, forging through the water and then leaping, landing on the back of a crab. She leapt from one to another, vaulting between shells, ducking and weaving, avoiding snapping claws, her parkour skills tested to the limit. She reached the last crab, landed on it with both feet and leapt into a perfect forward somersault and twist to splash down in the stream on her feet, facing the back of the half swarm of crabs, claws at the ready. Then she staggered, the wolf receding from her, the bone deep weariness coming back full force. She really needed a sleep, or failing that at least four hours of rest.

The crabs still in the stream ignored being used as stepping stones, instead focusing their attention on the threat that stood before them, which, in this case was the large and angry orc-crossbreed that was waving the length of steel that was more like a sharpened baseball bat than a sword at them. They charged legs scrabbling sideways to crowd close to Thorian, claws held wide to grab and squeeze. However, for once the injured one had the sense to continue getting out of the way. Having experienced just how badly Thorian could sting, it showed that it was more intelligent than many of the creatures that the King's Special had faced in the Underworld, making its way down stream until it settled in the mouth of the tunnel that the companions had come out of to find this space.

The less sensible ones learned the hard way that some dinners come with a bill that is too high to pay, closing in on Thorian, mouth parts snipping and snapping as they raised their claws to the on guard position. Thorian, unsurprisingly, hit back first. With a solid sounding crunch his blade parted the nearest crab from its life. The second backed up fast enough to avoid the length of bright steel as it swung towards it. The third backed up, snapping and clacking the claw of its left arm while the other fall to the bottom of the stream, trailing a plume of blue blood in the water.

"It appears your opponents are more noble than you, my dear Ulrich," Jeremiah observed, climbing slowly to his feet without haste as the coagulated slime oozed its slow way ever closer.

The swarm of crabs on the beach wavered and darted back and forth despite their giant size, confused and dazzled by the flaring flames of the fire. Jeremiah grinned and whispered a command to his vigor puppet. It shambled up to the fire and without putting the pack down, gave the blaze and almighty kick.

"Ea-ow!" Estella cried out, burning brand glancing off the back of her hand. On instinct alone she flinched away. Jeremiah smiled as her sudden movement caught the crabs attention.

Estella screamed as a giant crab seized her round the waist and lifted her off her feet, her feet kicking in the air as she tried to force its grip open. Her eyes bulged as it started squeezing, tears of pain starting from her eyes as its grip forced her bottom rib to press into her liver. She beat at it ineffectually with a fist.

"Follow me," Jeremiah commanded his vigor pet and crouched, calling upon the change that he'd felt bubbling inside for days. His god's approval at the danger he'd put Estella in surged through him and Jeremiah grunted as his bones bubbled and shifted. The reward for withstanding the moment of pain was worth every second however.

The wing limbs unfolded with a ripple and a tear. Jeremiah winced at the damage done to his lovely new robes but it was still worth the split seams. He flexed the new fingers of his wings, folding and unfolding them, stretching and testing the membranes. They were perfect and even matched the coloration of his robes. His god had impeccable taste.

Jeremiah stretched into the lift of his wings and leapt, the down beat nearly thumping him into the roof of the cave. He dropped and wobbled in the air as he adjusted effort, lift, updraft and wing shape, calibrating the best combination of the factors to produce the maximum amount of lift for the minimum amount of effort and the most amount of grandeur. Once he was sure he could control the glide he offered up another prayer to his god.

Kaelin yelled and ducked her head, shielding her face as the light, that dreadful light that destroyed, shone out in the cave. Quenril and the others cried out in fear and threw themselves out of the way of the beam of destruction, Sabal throwing himself flat and rolling underneath one of the giant crabs in the effort to get away from that raking glare of blazing glory. Ulrich yanked on his mounts eyes stalks, canting the giant crab sideways as the shaft of radiation chopped into the water, Thorian throwing himself out of the way at the last second.

The swarm of crabs on the beach took the full blast of the blessing of the Dragon of Destruction, turned to perfect, flawless statues of salt between one heart beat and the next, the only crab unaffected being the one that was slowly crushing Estella's ribs. It span to track what had happened to its friends and Estella's flapping feet knocked into the upper raised, transmuted claw of a salt crab statue and it crumbled to nothing, setting in a chain reaction that caused all the rest to collapse into dunes of salt, the white crystals pilled high.

"Cousin?" Quenril called, wading into the mass, trying to find where Sabal had been moments before, "Cousin? Cousin!"

Jeremiah drifted over the steam, pulling up into a hover slightly further on than Kaelin. He checked that there were not any spiders hanging on to the ceiling and then turned his attention to the rest of the battle. He frowned as he noted that the crabs in the stream had managed to duck under the surface of the water and therefore had avoided the power of his god. Thorian also surfaced in a splutter and gasp of icy water, even more soaked than he already was, if that was even possible. Oh well, the orc crossbreed probably need a good bath any way. His kind were known for not being clean. The fact that Thorian often asked for water and warm water at that to bath in, well, that was a detail that Jeremiah chose to forget. Still it was vexing to discover that there was a limit to his god's power, although water was a rather limited defense against his god's glory.

He noted Nanny Tatters dithering on the shore and sent her a mental command. She blinked and opened her maw to devour the time of the crabs in front of her. If she caught either Thorian or Kaelin in the area of effect? Oh well, casualties were to be expected on a journey such as this and he could always wax lyrical about their noble sacrifice to King Tatsuya. Jeremiah smiled as it occurred to him that if he ever managed to get away to a land outside of King Tatsuya's reach then he could make either of them one of the Saints of his new religion and wouldn't that be a torment to their souls. It was enough to make him ignore just how sore hovering was beginning to make his shoulders.

Nanny Tatters began her in drawn death rattle... and then coughed, a great fluid sounding hack that seemed to come up from her very toes.  Jeremiah drew his brows down as she coughed and coughed again. It all seemed rather put upon and he clenched his fist to remind her who was in command here and that she had better learn to stay obedient, if she didn't want to wind up as a permanently useless pile of bones.

Nanny Tatters flinched and whined as his Will bend her bones and bubbled through what was left of her mind with agony.

Behind her, Estella opened her mouth and vomited, vomited a huge black stream of oil that seemed impossible, its mass far out sizing what it should be possible for the girl to contain, even if her whole body was just a hollow container for what now poured out of her. It also continued without a break to grab a breath for much longer than it should have done if this was just an almighty stomach cramp. The crab back up, waving her about, the other claw trying to wipe the offending gunk from its eyes but it clung like tar as Estella gasped and gulped to get her breath back, struggling as the crab squeezed tighter.

The tar moved, bunching up in places, flowing in others, a face rising out of the mash of goo, a face of fury and blood lust wrapped up in the scales of a dragon that had defied death itself.

Crabs, it appears cannot, scream but it span and flailed as Valodrael grabbed the arm of the claw that was crushing Estella in a grip tight enough to crack its shell, the claws of his other hand latching on to the edge of its shell even while the rest of his spine and back legs were drawing together out of the pool of tar. The crab tried to clamp on to Valodrael's bulk with its other claw but the pincer just snipped through Valodrael's side time and again, the wound closing up with soft, wet noises, unnoticed in the dragon's fury. The crab waggled its legs in fright as one set were lifted off the ground and then a brutal set of cracks rang out as Valodrael twisted and wrenched its arm free of its socket, dragging connective tissue out of its shell as he did so. The claw spasmed open, dropping Estella to the floor, where she lay gasping, clutching her sore ribs. The crab managed a noise then, its remaining pincer battering the floor, a strange rasping sound coming up from inside it as Valodrael adjusted his grip around the edge of the wound where its leg had once been. He grinned as he started to pull the shell in two different directions with a slow deliberation. The crab flailed with desperation, the noise it was making becoming louder and then there was a sharp crack as its shell split along the seam between top and bottom. With a grizzly tearing rip punctuated by cracks, Valodrael opened the crab up like a book of flesh, exposing its quivering internals to the air, grinning the whole time, grinning like a rat trap, grinning like death itself.

"Cousin!" Quenril cried as the Ash Elf in questioning surfacing from the pile of crab salt that had collapsed on top of him. He was gasping and choking, crystal crusting his skin, jetting from his nostrils at every snort and cough, eyes streaming with tears that cut channels through the salt clinging to him but Tasnar laughed with relief as he helped pull his cousin out from under the mass of grains, the white stuff trickling out from every collar and cuff.

Kaelin rubbed a hand over her brow and then took a deep breath, unslinging Haggis and tucking the blow stick into her mouth. She started blowing into his bag, trying to focus on the tune she wanted to produce, a sleep soothing tune to lull the senses and calm the fray, to cast the others into sleep. She took a deep breath and squeezed Haggis' bag.

The hiccup came at precisely the wrong moment, interrupting the flow of air into Haggis' blow stick and with the pressure she'd just put on his bag it resulted in a serious case of back blow. Kaelin choked, trying to grab a breath but it felt as if her tongue had been forced backwards and was clogging up her throat. Her chest spasmed and heaved, eyes bulging, face turning purple as she tried and tried to shift her tongue, tried to breath. In her arms Haggis made an awful noise, some where between a squeal and a hiccup of his own.

With the slow but unstoppable pace of a glacier the coagulated slime squished out of the tunnel into the camp, closing in on where Estella lay prone. She looked up from nursing her aching ribs in time to have her vision filled by the sight of a corroded shield suspended in greenish jelly bubbling mere inches from her face.

She screamed, a high pitched, nerve shredding sound, throwing herself backwards as the surface of the jelly bulged towards her, clawing her way backwards on her butt until she was clear of its hissing, bubbling reach. She screamed again as it continued to hiss and bubble in her direction, the wood it oozed over beginning to dissolve within its bulging flowing mass, the fizz of its disintegration slowly rising through the slime's mass.

Thorian spat a stream of water as he stood back up in the stream, water draining out of his new armor in rivulets .

"I am not having fun!" he snapped, "I am am not having fun at all!" The crabs in the stream waved their claws at him, spreading them wide in a threat display that was supposed to terrify him. It didn't work. If anything it made it worse for them, spreading their guard wide. The first cracked down the middle, blue spilling into the water. The second was thrown across the stream to smash open against the rock wall, splattering across the stone. The last within his reach had its shell shattered like fragile glass, its body slumping into the water, its grip going slack.

"Thorian!" Ulrich snapped riding the crab up to the orc crossbreed, "Grab Estella and get on Weatherall's back here! The slime shouldn't like the water, especially if its as loaded with copper as Jeremiah said. Let's just get out of here." He turned to face the Ash Elves, Sabal still crusted with salt. "I say chaps, I think it was time we were gone; grab our packs, would you?"

Quenril nodded and turned to wade through the piles of salt to reach the camp fire, aiming for their packs, his kin flanking him. Meanwhile Thorian frowned.

"Er, who's Weath-er- all?" he asked.

"Weatherall," Ulrich smiled and nodded at the giant crab he was riding, "I seem to have a knack for taming the beasts of the Underworld. I'm beginning to wonder if my mother's people ever spent some time down here."

"More likely you have been blessed by the gods," Jeremiah called, "You should give thanks and praise them who have so richly blessed you."

"And I absolutely will," Ulrich called back, "The moment someone can tell me which god it is who is my patron."

"Well mine of course," Jeremiah replied, ignoring the fact his face was turning red with the effort of keeping air born. He'd never really had cause to regret his love of the lunch buffet before but now he was realizing why you never saw a fat bird that could fly. "My god healed you and guarded you. You should give praise to the Great Dragon."

"That remains to be seen," Ulrich muttered, shuddering as he turned away from what he could see behind Jeremiah. The thing may have been dragon shaped but there was something so subtly wrong about it, something that coiled in the purple flame that flowed round its limbs, something in the shine of its eye, that made the mind want to curl up and scream itself hoarse with terror. Ulrich definitely preferred Valodrael. Valodrael may look at you as if he wondered what you would taste like if he ate you but if you were friendly to Estella there was the way to keep him from giving in to that curiosity. That... That... That thing? There were no brakes, there were no breaks you could put on its mind. There was nothing you could barter, offer or trade with it to keep you life or indeed, your sanity. Part of Ulrich worried just how sane Jeremiah actually was.

Jeremiah hovered a little lower over the stream, watching the efforts with interest. Narrowing his eyes, he sent a mental command to Nanny Tatters. She lunged into the steam, water cresting up before her, which was probably what warned the crab to shift out of the way. Nanny Tatters' teeth clashed together but a mouthful of water was all her reward for her effort. Jeremiah frowned. She really was behaving very lack luster.

Estella scrabbled to her feet backing away and then spotted something. Taking her courage in both hands, she darted forward, grabbed Thorian's second boot before the slime could engulf it, snagged the strap of her satchel and scarpered for the edge of the stream. In the water the last of the crabs in the combat struck out at Nanny Tatters and managed to smack her across the face but missed the follow up grab to her neck, water churning to froth around their battling forms. Jeremiah came to a decision and shook back his sleeves, fingers tracing paths of power through the air as he chanted the words.

Ulrich turned and looked over is shoulder as a shadow fell across him.

"Holy buckets!" he exclaimed. Nanny Tatters was suddenly swelling to something half way approaching her original size, air and water being pushed out of the way as she expanded, one of her back feet lifting as she lengthened. "Holy buckets!" Ulrich exclaimed again, almost twisting Weatherall's eye stalk as he tried to make the crab understand it should shift its backside. Peter whistled shrilly as Nanny Tatters' foot came crashing down.

Weatherall switched leading side with almost ballet style grace, not only switching which way he was facing but also twisting both himself and his rider out from under the crushing ton weight of the crone dragon's limb.

"Good work, old boy," Ulrich risked losing his grip on one of the eye stalks to pat Weatherall's shell. He then surreptitiously rubbed his neck. If he was going to ride Weatherall a lot he was going to have to invest in a neck brace, that switch back move had nearly cracked his neck.

Nanny Tatters reared on to her back legs and then crashed down with all her weight. The last crab in the combat burst as her entire weight and force smashed down on its back, like a beetle crushed under foot. Pieces of shell ruptured outwards with such velocity that they broken the surface tension of the water to fountain into the air before pattering back down on the rippling water of the stream. Under the surface ropes of unspeakable things unspoiled in the water. Nanny Tatters performed a bouncing little dance, hoping from one diagonal set of feet to the other diagonal set in a move reminiscent of the dressage move piaffe but on the spot, feet flicking up a deep series of troughs and waves that slopped on to the shore.

Estella dodged passed the prancing dragon feet, ducked under the whisking tail, splashed through the shallows and scrambled up beside Ulrich on Weatherall's shell.

"And I thought my life couldn't get any more crazy," she observed to him, "One of these things tried to snip me in half and now I'm riding another. Remind me, when did I sign up for this craziness?"

"Probably when you decided to join the King's Special out of your own violation," Ulrich grinned.

"Fair point," Estella nodded.

Kaelin leaned against the wall, hacking hard enough to turn the whites of her eyes red, her face twisting as she fought for breath. She'd never been afraid of water before but now it felt like she was drowning without her head being under the surface. Haggis gave a worried drone, trying to help. Kaelin managed to drag a breath into her lungs but then they cramped again. Kaelin felt herself sliding towards the surface of the water and grabbed a nobble of rock to hold herself up.

Quenril and his kin dashed up to the camp fire, snagging not only their own packs but also the packs of the rest of the King's Special before the oozing jelly could engulf them. Well, except Jeremiah's as the vigor was already carrying that into the stream at its plodding pace. Tasnar cried out as the back of his hand brushed the surface of the jelly and the skin vanished with a stinking hiss.

With a roar Thorian dived forward and seized a pair of burning brands from the fire. Lunging he sank both of them deep into the heart of the jelly. With a hiss the fire was extinguished, the jelly flowing shocking speed up the wood towards Thorian's hands.

"Hate to break up the party," Ulrich called as he jockeyed Weatherall forward, "But it really is time to go!" As the Ash Elves made it to the stream behind them, Weatherall snatched Thorian round the waist and hefted him into the air. With his legs disappearing into a blur Weatherall slashed into the stream, herding the Ash Elves in front of him with his bulk and snatched up Kaelin in the other claw before her head could sink below the water.

"Peter, Marmaduke, follow us please good boys," Ulrich called, "Follow on, follow on."

Peter came with an irritated hissing. Despite his every effort he hadn't been able to snag a juicy crab dinner and he'd been pinged by flying crab shell for his troubles. And now his master had chosen to ride on the back of one of the dratted things. It was even worse than when he was riding that ridiculously noisy tin pot. Peter trundled along, hissing and whistling his ire quietly to himself, occasionally directing a particularly venomous insult at Marmaduke and muttering others at Weatherall. In short, he was not in a happy place.

Behind them the jelly oozed forward and flowed over Nanny Tatters' toes as her left foot rested on the bank. She swung her head round, gazing with dumb fascination as her claws started to bubble within the jelly's great bulk, apparently unconcerned about its attempts to eat her.

"Nanny Tatters, hear your master and move your foot!" Jeremiah ordered in exasperation. Really, why did he have to have servants that were so dull?

She swung her head back round to face him and Jeremiah felt a twinge of unease as her one great eye seemed to focus on him for a moment but then she slowly, very slowly lifted her foot clear of the jelly's mass. It hung on for as long as possible but then it had other things to worry about.

Valodrael drew in a rattling breath, the scourge of a winter blizzard over Arctic ice. Then he exhaled, the Chill of the Void echoing through the cave, breath of the King's Special pluming into the air as the temperature plummeted to below freezing, the fire dying, its paltry warm no match for the frigid touch of the space between the stars.

The coagulate jelly started trying to ooze towards Valodrael but its surface swiftly turned rigid, the swirls and whorls of jack frost crystals spreading faster than leprosy spots, quickly meeting at their edges and penetrating deeply into its internals. Some how Valodrael keep exhaling, the icy touch of the Void crackling through the air as the jelly rang and chimed with abrupt ice. Estella watched in amazement as she could see the jagged spires of ice piercing through the slime's translucent form, crossing and crisscrossing, layers of ice grinding together as it filled the slime to the limit, its surface bulging as internal pressure forced its way out.

Valodrael hissed one final breath of wintry cold and panted for a moment. The frozen slime tinkled as its new weight settled slightly. Valodrael snarled at it and lifted his left forefoot, bringing it up and across. With one almighty back hand he shattered the coagulated jelly, shards of ice spraying across the cave, splashing down in the stream, bouncing off of the walls, rattling like smashed glass as it tumbled across the stone, the corroded pieces of metal, the last relics of once brave heroes ringing and bouncing as they were finally released from their prison.

Valodrael snorted and turned away. He stopped and turned back. A claw raked through the shatter remains, flicking pieces of greenish white ice out of the way. He snagged what he had spotted out of the wreckage, lifting it twined round a couple of his claws. The silver shone as bright as the day it had been wrought and the emeralds where no worse for their time spent encased by the rippling internals of the jelly, casting bright green spots of light where the glow from the light stick Estella held up touched them with chemical fire. Valodrael hummed huskily in his throat, considering just how beautiful his hoard would look around Estella's neck. He turned to pace to where Ulrich had brought Weatherall to a halt in the stream, the human concerned for Kaelin's choking form as she still hadn't caught her breath properly.

Kaelin hung limp in Weatherall's claw, eyes glassy and unfocused, breath an alternative gasp and cough. Estella held up a light stick and rooted through her satchel, looking for something.

"Nanny Tatters?" Jeremiah called from where he watched Kaelin trying to not expire, "Would you be a dear and give our wolfish friend a little mouth to mouth?"

"Not..." Kaelin darkened with the effort of not coughing, "Not blasted likely!" Her eyes went crossed as she pressed her lips together, holding her breath as Nanny Tatter's paced closer.

"Try this," Estella held out a flask. Kaelin snatched it and gulped the contents. She coughed once and gasped, not only swallowing but also breathing in the vapors. She gasped again and then her breathing settled out.

"Thank you," she said, passing back the flask, voice thick with a blocked up nose, "Oh ow, oh." She groaned. Ulrich reached out a hand and pulled Weatherall's claw as close to his back as it was possible for it to go, helping Kaelin to step on to the crab's shell.

"Are you better?" he asked as she collapsed beside him.

"Been worse," she muttered, holding her head in her hands, "Oh, I've got a headache."

"Plenty of space to lie down," Ulrich noted.

"Thanks," Kaelin muttered and actually took his advice, stretching out along the back edge of Weatherall's shell with a groan, her color still blotchy with the effort her body had been through.

"Here," Estella leaned over the side of Weatherall, ducking a length of cloth in the icy water. She squeezed it out and folded it, laying it over Kaelin's brow.

"Thank you," Kaelin muttered, putting a hand over the cold pad.

"You're welcome," Estella said quietly, "It's nice to pay it forward."

Nanny Tatters suddenly stumbled as Valodrael snaked between her legs in the smallest size they had ever seen him only to suddenly grow huge, shouldering her back. The two dragons stood nose to nose, simmering violence snapping through the air between them, Valodrael's lips curling back, an unspoke threat. Nanny Tatters blinked and then backed down without being told to. Jeremiah frowned and mentally pushed into her mind, searching for any sign that she was developing a will of her own. He found only the rolling blankness of the mindless puppet, a dark fog of numbness and blank thought.

Valodrael also glared at her for a further moment before turning away.

"For you, my dear," he held up the chain of silver and emeralds that dangle loosely round the claws of his right 'hand'.

"Oh its lovely," Estella smiled and reached out for it, draping the loop of it over her head and letting it settle on her collar bones, "Thank you Val."

"Always my pleasure," he bowed his head to her. He noticed Ulrich watching them and winked.

"Smooth move," Ulrich whispered and looked away at the sound of Valodrael liquefying. He looked back to see Estella blinking Valodrael's darkness from her eyes. He shook his head. There went a very messy dynamic that he had given up trying to judge.

"Er," Thorian called, "Could you, er, get this thing to put me down. Please?"

"Oh sorry old bean," Ulrich smiled and reached out, tapping Weatherall's claw arm. The giant crab swiveled its freed eye to look at Ulrich, apparently weighing up its chances of maybe getting this collection of parasites off of its back.

"Um its squeezing tighter," Thorian complained. Ulrich squeezed its other eye stalk and Thorian relaxed a little as the pressure eased off. Ulrich tapped the arm again and this time Weatherall lowered his arm and released Thorian.

"Thankee muchly old chum," Thorian patted Weatherall's shell, "Well, what are we doing now?" He looked round at the cluster of the group on Weatherall's back, the three Ash Elves wading through the water and spared a glance for Jeremiah above.

"Might need a hat for that," he muttered.

"Here," Estella called to him, "I think this is yours." She held out his boot to him.

"Oh thankee muchly," Thorian grinned and leaned against the wall to pull it back on. The Ash Elves handed out peoples packs so that everyone was carrying their fair share again. Everyone save Jeremiah that was but the vigor puppet was still stumping along carrying the packet above its head as it forged through the water.

"Well, I don't any of us are going to be able to relax at that beach any more, so I say we more on," Ulrich observed.

"The scavengers will also be attracted to here, with so much death," Quenril noted, "We should make haste."

"Can the kervead's swim?" Ulrich asked, "Most of the mess we've made is in the water and up on the surface most insects can't swim."

"I have noticed that the kervead's haven't been swarming," Tasnar noted, "They should have cleared up the mess of the octopods, not have left them to smell so bad the following candle time." The cousins looked at their elective spokesman but for a moment, Quenril closed his eyes, his expression still as he fought to not give away his emotions.

"Would the kerveads that swarm in the chasm outside the Citadel of the Snake Clan be attracted to such a small offering?" he managed to say it like the Snake Clan where other people, not their family, not their people, "Would they be interested in such small pickings when a banquet lays before them? Would the Spider Clan willingly surrender the trading rights with the dwerg?"

Sabal and Tasnar looked at each other and then dropped their gaze, unwilling to say the answer.

"We must assume that the Spider Clan has faced the same trial that the Snake Clan did and they have fallen, much as we did," Quenril said, "So our only hope is now also the Lady's Kaelin's hope."

"You what?" Kaelin lifted the cold compress on one side so she could turn her head to look at him, while Tasnar and Sabal also frowned.

"If the Lady Kaelin can complete the forfeit in time and thus preserve her own life," Quenril explained, "If she can destroy the source of the curse affecting our stolen brethren and the women of the Clans then they may, may regain themselves. If this is true then we have the chance of them being able to control what they have become. We will never be who we were but we may have the chance of continuing on in a new way."

Tasnar looked down again as if he was seriously considering it. Sabal opened his mouth, an angry look in his eye but then his teeth clicked shut and he turned away, wrapping his arms around his chest, holding in the pain that change can bring.

"Good people," Jeremiah called, his face now rather florid with the effort of staying air born in one place, "As much as I love a good pity party, can we please make some progress today? I would like to find some where to land soon."

"He might have a point," Estella agreed. Everyone looked at her in astonishment but she simply raised her finger and pointed to where the remains of the squished crab leaked into the water. The crab that had scuttled down stream away from the fight after it had lost some of its legs had made its way back to the site of the battle and was delicately picking over the spilled remains of its one time brother in arms, pulling off pieces of crab fresh and feeding them into its mouth with the finicky motions of an epicure, mouth parts grinding away as its eyes stalks watched them.

"The light bugs might not being giving us trouble but how long before anything else that was down stream come to see what is leaking into the water?" she asked.

"That is singularly disturbing," Ulrich observed and then patted Weatherall's shell, "Onward Weatherall, onward.We few, we lucky few."

"We band of burgered," Kaelin muttered, lowering the cloth back over her eyes as they started out. The crab's shell was decidedly steady as it moved with its strange sideways gait. With the coolness easing her headache, it was almost...

A soft clap sounded but Kaelin could tell that no matter how quiet it was, quieter even than the beat of Jeremiah's new wings and the swish of the others walking through the water, that it was made by the movement of a large amount of air. It sounded again and then again. Kaelin rolled on to her elbow, catching the compress before it fell into the water.

Nanny Tatters backed up again and lunged at the tunnels opening her shoulders smacking into the walls of limestone as her claws scrabbled in the stream, trying to find enough traction to pull her into the tunnel. For a undead puppet, she seemed strangely desperate to keep up with them and then Kaelin remembered what Jeremiah had done to his doppelganger when Jeremiah the Second had displeased him.

"Your pet's in trouble," she called up to Jeremiah, dabbling the compress in the water and squeezing it out before laying back down and laying it over her eyes.

"Excuse me?" Jeremiah said.

"Your pet," Kaelin pointed without lifting the compress off of her eyes, "She's in trouble." Jeremiah frowned and looked to where Nanny Tatters was threatening to tear her new skin with her efforts to follow her master. Jeremiah tutted and breathed the prayer to his god. There was a thunder clap as something rather large became that much smaller, Nanny Tatters bounding through the water now that she was only pony sized again.

"Oh really," Ulrich sighed, water dripping from his hair on one side, "Did you have to let her do that?" Behind him, Estella moped her face and Kaelin snorted water from out of her nose.

"Oh why would I deny my servant the expression of how eager she is to please me?" Jeremiah asked as Nanny Tatters slowed to a walk underneath him, just before the waves of water she was kicking up splashed over the pack the vigor was carrying. Kaelin frowned before she covered her eyes again. That one was definitely developing signs of a higher ability to calculate her own survival than they had given Jeremiah's puppets credit for. Part of her wondered if the priest would be willing to give up his favored pet but then decided that it wasn't her problem. If Nanny Tatters was coming back to herself then it was not her business to tell Jeremiah that he needed to watch his back.

They pressed on through the tunnel, forging their way through the icy water, its green touch chilling to the feet, Jeremiah's wing beats ruffling the surface. After a while Estella let the talismans back out of the bag to gambol through the air, they cartwheeling forms even more lively than usual as they were back to being seven but careful to keep away from where Peter the centipede trundled along, his antennae feeling over the stone ahead of him. The purple frog settled on her shoulder and hummed quietly in her ear. Above the red cardinal lead the fliers in an exploration of the tunnels roof, fluttering round the eons worth of dripped stone, the new kirin galloping through the air at its side. The black bat cat rippled forward with feline grace, while behind it the phoenix drifted on wide spread wings, its trailing tail peacock wide and speckled with eyes of blue among the red of its feathers, occasionally admonishing the serpent with feathered wings that coiled round it in flight.

Estella smiled as she watched their antics, running her eyes over the strange rock of the tunnel, so smooth in some places it looked as if it had been worked and then in others so uneven were the drip of centuries had molded and shaped great spires and fans of rimstone. Above the run of the stream the drip and plop of water was a continuous chorus in the darkness that was broken only by the light stick that Thorian held up.

On and on they pushed into the dark.

They had stepped out in to the cavern before they had even realized it. Thorian held up the light stick but only the wall to their left was truly visible and in the dark shapes loomed ahead.

"Kaelin," Ulrich whispered, "Can you find a tube marked light, extra in your pack. I think we divided them up fairly evenly."

Kaelin didn't say anything but sat up and rooted through her pack.

"Here," she held it out.

"Hands full my dear," Ulrich point out, "Just point the blunt end away from yourself, as well as anyone else and pull the sting."

"Oh right," Kaelin nodded, remembering the night time fun they'd had at Black Randle's cabin in the woods. She rose to her knees on Weatherall's back and pointed the tube up into the dark. With a sharp yank she pulled the sting. On a tongue of chemical fire, the flare hissed up into the dark.

"Eye shield time," Ulrich ducked his head, "Marmaduke, cover my eyes." The automaton stamped forward through the water and clapped a bronze hand over Ulrich's face, the others copying, even Jeremiah.

Peter hissed with distress as the chemical sun burst into being and dashed back to the tunnel's roof on pure instinct.

Jeremiah ignored its cry of pain and swooped forward, the looming shapes having been revealed to be massive pillars of stone dividing the way ahead into three. He dived low over the water, eyes narrowed as he watched the color change that spoke of how deep the water was. He span round the pillars, wings beating with power.

"I am afraid that there is no point trying to stay with the water, my good people," he reported, "The source appears to be a tunnel but it is under the surface and I cannot tell how far it is until there is an air pocket. As much as I am sure that you are all as disappointed as I am, unless you can breath underwater, I believe that we should return to the tunnels that have dry floors."

Kaelin rolled her eyes at his tone but had to agree with him that diving into a tunnel where you had no knowledge of how long it was and whether there would be breathable air at the end of it.

"So center or left?" Ulrich asked. Jeremiah drew himself up in the air, flaring his wings wide. Gazing down he chanted a prayer, making Quenril and the other Ash Elves flinch and cower.

There was a boom as Nanny Tatters ballooned to full size, her pale, semi-translucent skin stretching to take the sudden change. She swayed for a moment and then shivered slightly before she settled. Jeremiah swooped over and settled on the top of her head, folding his wings after a couple of moments practicing and then sitting down cross legged, like a foreign prince in his howdah, his cushions the fleshy deadlocks that adorned Nanny Tatters head.

There were a lot of splashing from below and Jeremiah looked over the side of her skull to where Thorian and the Ash Elves were struggling to their feet in the water. Ulrich had his ridiculous giant crab down there as well, all of the riders looking some what soggy. Kaelin seemed to have lost that absurd cold compress of hers. Really, people were so willing to over indulge the mongrel. She looked up at him and spat out a thin stream of water, her gaze most decidedly unfriendly. Peter the centipede hissed from where he hung on to the wall of the cavern, his trailing end segments decidedly damp.

With a smile Jeremiah turned his face away and pointed to the middle path, ignoring the burning pain beginning to build in his shoulders. It was embarrassing to even think that he may need to lose some weight to make this flying lark possible.

"Forward, pet, forward," he commanded. Nanny Tatters strode forward, feet leaving massive waves in her wake that chopped back and forth across the cavern, threatening to swamp everyone else traveling. When he looked down again everyone, even those sat on Weatherall's shell were holding their packs above their heads to keep them from being soaked by the water. Today was just getting better and...

Nanny Tatters lurched, collapsing up to her left shoulder in the water, nearly bucking Jeremiah off sideways and heaving up the water as her bulk slammed down into it.

"Brace yourselves!" Ulrich yelled, letting go of Weatherall's eye stalks and grabbing the front edge of his shell. Kaelin also grabbed the edge of the shell, where as Estella wrapped her arms around Ulrich, all of their packs swinging side ways as they had only time to loop their arms through a strap or two. Thorian and the Ash Elves had nothing at all, their yells literally drowning in the surge of water. Estella yelled as Weatherall proved to have a skill they hadn't expected, kicking off from the floor and spreading his legs out flat to either side, his claws in alignment to make water wings that lifted them up the face of the wave and over the top.

There was a thunder clap sound as the wave smacked into the tunnel entrance and forced its way through, dying off in a gurgle that echoed round the cavern. Weatherall waggled and then his feet found the floor under the water again. The echoes died away.

Estella, water running from her clothes, rose to one knee on Weatherall's back, looking round, mouth slightly open, eyes wide.

"Erm," she started, "Guys? Where's..."

Thorian burst through the surface, coughing and spluttering, face dark with fists clenched.

"Where is that fool!?!" he roared, "Where is that blue nosed dangleweed!?!"

Estella breathed a sigh of relief and smiled as she realized that Thorian had picked up her favorite cuss.

"Your favorite cuss?" a voice in her head asked her, "I think you'll find that it was mine first."

"And seeing as you are sharing my head, surely it's shared property by now?" Estella continued to smile. She frowned as no replied was forth coming. Her heart sank.

"Val?" she questioned slowly.

"Well done," she could feel his smile, "That is the first time you haven't apologized for something like that." The pride was unmistakable. Estella felt the warm flow into her cheeks but it wasn't a bad feeling.

 "I said, where is that dangleweed!?!" Thorian roared again.

"Please Sir Thorian," Quenril called in a muted tone from where he was helping Tasnar to his feet, "Lower your voice. Some of the rock formations can snap of during loud sounds."

"What?" Thorian asked and looked up at the ceiling, "Ah, okay. I'll be quiet."

 Out of sight, Jeremiah was pulling himself back up on top of Nanny Tatters' off kilter head, yanking on the fleshy dreadlocks and taking the time to slap her across the face with an out flung wing.

"Stupid oaf," he muttered, "Straighten up!"

With a sucking sound Nanny Tatters dragged her arm out of the pot hole that had been deep enough to swallow her to the shoulder.

"Marmaduke, hold Weatherall still!" Ulrich commanded. The automaton lunged forward and grabbed Weatherall's back legs as the water rushed back into the hole, dragging everything with it. Thorian grabbed Sabal's collar as the elf lost his footing. With a slurp the water stilled.

"Chunky dunking," Kaelin observed.

"Indeed," Jeremiah said, his mouth twisting like he'd just bitten down on a lemon as he settled himself on Nanny Tatters head again. "Forward!"

"I say old chum, is that really a good..." Ulrich called.

Nanny Tatters stepped off the edge of the rock shelf that was hidden under the water, wallowing into the pool, her whole chest crashing down into lake, water sheeting up either side of her and a swell racing across the cavern to bounce off the far wall and come racing back. Nanny Tatters, already afloat simply rode up and over it but it rolled on towards the rest of the King's Special.

"Surf's up!" Ulrich yelled as the wall of water barreled towards them.

Draconnic Shenanigans - Episode 31

Chapter Thirty One: Fumbles in the Underworld

 

(Artwork Credits to the Artists of the Savage World Bestiary)

 Quenril and the other Ash Elves woke the whole team after most of them had managed to catch at least a reasonable amount of sleep. Jeremiah grumbled that they were trying to murder the King's Special by cruelty but nobody was surprised by that and nobody paid any attention to it, having heard it all before, multiple times. Jeremiah's complaints and moans and grumbles had become just part of the morning routine that had to be endured. While they ate a cold breakfast the Ash Elves disassembled their pot bellied stove and stowed it.

Once she'd eaten Kaelin unwound the bandage from around Ulrich's wrist and had a look.

"Not bad," she commented as Thorian held his wrist still, "One more clean and some more of this and you should be good." She matched action to words, swabbing out the injury and then dripping some more 'for healing' potion into it. This time the 'for healing' potion didn't smoke on contact with Ulrich's flesh, which Kaelin took to be a good sign that the injury was well on the way to recovery.

"Try to take it easy on that wrist," she wryly, "I know you find that concept difficult but please do try."

"My dear Kaelin, since when have I ever not been the soul of discretion?"

 "Em, since you were running around with an injured arm that you were supposed to be resting and instead you were wooing the chief of the people who were trying to kill us at the time," Kaelin pointed out as she tidied the 'for healing potion' and other healer equipment away.

To give him credit, Ulrich actually thought about it for half a minute before he replied.

"Fair point," he conceded, "But you must admit as to the results of my efforts."

"What? Getting us tangled up in a war zone?" Kaelin protested, "Nearly crushed by a cave in? Shouted at by a steel monster that nearly ran us all down? Not to mention discovering a species of dragon that can apparently devour time itself from its victims to heal itself even after it is dead! And," she took a deep breath, "That is just paragraph one of column one of page one. Do you need me to continue?"

"Actually I was thinking more along the lines of discovering the entire reason why the Ash Elves were raiding into the upper world in the first place plus discovering the world wide conspiracy that a madman of a werewolf is involved in," Ulrich grinned as he replied, "Not to mention discovering an entire civilization that no one knew was down here and bagging loads of wonderfully new goodies as well as allying ourselves with a new species of dragon that can defy death itself. Did I miss anything? Although I will accept the point about Nanny Tatters. That one was well made."

"Now, my dear Ulrich," Jeremiah smiled oily, "Surely you exaggerate. As you can see, the only thing keeping Nanny Tatters on her feet is the will of my god."

Kaelin and Ulrich looked at each other, looked at Jeremiah and where Nanny Tatters was lurking behind him and looked at each other again.

"None so blind," Kaelin remarked.

"As those who don't want to see," Ulrich nodded, "Any way, chaps, which way should we go this delightful morning?"

"Well the middle tunnel is a dead end," Kaelin noted, "And could have some very unpleasant surprises for us by now."

"What is the matter, my dear Kaelin," Jeremiah wheedled, "You surely can't be afraid of having to fight a fluff bunny or two? How could the great and powerful Kaelin be scared of a lowly piece of fluff? I would have thought you would merely crush them under your heels." Kaelin gave him a long, flatly unfriendly look and turned her back.

"I think we should go that way," Ulrich pointed at the right hand tunnel, "I might not have Kaelin's grand nose but there is a whiff of something extremely foul coming down that tunnel from the left." The others frowned at him but Estella stepped forward and sniffed carefully. She turned green in an instant and clapped a hand to her mouth.

"Yep, yep," she backed away, hanging on to the wall of the tunnel for support, "Yep, I... I totally agree with him. We do not want to go down there, it's... ugh." She closed her eyes, trying to get as far away from the left hand tunnel mouth as she could before she took her next breath.

"Oh, come now my dear," Jeremiah smiled, "Clearly you have traveled much and had many rich and varied experiences. A little mess left over from our fight with those bags of wind yesterday cannot possibly be that disturbing, even if the kerveads haven't started breaking down the bodies yet."

"It stinks like a million years worth of rotting vegetation and decomposing seafood!" Estella snapped, "And no, you're right, I don't know what either of those things smell like but Valodrael spent about three hundred and fifty years crawling across the abyssal plain, he knows exactly what a million years worth of rotting vegetation and decomposing seafood smells like and neither of us wants another nose full of that reek!"

 "As I was going to say," Ulrich interrupted, "We haven't been down the right hand tunnel and therefore there are no dead things lurking down that one."

"Yah hope," Kaelin muttered but she hefted her pack on to her back and settled it into place, head turned towards the tunnel. They stepped out towards it, Kaelin lifting a light - standard stick, casting its strange white light over the contours of the stone. There was the strange feeling of being underwater or one the shore of a strange, dark sea, the bands of color waived through the stone, the layers of ages displayed in different colors.

"What do you think causes this?" Estella traced a hand over the bands of yellow to red to pale grey.

"The gods put many mysteries in the flesh of Hestia to test the belief of us mere mortals and weed out those who would turn their backs on the godly for the momentary glitter of so called scientific discovery, which is merely the understanding of mortals and therefore debased by its very nature," Jeremiah said piously.

 Kaelin lifted a hand behind Jeremiah's back and mimed a mouth flapping open and shut, the look of an unimpressed queen stamped across her features.

"In the time before time," Quenril intoned quietly, "When the gods did not exist and Hestia did not know herself, the ground itself fought with itself, tearing rock, shifting oceans, turning plains into mountains and sinking mountains below the waves. Time beyond time lost in a war that had no sides and no victor. As mountains were ground away by the savagery of the world's anger unleashed upon itself so their remains settled upon the beds of oceans and were pressed by time and water back to rock only to be heaved up to become the roots of the mountains. Even the Eldest race did not exist then. It was long after Hestia had spent her anger and settled to creation rather than destruction that the first lives came crawling into the world."

"This 'Eldest Race' you speak of?" Jeremiah smiled, obviously not believing a word of it.

"No," Quenril frowned, "The lesser lives were first, the lives that live in burrows or swing high among the weeds of the upper world, the lives that crawl and walk and swim. The lives that hoot and howl and jabber but have no language. The lives that live but have no knowing of that life, the lives that think only of here, of now and do not look to either past or future."

"Animals," Kaelin noted, recognizing what Quenril was describing through centuries of not experiencing the surface world for himself, word of mouth stories handed down generation over generation, remembered after the meanings had faded out of them.

"Yes," Quenril nodded, trying out the new word, "Animals. It was after ages forgotten that the Eldest Race came to be. They looked and saw. They listened and they heard. They made sound and spoke. They looked and named the lives that crawled and walked and swam. They listened and named the lives that hooted and howled and jabbered. They looked and listened and spoke and named Hestia and in her naming Hestia knew herself and so was complete for she knew herself at long last. And in time she prepared the caves and caverns, the grottoes and tunnels so that her last true grandchildren could find shelter when the Betrayers rose and cast down the Begetters, the children of the Eldest Race." He fell silent for a time but spoke again before anyone else could, "And now we must return to the upper world, a world we do not understand and do not know for Hestia's sanctuary has failed and we have no where else to go."

 "Yeah," Thorian admitted, "It's crappy when that happens but least you got your brothers with yah. I ain't even got that, least til I joined this lot." He reached out and mussed Kaelin's hair. She snarled at him but Thorian didn't seem fazed by it.

"Why are you not with your family, good man Thorian?" Tasnar asked, "I believed that your people were said to run in clans in the mountains."

"We do," Thorian admitted, "But I is a little smart for all my folks back home. They find my thinks difficult to understand. Like my pictures."

"Your pictures?" Tasnar asked.

"Yeah I..." Thorian reached for his pocket but then stopped, eyes squinting at the darkness. "Hey up, what's that?"

The party slowed to a halt as a new tunnel branched off the left hand side of the one they were following. Without needing to look at each other the party drew their weapons, a slight susurration carrying from the dark within that tunnel mouth making them all beware.

Taking his sword in a firm two handed grip, Thorian stepped up to the tunnel mouth, Kaelin at his side, thrusting the light stick into the chamber first, letting it roll in across the floor.

"Wow!" Thorian cried out from where he looked round the each of the tunnel's mouth, "Wow-wee! We've hit pay dirt!"

"Oh my dear Thorain," Jeremiah muttered from the back of the group, rolling his eyes at the ceiling, "I can assure you that dirt never pays, unless you are a peasant and then it isn't your dirt but the land you til at the pleasure of your lord and master."

The others weren't listening to him, gazing instead at the mounds and heaps of glistening yellow in the shine from the light stick. Jumbles and waterfalls of gleaming yellow, bright and buttery, piled against the walls of the living room sized chamber, just waiting for the collecting.

"Beautiful things," Ulrich breathed.

"A bagful of that and I would never have to risk stealing again," Kaelin muttered, something shrieking at the back of her mind, something desperately trying to get her attention.

"Are such things worthy of being traded on the surface?" Quenril asked in wonder, "Are the riches of a dragon's horde counted for so very much?"

Strangely enough, it was Thorian who suddenly pocked out his lower lip, a big think crossing his mind.

"A great big pile of gold coins don't get here all by itself," he noted, "So it is probably going to make someone real angry if we take some of it." He nodded slowly to himself, "That means taking some of it would be a bad idea." He brightened, beaming hugely. "Me first!"

He strode into the chamber, heading straight for the biggest pile at the back.

"Shiny!" he exclaimed, reaching down towards the splendid stack of rich, yellow... It moved, it moved in a way that no pile of gold should be able to, lifting with a wet, sticky sound as something burst from underneath it.

"Oy!" Thorian yelled, snatching his hand back as the big rat's teeth clashed together a hairbreadth from his fingers. Wiggling, squeaking, writhing, hairy bodies erupted out of the jumbles of what was most definitely not golden riches, shrilling their anger and their hunger as the King's Special disturbed their nest. Yellow teeth curved in the shine from the light stick as the rats surged forward, mouths gaping open.

"Someone wants their dinners," Ulrich grinned, sword whispering from its scabbard.

"Yeah?" Thorian roared, "Well they're getting the bottom of mah feet!" He began jumping up and down, a few of the golden 'coins' bursting under his boots as his weight crashed down again and again.

Kaelin grinned, eyeing the size of  the rodents before them, her bones bubbling and rippling below her skin, muscles reforming and stretching as the wolf came up to the fore, the claws pushing their way out through her finger tips, her nails sliding back to give them room.

With a howl she charged into the chamber, mouth agape, claw spread wide, red light in her eyes. The rats screamed as she laid into them like a terrier in a barrel. Spines cracked between her teeth, fur parted, bones crunched, bodies smacked against the wall with wet scrunches. Kaelin howled, a savage grin curling her mouth as she turned, the swarm cut in two as effectively as a scythe through a wheat field, a trail of the dead in her wake.

"Now this is what we were made for!" Thorian yelled with a grin as he jumped up and down, "No talking, no writing, no having to know fancy stuff. Just a pair of big boots and enemy we can stomp on!"

The rat swarms appeared to have a different opinion on this, bunching and snarling back at them. One swarm swirled and then launched itself at Kaelin. She screeched as the rats threw themselves at her trying to pull her down by sheer weight of numbers, scrambling, scrabbling, clawing their way up and over her, teeth trying to sink into her flesh but the multiply layers of her new dragon scale armor confused them and defeated their bites, while her claws swiped and threw the ones that reached her neck. She snarled as the rats continued to try and reach her ears.

Thorian yelled as Kaelin suddenly dropped but she wasn't submitting to the rats desire to devour her, rolling instead across the ground, her body weight crushing rodents and her motion flinging them off. She rolled to her feet before she hit a mound of the golden stuff, rats groaning and shuffling in her wake.

The other swarm, the second half of the original big swarm, launched itself at Thorian but it appeared that his lurching, leaping motion had confused the swarm mightily and some of its members leapt one way while others leapt in the opposite direction. The result was them crashing into each other. Squeaks and squeals rang out as teeth bit the wrong ears and claws raked the wrong skin. Rats went tumbling across the floor, locked together in savage, ripping fights with each other, screeching and squealing as they took their ire out on each other.

"Well," Ulrich raised his eyebrows as he watched, "They do say friendly fire is decidedly unfriendly."

Thorian grinned and hefted his sword, eyeing up the brawling swarm in front of him. Lowly the point of his blade he bent his knees slightly, shuffled his feet shoulder width apart, making sure he had a loose but firm grip on the hilt. Taking a steady breath, his swung back and then... The sword blade cleaved forward in a brilliant downward arch that sheering through the swarm with almost surgical precision, rats parting from each other and departing from themselves, the swarm cleaved in two with brutal finesse.

"How's that?" Thorian cried.

"Poetry, good sir, poetry," Ulrich called and then set his heels to Peter's side, balancing perfectly as the centipede reared, whistling its battle cry.

"Tally-ho!" Ulrich cried, "To the rescue!"

"You what?" Kaelin asked as Ulrich charged into the swarm that was mobbing her.

"It is the duty of a gentleman to protect a fair lady in distress," Ulrich grinned as he chopped out at the swarm, "I may not be able to claim my father's lands but I can at least claim that I am as much a gentleman as he is and possibly more." Rats screamed up at him.

"What lady?" Kaelin snarled through her fangs, her voice guttural with the power of the wolf.

"Why you of course fair Kaelin the wild," Ulrich grinned as he did his deadly work, "Who else would I mean? You are fair, even when you let your wildness out and you were in a little trouble there for a minute. It would be churlish of me to stand by and not lend my aid to you in your time of need, fair damsel."

"You keep spitting nonsense like that," Kaelin slapped out at a rat that hadn't learnt its lesson, "And I'll assume you want a rat to the face."

Ulrich just grinned as the swarm parted before him, the once massed force of rodents now broken into four patches of vermin that looked like they were beginning to regret their life choices. Peter scissored out at them, mouth parts sheering through the air and one of the mini swarms stumbled back... Right into Marmaduke's path. There was a metallic crash as the mini swarm vanished in splash of red paste.

"Is that what they mean by painting by numbers?" Thorian grinned and eyed up the two mini swarms in front of him. It must be said that in their defense that rodents do not have a lot of room in their heads for brains and thus changing their ideas about what to do in a situation takes them sometime to accept. They were fighting to defend this space against the big people therefore they would do so, long after it should have been obvious that the war was lost. Thorian rather permanently  changed their minds for them, his broad sword swinging in a series of loops and arches that turned both mini swarms into a pile of rat sushi. Peter swung his head towards it, mouth parts clicking.

"Oh really Peter, must you?" Ulrich protested as the centipede lunged across the chamber, digging into the pile of diced rat with an unseemly fervor. "I'm sure I fed you while we were at Myslynn's mansion."

"Perhaps he's tired of the flavor of werewolf," Kaelin suggested, squaring up to the last mini swarm.

"Werewolf?" Ulrich looked over his shoulder at her.

"Well what do you think the dwergs were feeding him on?" Kaelin crouched and spread her hands wide, "They own supplies? No fear, they had plenty of werewolf carcasses to dispose of and Peter was good for dumping the pieces Sinbar couldn't use." She tensed, ready to spring.

Jeremiah stepped in first, grinning in the arch of the chamber's entrance, finger pointing in a fine posse that should have been named something like 'smiting the sinners' if it was depicted in glass in a church window.

"Feed!" he commanded. The one eyed horror that was Nanny Tatters lurched round him, scaleless skin stretching and wrinkling over her form, vertical eyelids blinking over the blue washed black orb of her sole eye as it rolled and wobbled in the middle of her forehead. That glaring globe swiveled and focus on the last swarm of rats. Her jaws opened and the long, in drawn death rattle of her breath clattered.

The rats screamed and turned almost as one to flee but even as they did so their limbs shook and gave way beneath them, their fur turning white, their whiskers brittle, their eyes dull. They dropped in their tracks and as that gods awful noise continued their flesh pulled back from their teeth, their eyes shriveled and their skin turned to dust. Finally the dreadful rattling trailed to a stop as Nanny Tatters closed her mouth and blinked. She turned her head and blinked at them, her gaze steadier than it had been before.

"Come here my little pet," Jeremiah called and she turned pacing towards him, her chilling gaze raking over the rest of the group as she did so, her stare piercing even as she let Jeremiah stroke the top of her head. Kaelin rubbed her left hand as the wolf receded from her. She hadn't moved it quite quick enough as Nanny Tatters had started her attack and the tip of one of her fingers ached with a fierce numbness that made her shudder. Whatever Nanny Tatters was, she was not as fully under Jeremiah's control as he liked to believe. She shivered as behind Jeremiah the Ash Elves forked their fingers in the gesture to ward off evil and Estella blinked Valodrael's darkness from her eye. At least some of their merry band were fully aware of what Nanny Tatters was.

A nasty sounding crunch rang out behind her.

"Nasty, sneaky, lying vermin," Thorian grunted as he stamped on rat bodies, "Sniveling, cheating, backbiting scum!"

"My dear Thorian," Jeremiah smiled, "Whatever is the matter?"

"They're fibbers!" Thorian pouted, "They are big, nasty, fibbers. This isn't gold!" He waved his arms around the chamber. "Not one bit of this is gold! It's all nasty, yucky slimy stuff! They're big, fat fibbers!" He continued stamping on rat carcasses.

"Er, it might not be a good idea to do that Thorian," Ulrich called, from where he'd given up trying to turn Peter's head away from his feast of frittered rat, "The kervead's might not have been attracted by the smell of those octopods we dealt with yesterday but they maybe by the smell of rat squishy."

"Rat Squishy?" Thorian asked.

"It is like a fruit juice smoothie but meatier," Ulrich explained, "And you've rather covered your boots in it."

Thorian lifted a foot and looked at the sole.

"Oh," he admitted, "Yeah, I have rather. Sorry."

"No need to apologies to me," Ulrich grinned, "Just wipe your feet, the carpets are hell to clean." Ulrich managed to pull Peter's head around and lead him out of the cave. Thorian frowned, wondering if Ulrich was taking the mickey out of him. It wasn't as cruelly done as Jeremiah usually did it but it still seemed like Ulrich was making something of a joke out of him and the fact he didn't understand all those fancy words. He sniffed and looked at the floor. After a moment he bent and picked something up.

"Here."

Kaelin turned to see Thorian offering her a still fairly whole rat.

"Um what's that for?" she narrowed her eyes.

"If you want to put a rat in Ulrich's face," Thorian explained, "I tried to find a good one."

Kaelin looked at it for a few moments and then her face changed, as if she was trying not to smile. She swung her pack off her back and fished around inside it for a moment. Pulling out a small pouch, she held it open. With a grin Thorian dropped the rat inside and Kaelin pulled the draw string tight. Tying it to the bottom of her pack on the outside, she swung her pack back on and stepped out of the chamber with a lighter step. Thorian looked round again and pocked at one of the heaps of golden slime mold with the point of his sword. Something clanged underneath all the ooze.

Frowning Thorian fished it out and gave it a wipe with a piece of cloth someone had tucked into his belt. Those dwerg people really did try to think of everything when they made a guy's armor. Holding up what he had found he frowned. It looked like those really fancy plates of polished metal he'd seen some rich human women holding, what were they called? Mirrors, that was it, a mirror but this wasn't flat. It was bent towards its middle like a bowl and the look of him was turned upside down on its surface. Frowning more, Thorian pulled it close to the side of his face so he could look at the backside of it.

He started and then put the funny thing back beside his ear.

"He takes risks with his life and health that he should not," Sabal whispered to the other two Ash Elves.

"It was to aid the Lady Kaelin of the wolf," Quenril replied, also whispering, "He honors his women folk and that is not common in the males of humankind. It is well that our sister's chosen understands what is expected of him."

"That and our sister is hardly going to chose a male that does not have the courage to face his enemies on the battle field," Tasnar noted, "She is proud and will wish for a chosen that she can also be proud of. He will show well in front of others."

"Still," Sabal muttered, "He is reckless..."

Thorian took the magic mirror away from his ear. Well here was a pretty thing - a magic mirror that let you hear things that were far away. This was a pretty find but, and here he rubbed his chin, but he wasn't sure that he was ready to share this find with the others, not just yet. After a moment he wandered back into the main tunnel, the magic mirror tucked safely away in his pack.

"Good job, Ulrich," he grinned as he walked up beside Ulrich, offering the human a fist bump, "Keep up the good work."

"Thanks," Ulrich said carefully, eyes narrowed as he bumped knuckles with Thorian, "What are you up to?"

"Nothing," Thorian said quickly, a little too quickly, his expression akin to a toddler who had just been asked 'what have you got in your hand?'

"Now Thorian, I thought we were better friends than that," Ulrich noted with a frown, "You won't be keeping secrets from a friend, now would you?"

"It's depending on the secret," Thorian said, rubbing the back of his neck.

"The sort of secret were you are planning to play a mean trick on a friend," Ulrich prompted.

"Oh no, I am never planning to play a mean trick on my friend," Thorian beamed, "Play a mean trick on someone who plays mean tricks on me and uses funny words at me and says things to make me look dumb, yeah I'd love to play mean tricks on that one. I'd love to play mean tricks on that one all the time."

Ulrich frowned some more.

"Well if I've said something that you think was done to make you look dumb I apologize as it was not intentional and I will try to not do it again," he said carefully.

"Oh good," Thorian smiled, "I don't like it when I have to think that you are a meanie, I don't like that at all. It's not good times when you have to think you might have to give your friends a right good bashing for being meanies."

"So if you're not going to bash me for being a meanie," Ulrich asked again, "What are you up to?"

"Oh nothing," Thorian shrugged with a smile, "Nothing at all."

"Now Thorian," Ulrich folded his arms, balancing on Peter's hard shell, even as the centipede shifted under the change of weight, "It is not nice to keep secrets from your friends, it does rather make you out to be a meanie."

"Alright," Thorian grinned, "I'm not to tell you but you're being super duper reckless. That's what some people are saying, right? Some people are saying that you are being super duper reckless."

"What?" Ulrich blinked after a moment and looked round at the rest of the party. Jeremiah was grandly ignoring them all, concentrating on Nanny Tatters, while Quenril and the Ash Elves were totally pocker faced.

"Don't look at me," Kaelin shrugged, settling her pack more comfortably on to her back.

"Shall we move on?" Thorian beamed, stepping up to the tunnel mouth.

"Um, er, yes," Ulrich stuttered, totally thrown by the feeling that Thorian had one totally over him.

Lacking any better direction they carried on passed the opening to the chamber, heading down the tunnel they had been originally set in, this time Thorian snapping a light - standard stick to light the way, Gerald drooping with relief as they pushed on into the dark, his glow muted down to a dull shine. Kaelin glanced at him.

"You've pushed him too hard," she noted.

"I beg you pardon?" Jeremiah questioned.

"You little pet bug," Kaelin observed, "You're pushed him to hard, he's hardly got any light left."

Jeremiah frowned and lifted a hand up.

"Gerald," he commanded, "Here!" Gerald stepped forward, one foreleg waving in the air for a moment and then made contact with Jeremiah's hand. With a lurch, the giant moth made it over and settled on Jeremiah's hand come forearm. He buzzed his wings for a moment as Jeremiah lowered his arm and looked at his pet. Jeremiah frowned, stroking a finger over Gerald's fur. Instead of being reassured by the touch the moth froze, trembling with nerves. Jeremiah lifted a wing, scowling at what he saw underneath.

"He probably just needs some time to recharge," Estella noted as she wandered along, dragging her finger tips over the wall, seeming to relish the feel of the stone under her fingers. The red cardinal rode on her wrist, while the purple toad clung to her shoulder. The newest of her talismans trotted in the air above her head, keeping  pace with its mother. The rest of her talismans rode in her satchel, occasionally peeking out at the world around them but keeping a careful eye on Jeremiah.

"And of course you are the expert on my creation's needs," Jeremiah didn't quite sneer at her, not quite.

"I meant no disrespect sir," Estella looked at him coolly, "And of course it is your choice on how to treat him. I was merely making an observation about how much power you had him burn when you had him being our primary light source yesterday. It is so unusual to witness a revenant having such loyalty to their master."

"Is it indeed?" Jeremiah said sourly, glaring at her.

"Oh yes," Estella nodded, looking at where she was putting her feet, rather than at him, "I don't know if you noticed but even Sinbar's creations would not enter the fight unless directly ordered to. It appears the instinct for self preservation is the strongest instinct and the one that lasts the longest after death, even when the rest of the personality has been stripped away. It was always assumed that a Death Master's constructs would stand by and do nothing if their creator was in danger, unless they were directly ordered to intervene. And then your little bug there proves everyone wrong."

 Jeremiah frowned some more as they walked on, allowing Gerald's wing to fall back to his side.

"How did he prove everyone wrong?" he asked at last, obviously fighting to over come his distaste of asking for anything from Estella, even knowledge.

"As I said, revenants have been known to stand aside and do nothing unless directly order to by their creator, even when their creator was in danger," Estella noted, "Which just goes to show the blind instinct of self preservation can be really rather stupid. Any thinking creature would be able to realize that if their master dies then the magic binding them together is going to disintegrate and therefore to not protect their master is to not protect themselves in the long run. But then your little pet there actively harms himself to keep the light going long after you had directly ordered him to. He didn't try to dim or fade out, he just kept going, even though it has obviously hurt him to do so. Loyalty like that has never been seen before in a revenant."

Jeremiah frowned at her and frowned more as he looked down at Gerald, tugging at his beard in thought.

"Gerald," he said at last, "Back to your accustomed place." He lifted his arm and Gerald managed the short flight to the peak of his miter. Jeremiah strode on, a look of consideration on his face. After a while Kaelin dropped back a few paces so that she was walking shoulder to shoulder with Estella.

"Why did you do that?" she asked quietly, not trying to whisper, which would have carried further in the cool, damp air but not speaking loudly either.

"Because you drew attention to the fact that, at the moment, Hat, Gerald, which ever name he wants to call his creation by, is showing up flaws," Estella pointed out.

"And that was a problem why?" Kaelin asked.

"Really Kaelin?" Estella asked, "What did he do the last time he decided that some of his creations were flawed?"

"OK yeah," Kaelin nodded and then shuddered as she remembered the noise as the three puppeted Ash Elves had collapsed into piles of mush and corruption. The smell had also been unbelievable. "But you have to admit that they had begun to stink really, really bad." She shuddered as her stomach rolled over at the memory and she swallowed reflexively.

"I will admit that," Estella murmured, "But what of his copy? He did not smell bad nor did he fail to comply with an order and yet a small infringement spelled his death."

"Ah, I get you now," Kaelin nodded, "But why the concern for Hat... Gerald?"

"Because I wasn't lying when I said that Gerald is rare for a revenant," Estella admitted, "There is not many of his kind that would damage themselves for their master without direct order. Also, you should have noticed that unlike the unfortunate souls that our priestly friend was utilizing as his body guards, Gerald does not smell, is not leaking and does not appear to be rotting. I am not so foolish to barter with Jeremiah's god for such ability but the knowledge that such a thing has been done once means that I can hope that it can been done again by different means."

Kaelin frowned at that, not understanding what Estella was after, although she knew that the young woman had been spending a lot of time with Sinbar in the last two weeks.

"That and if Gerald was turned to dust we would lose our alternative light source to the sticks that you all seem to be carrying in your packs," Estella noted, "Yes we have the Ash Elves and Valodrael to help us but we could wind up down here for a lot longer than we plan and I don't think all of you can see in the dark the way I can when Valodrael's sharing control. That might not go well if we came up against some of the creatures that can be down here and you couldn't see."

"I could smell," Kaelin pointed out, a slight grin tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"Fair point," Estella conceded, "But can Ulrich and Thorian?" Kaelin thought about it.

"No," she admitted, "Probably not." She thought some more. "Yeah, probably sensible to keep him around for a while longer."

They walked on into the dark, the light stick slowly burning down and being replaced, each taking their turn to hold one aloft as time dragged on, even Jeremiah, who did actually appear to have listened, for a change, to someone outside of his own ego.

Thorian, Ulrich, Jeremiah, Kaelin, Thorian, Ulrich, Jeremiah, Kaelin. Over and over, or was it only once. Kaelin wrinkled her brow as she tried to think of it, to keep track but her mind drifted on the current of time, sliding into a strange place, the fatigue of the change sapping her energy, only the rhythm of walking keeping her on her feet.

She stumbled as someone caught hold of her. Her head snapped up, the change trying to rise through the weariness.

"It's okay," Estella said quietly, "I didn't think you'd want to walk into the back of him."

Kaelin looked round and realized that they had come to a T-junction and that if she'd kept walking mechanically, she would have either walked into Jeremiah or the blank wall ahead of them.

"Thanks," she yawned, trying to not swallow her own tongue with how wide her jaws opened.

"Hold still," Estella whispered and stepped round behind Kaelin to pull open her pack without Kaelin having to take it off. She rummaged inside for a few moments and then pulled something out.

"Try this," she said, stepping back to beside Kaelin and handing her a flask marked 'for exhaustion - drink me'. 

"Alright," Kaelin mumbled and tossed down the contents of the flask.

"Woah!" she gasped as a surge of energy buzzed through her, "Woah wee! Wow. That did the trick." She shook her head slightly and looked up as Thorian swung the light - standard stick to the left and then to the right.

"And which way do our esteemed leaders think we should take?" Jeremiah asked, a snide under tone in his voice.

"Right," Ulrich stated.

"Left!" Thorian declared. Ulrich stared at him for a moment and then Thorian grinned, "Ah, I'm just messing with you. Right it is." Still grinning he lead the way to the right.

"This day is becoming strange," Ulrich noted as he swung Peter's head that way. 

Strangely enough the right hand way started curving to the left. To begin with it was hardly noticeable, a slight drifting in the tunnel to that side that only slightly tugged at the attention but, gradually, the curve increased to the point that the King's Special and their allies started walking closer together to stay within sight of edge other. The tunnel curved and curved and curved some more.

"Does anyone else get the feeling that we are being turned round completely?" Kaelin complained.

"That is impressive," Tasnar noted, "Not many people of the surface world are so good at sensing the direction that they are heading in whilst within the Underworld."

"Ah, nothing special to me," Kaelin shrugged, "Most surface people are over attached to roads, take the roads away and they can hardly tell their afts from their elbows. Grandpa wouldn't let us go near roads, not even on a raid. We went over the fields, particularly if there was a herd of cows or two in the way. Guess all that mayhem was useful for something."

"It's no wonder Val liked you from the start," Estella grinned.

"Er what," Kaelin frowned, wondering exactly how Estella meant liked.

"Chaos, destruction, disorder, the Void Dragons were born to create it," Estella shrugged, "They were a fire, in love with destruction. Sounds like you have a piece of that fire in you too."

"Yeah? Well I never liked it," Kaelin folded her arms, "If I'd had the guts I would have run sooner but I needed someone else there to take the pack out so I wasn't hunted down immediately. Killing things was a way to stay live myself but it doesn't mean I enjoyed it."

"Hum," Estella considered it, "Still, which would you rather? Stealing from little people or, if  you had the chance would not prefer to lay your hands on some rich dud's jewelry box?"

Kaelin pursed her mouth, flexing her fingers while she tried to keep the guilty look off her face, the rings that she'd taken from the Wizard's Tower still hidden beneath her gloves. She also remembered the diamond mural that had lined the chamber of the Council of the Dwergs and the fact that her first instinct had been to wonder if she could get in there while everyone else was out.

"Alright," she admitted, "I would prefer the rich guys money box but only because there would be more stuff in there."

"But stealing from the rich is a defiance of the natural order of the world," Estella pointed out with glee, "Or did you seriously not notice how just about every story we are told as children tries to convince us that the only monsters are the people who fight against the rich?"

"That is a heretical lie," Jeremiah played devil's advocate, "It is the duty of parents to instruct their offspring in the proper behavior necessary for the functioning of society. Any who will not conform are the selfish monsters who destroy society."

"Oh really?" Estella asked, "And society isn't destroyed by the rich who horde all the resources and leave the farmers and creators of tools to starve?"

"That is a socialist lie," Jeremiah countered, "Good things come to the righteous while the wicked should submit to god's judgement."

"Oh I see," Estella's smile had an undertone that wasn't humorous, "It's the old song

'The rich man in his castle,

The poor man at his gate,

He gave them both their places,

And ordered their estate.' 

 Well I'm sorry, priestly man but I have yet to see a rich person who was truly righteous and who actually cared about the poor who built the foundations of their wealth. The rich may starve last but one day they will do."

"And the Void Dragons cared about the poor when they unleashed chaos?" Jeremiah sneered.

"No but they made the rich care about them," Estella smiled back, the fangs of something, someone else beginning to bleed through, "If the rich didn't take precautions it was their mansions that were hit first. They either served the community that served them or, well the Void Dragons played rough when they saw their chance and you can hardly talk, seeing as you worship the Dragon of Destruction."

 Jeremiah frowned at her words.

"You have been a little too free with the name of your god," Estella observed, "Or did you think that nobody else knew of his name? Not all of us lesser races are so forgetful. We remember, we remember."

Jeremiah watched her as Estella stepped out ahead and his look was calculating, a weighing up of risks and opportunities. Estella stepped on, unaware of his scrutiny, except...

She turned quickly and locked eyes with him, only her eyes where light less pits, holes cut through reality to the place on the other side, the Void where no stars shone and life went to die. She held his gaze, something else looking back at him as well, its hunger thrumming through their linked gaze. Jeremiah reached for his god's presence and found only indifference. He shivered as that knowledge poured through him. His god was only vaguely interested in this conflict as it held no gain for him. Jeremiah broke his gaze away, sulking but Estella didn't laugh as she turned away as well but Quenril gave her a quiet nod of approval and Sinbar was trying to disguise the fact that he was watching her with interest.

The tunnel curved on and on, ever into the darkness, ever into the the night underground, the night of damp stone and dripping water and the mustiness of ages.

Kaelin's ear twitched. There was another sound traveling on the humid air.

"Can anyone else hear that?" she asked.

"Hear what, good Kaelin?" Ulrich straightened up, "Are you going to allow us to hear your dulcet serenade us?"

"Seriously?" Kaelin rolled her eyes, "When are you going to get it into your head that I am not a lady?"

"Perhaps it is a thing of the rich to be blind to that which they do not want to see?" suggested Jeremiah, happy to get a dig in on the lines of their earlier discussion. 

"Speak for yourself," Kaelin muttered, eyeing up Nanny Tatter's where she stumped along, occasionally waggling the stump of a tail she now possessed. She reminded Kaelin of a large, scaly version of a breed of cat she'd seen, who all had short stumpy tails. She also worried Kaelin, there was something about the damn thing, besides she was the undead servant of a man she did not trust further than she could throw him, that made both the human and the wolf nervous.

Thorian suddenly tilted his head, listening to something up ahead of them.

"Alright," he called, "Who is it going to the bath room? Seriously? Would you close the door? Ew!"

"Orcs," Kaelin rolled her eyes again, "They never change."

"Just trying to lighten the mood," Thorian grinned, "All this rock above our heads seems to be getting us all down, real down."

 Ulrich covered his face and groaned.

"That, my dear Thorian, is what we humans call a pun, a play on words, and I have to admit that it was a pretty good one," he said.

"Ah know," Thorian beamed, "Told you, Ah was too smart to stay at home." He turned and lead the way on.

The tunnel broadened and then one wall fell away to reveal a bubbling, bouncing stream that surged beside the path.

"Who wants a wash?" Thorian cheered.

"Wait!" Kaelin snapped.

"What?" Thorian turned with a look of puzzlement. Kaelin stepped carefully closer to the edge of the stream, sniffing and sniffing. All she could smell was water, cool and clean, a little heavy on the minerals but nothing that said danger. Finding a small stone she flicked it in, listening to the medium pitched plop as it vanished into the water.

"It does seem to be just water," she admitted, "And not too deep." Thorian had been studying the stream as well, only with his eyes and what he noticed was the two large shapes under the surface. They were of a slightly paler color than the rest of the stream bed and shaped like the oval plates he's seen some people use, only a lot larger, more like the size of boats. Puzzled, he slipped his new toy out of his bag and had a listen.

He heard water, lots of water! What was just a little stream sounded like a raging flood, a cataract, a torrent,  a waterfall thundering over the edge, flinging itself into the gorge. He flinched and slipped the magic mirror back into his pack. Standing up again, Thorian looked and the stream and pursued his mouth, tugging his lip between his tusks. He made a decision, leaving his pack on the ground and drawing his sword.

"Er, Thorian?" Ulrich asked, "What are you doing?"

"There's something in there," Thorian noted, doing a couple of stretches, "Something big. I'm going to touch it."

"Um wouldn't that be a bad..." Ulrich started.

"Anchor Ball!" Thorian yelled as he leapt.

"Idea," Ulrich finished wryly as the geezer fountained up. Thorian surfaced a second later, up to his waist in the flow. Something else surfaced as well, massive shell made claws clicking and clacking as they snipped at the orc crossbreed.

"Wah!" Thorian yelled and smacked the giant crab with a mighty downward blow of his sword. It fell back in a sheet of spray, claws flung up and back as its shell cracked in two. Then it seemed that it rose again, whole and undamaged.

"Oh good gods," Ulrich exclaimed, "There's two of them!"

"Wah!" Thorian yelled again and slashed at it repeatedly. It reared back and then scuttled from side to side, claws slashing back and forth as they snapped and sheered through the air. It was most decidedly ticked off. A claw clashed shut a bare inch from Thorian's nose.

"Oy!" Thorian yelled, "That's enough of that!" His sword smacked off the crab's great claw but it moved with the force of the blow, splashing up a mighty sheet of water but by the way the crab's mouth parts clicked and palpated the only real effect it had caused was now the crab was even more ticked off than it already was.

A howl shuddered through the air and Kaelin leapt, the change rippling through her, the fangs of the wolf pushing through her gums as she landed with a smack on the crabs shell. It span and snapped, claws trying to reach over its back but unable to do so because of their hinging, while Kaelin span and scrabbled over its shell, her claws scrapping and gouging over the chitin, the noise like nails down a black board.

Jeremiah drew himself up and began chanting a prayer to his god but he stumbled over the words, his tongue suddenly thick in his mouth. A terrible itching feeling came over him as if thousand of hairy things were crawling over him, spreading out from the scar on his arm from where Kaelin had bitten him. He opened his mouth to yell at her.

"Woof!Woof! Grrrrrrrr!" burst round the cavern.

Estella glance at him and very nearly burst out laughing. Jeremiah had always been some what hairy but now it was ridiculous, the fuzz crawling over his face, colonizing every spare space of skin and his voice...

"Bork! Bork! Grrrrrrrrrrr grrrrrrrrrrrrr gruff grrrrrrrrrrrr!" Jeremiah exclaimed and then by sheer will power managed to drag his mind back into human speech and started praying to his god, pointing out that allowing his servant to be so humiliated reflect poorly on himself and that perhaps, if he wanted to be taken seriously as a god, then he, just maybe, he should see about reversing whatever the heck had happened to his servant. After a moment his god responded and the terrible itching began to recede. Jeremiah prayed very hard to thank his god for his favors as the last of the excess hair receded.

Estella was still trying to not giggle as she hefted one of her throwing axes and tossed it. She admitted later that she probably shouldn't have tried that, she probably should have fought her giggles back under control before she tried a live firing exercise. As it was the first axe splashed down wide of her target.

"Bother!" Estella spat, still unable to shake the training to mediate her language, even though she had shaken the conditioning that told her that women were not righteous if they picked up a weapon. She hefted her second axe and... It slipped in her grasp. On pure instinct she grabbed at it and...

"Hell's fectating balls!" she roared, revealing that she could actually swear, holding her right wrist in her left hand, crimson splashing from the long slice in the palm of her hand, "Goat licking swine herds of Catamite!"

"Good one!" Thorian grinned as he swung again at the crab, splashing water just about every where. The crab reared and swung at Thorian, deciding to target him instead of working out how to scrape the irritating thing off its shell. Turned out, that was a mistake of the lethal variety as Kaelin, having failed to scratch it open with her claws, pulled her sword open and took aim at the ridge of shell between its eye stalks. She stood up, riding the rocking, rolling shell. Narrowing her eyes she adjusted her aim to more the center of the shell and then rammed it down with all her strength. The crack was as loud as a magic blast. With a final spray of water, the crab collapsed back into the stream, Kaelin getting utterly soaked in the process.

"Whoopee!" Thorian cried, "Who's up for crab sticks for dinner?"

Ulrich looked on as he nibbled a sweet biscuit from the ever full tin.

"You know," he said with a completely straight face, "You are all being really rather reckless."

"You're only upset because you missed all the fun," Thorian grinned as he put his sword back in its scabbard and reached under the water to seize a leg of both the crabs. Turning, he began dragging the rattling, scraping carcasses up and out of the stream. Kaelin stepped down into the water off the back of the crab she killed and retrieved the throwing axe that Estella had misplaced.

"Thank you for fetching that," Estella said, her face tight with pain.

"How bad is it?" Kaelin asked and took hold of Estella's hand, making the fingers bend open. Estella made a small noise and breathed hard through her nose.

"You've been lucky," Kaelin noted, looking at the flap of skin that had been lifted from Estella's palm and now stood raised with the motion, "It isn't deep, no risk to the tendons."

"Skin flap's going to have to come off," Estella muttered between her teeth, "It won't heal like that, it will just catch on everything my hand goes near as it dries out and withers. It won't start healing properly until that skin flap is off. Would you mind giving me a hand?"

"Hey Kaelin, give us a hand?" Thorian called at almost exactly the same instant.

"In a minute," Kaelin called as she started digging in her pack, "More pressing stuff over here." Beside her Estella clenched her hand again, trying to slow the bleeding.

"This is going to hurt," Kaelin warned as she drip 'for healing' potion over the blade of her knife, the fluid smoking on contact with the metal.

"I've been in pain before," Estella observed grimly, "I know what to expect."

"Right," Kaelin nodded and took hold of one end of the skin flap as Estella uncurled her fingers again. It had to be slow work to avoid doing more damage but Estella was surprising stoic about it, unflinching as the work was done.

"Are you sure your father only beat you that once?" Kaelin asked as she dripped 'for healing' potion on the injury and watched it smoke.

"I never said my father only chastised me just once," Estella hissed between her teeth, "But trust me this is not the worst pain I've ever faced. The only good thing about the worst pain was I knew that if I put the effort in it would be over and done."

Kaelin frowned at her a moment and then went back to carefully wrapped the bandage round her hand.

"There you go," she nodded as she tied of the end, "Just take it easy, okay?"

"Yeah no fear," Estella smiled, "I've no intent to lose my fingers so thank you. A lot. I appreciate it. Hey, I'm okay." She turned to comfort the chirruping red cardinal talisman who was hovering nervously at her shoulder. Her other talismans gathered frantically round her and she was busy for a while, trying to calm them down.

Kaelin turned and headed over to where Thorian had hauled together a pile of drift wood and was trying to get a fire going.

"Any luck?" Kaelin asked, starting to sort through the heap and breaking some of it up into smaller pieces.

"Ah think I'm getting there," Thorian stuck his tongue out between his teeth in concentration, "All of it seems to be damp."

"It comes floating down the water tunnels," Sabal informed them, "We never thought it was useful for much."

"It burns good," Thorian grunted, "If you can get it going. If nothing else you don't need that stovey thing to burn it in so you don't have to sit around waiting for it to cool down." He rubbed the stick between his palms even harder and at last a little flame started up from the flat of wood he was resting it on.

"Brilliant Thorian," Ulrich stepped up, "Now if we put this bit of wood here." He matched action to words and the little flame sputtered and went out. Thorian turned his head and looked at Ulrich, just looked, a flat unfriendly stare.

"I... um..." Ulrich stuttered, "I'm going to check on Marmaduke." He scuttled off. Thorian watched him go and then went back to work with his little stick, rubbing it frantically between his palm. This time the flame that sprung to life was a little larger and a little warmer. Thorian crouched, carefully feeding the fire and stacking lengths of wood around it so that the heat would drive the damp out of it. As the fire grew the colors of fire light flickered over the walls of the cave, the smoke rolling away over the ceiling, the babbling of the steam a melodious counter point to the fire's bright crackle and spit. Eventually Thorian stood up and yanked a leg or two off of one of the crabs, twisting them free of their joints. Laying them over the outer edge of the fire he sat back to wait for them to cook, the others gathering close to the flames, damp clothes steaming as they watched the dancing the flames.

"This is comforting," Quenril admitted, as the smell of cooking crab began to waft through the cave as juice began to hiss and bubble at the ends of the legs.

"Sometimes surface things have a benefit," Ulrich said sheepishly, stepping back into the fire light. He rubbed the back of his neck.

"Are you still mad at me?" he asked, shuffling his feet.

"Nah," Thorian batted it aside, "We've all done stupid squit on this trip, why would you be any different? I got it going again so no mess, no fowl."

Ulrich let out a breath.

"Thank you friend and as a make up present," he held up the eternally full kettle, "Any one for a hot drink?"

Crab legs and tea for lunch went down a treat, warming to the stomach and the soul. Kaelin found herself dozing off  in the warmth for a while, lulled by the sound of the fire and the quiet chatter around her as the warmth seeped through her damp clothes and warmed her outsides as much as the food and drink warmed her insides. It was comforting to know that there were people around her who would watch out while she was asleep. As she sank into the comforting warm she admitted that Estella was right, it had taken her two weeks to admit it but Estella was right. She understood the loneliness of the sea birds cry because she was the same, she wanted friends but life had always pushed them away but maybe, just maybe, she'd be allowed to keep these ones.

She opened her eyes to the field of green under the purple sky of dawn. She sat up in surprise and looked around. Down in the valley, figures moved, early morning tasks to be down, the rhythms of live a comfort and a structure as the dragons took to the sky, glowing with star light as they spiraled into the sky.

Something flickered at the edge of her vision as she turned her head to look. A butterfly floated over the wildflowers as they slowly opened to the first light of day, its wing beats impossibly slow and yet it still flew. Without thought Kaelin held her hand up to it and it settled on her fingers, twitching its wings slowly open and closed. She watched it as it stepped slowly on to her palm. It would have been so easy to close her fingers and crush it out of existence but something held her palm open. The butterfly took wing again and drifted down the valley. Following it with her eyes, Kaelin saw the beach at the valley mouth. On the sand a old blue boat lay canted over near where the river spread into a shallow fan, its paint dull, dusty and peeling with age. Someone was crouched on the hull, scrapping away at the wood. Kaelin was too far to see their face but she could see their dun shorts and white shirt, loose and flapping with the breeze off the ocean, an ocean as blue as the sea in a dream. She saw the moment when they looked up from their work and saw someone walking across the wide sand towards them, someone in black trousers and a shirt that didn't flap. The one on the boat jumped down to the beach and went towards the other as what ever that other was carrying was dumped on the ground to be forgotten, old junk that did not matter any more in this meeting on the sand as the ocean that had no memory rolled on for ever and the butterfly floated above the waves on wings that could not be touched by stone walls and bars of iron.

Kaelin opened her eyes again to the gloom of the dying fire and laid there blinking for a few moment as the others readied their packs but some how that was fine, she didn't mind, she could still feel the beat of the butterfly's wings against her palm.

"Are you okay?" Estella asked quietly.

"I was dreaming," Kaelin realized that her face was damp, "I was dreaming of the ocean. I was dreaming that it was as blue as I hope. I was dreaming that I hope." She smiled and stood up, hefting her pack. "I was dreaming that I hope."

She looked around, realizing that though the cave was dark and wet and chill it was still beautiful, quite, quite beautiful.

"What are we doing with that?" she asked, nodding her head at the body of the crab that still lay on the ground.

"Gonna leave it for the scavengers," Thorian admitted, "They need to eat the same as we do and if they is eating that, then they is not eating us."

"Good idea," Kaelin nodded after a moments thought.

"Tell you what," Ulrich suggested as he sat down on Peter's back, "I'll do a little scouting ahead, wouldn't hurt to see what's down the tunnel. Come on chaps." He tapped Peter's carapace and the centipede rippled into life, the Ash Elves stepping out beside him.

"Um Ulrich?" Kaelin called the question but they were already heading into the darkness.

"Let him go," Jeremiah advised with a smile, "If our esteemed noble wishes to risk his life for us then who are we lowly mortals to deny him that?"

"It's reckless," Thorian said, enjoying the new word he'd learnt, "It is reckless."

"Yes," Jeremiah agreed, "But if he is being reckless then we don't have to take the risks. After all, the Lady Zilvra will skin her brothers long before she turns on us if Ulrich gets himself permanently broken. Wins all round, wouldn't you agree?"

There others looked at him and shook their heads as they went back to finishing loading up their packs. Kaelin turned and walked to the edge of the stream, looking down into the depths. Estella followed her, her talismans flitting through the air around her.

"What were you going to say to Sir Ulrich," she quietly asked.

"To wait," Kaelin said wryly, "You see, before we came down here we met Lady Zilvra's little brother."

"Yes," Estella interrupted, "I remember Sir Ulrich mentioning him back at Snake Clan hold. Lady Zilrva's reaction was... odd."

"I think it was a mixture of surprise, relief and possibly despair when she realized that if they had listened to him all those years ago then the Clan might still be alive," Kaelin noted, "But what I what I was going to say now was that Governor Risgath told us that if we lost our way down here then we should hope for rain on the surface. If the tunnels were dry then it was a dead end but if water was following down the tunnels..."

"It's a way out!" Estella exclaimed, "So if we follow the stream!"

"We find a way out," Kaelin nodded, "No idea where we'll be on the surface but it will at least be a start to get back home and hopefully we'll be in time to save something up there."

"He'll be back in a minute I'm sure," Estella shrugged, "If nothing else I don't think separating down here is a sensible idea. Then we just have to convince them all that getting wet feet is the best way to get out of here quickly."

"Which one do you think will be the most difficult?" Kaelin asked, "Do you want to bet on it?"

"What could I give you but a talisman of your own?" Estella asked, "Would you like one?"

Ulrich and the Ash Elves traveled up the tunnel but were barely out of sight of their camp ground when the tunnel opened out again into a wider space.

"Oh Lord Harry," Ulrich muttered, "If I have to tell the guys we have come all this to find a dead end, they are not going to be happy."

He gazed round the rough stone walls and shuddered. Someone had definitely just marched over his grave. He turned Peter.

"Come on, let's go back and tell the..."

The face was half an inch from his. Wide, wild, glaring eyes ringed in shadows, the mouth stretched wide in a silent scream, the proportions for the whole thing were just off.

Ulrich reared back with a scream matched only by the hideous sound that finally broke free of the ghosts immaterial lungs. Ulrich reeled, his heart hammering faster than a drop hammer but with the same amount of force, his skin trying to crawl away from the thing in front of him. A damp stain spread on Peter's carapace.

Sabal and the two brother's screeched, high, thin, unpracticed shrieks and bolted back down the tunnel, their voices whooping and squeaking, sheer unaccustomed panic ruling their brains. Peter on the other hand, Peter went ballistic!

 The ghost actually flinched as Peter lunged and then the giant centipede's jaws sheered shut, his mandibles clashing together with the force. The ghosts form was shredded, wisps of it hanging in the air, their blue glow dimming as they drifted. The ghost writhed in the air, trying to pull itself back together. Peter bit it again and again and again, shrieking his whistling war cry, multiple legs waving and stabbing in the air.

The specter wailed as it disintegrated, coming apart into strands and snippets, its light dissolving until there was nothing left. Peter, however, was not mollified.

Kaelin and Estella looked round from their discussion of what talisman Kaelin would want. Someone was yelling and crashing around in the tunnel that Ulrich had gone down.

"Are they having a party without us?" Thorian asked.

"Erm what? Who?" Jeremiah looked round from where he'd been reading one of his books, then Quenril and the other Ash Elves stumbled into the camp sight, hair a mess, eyes wide, faces a strange shade of blueish grey.

"Looks like he is," Kaelin broke into a run, Estella beside her and Thorian not far behind. Quenril reached out, opened his mouth to say something and then looked round. His brother and cousin fell in on the same fact as him a moment later.

"She'll kill us!" Tasnar gasped.

"Oh really people, do we have to hurry?" Jeremiah called as the three Ash Elves climbed back to their feet and dashed back into the tunnel, "There are more important..." He trailed off, realizing that people weren't listening to him again. With a sigh he turned and told the vigor to follow him, leaving behind the remains of their camp site.

Kaelin and the others burst into the cave to see Ulrich hanging on as Peter charged round and round in a circle, clashing and snapping his mandibles, a furious light in his eyes, Marmaduke bonging and clonging like a kettle as he tried to jog round after Ulrich, legs and arms waving a little out of kilter as he tried to keep up.

The three Ash Elves crept in, their ears drooping and feet dragging in the dust.

"Oh great lord, chosen of Lady Zilvra," Quenril began, not looking up, ringing his hands, "I beg your forgiveness. It was not our intent to betray you. We truly thought that you were with us when we run. We have been cowards and..."

"Oh I say chaps," Ulrich managed to smile even as he tried to wrestle Peter back under control, "It was eminently sensible of you to secure the lines of retreat. I would have thought of it myself I'm sure, if I wasn't having just the tiniest moment of bother with Peter here." The centipede in question reared and shook himself, whistling like a kettle about to blow its lid. Marmaduke managed to clang up to Ulrich's shoulder but then Peter took off again.

"You are not angry with us?" Quenril's eyes were wide as he looked up in shock, "Great Lord?"

"Angry? Why would I be angry with you making sure that we could retreat from something that may not have been killable?" Ulrich wrenched Peter's head around and finally brought him to a stand still. "That is enough of that!" Peter trembled and hissed with ire. Ulrich straightened up and rubbed his hair back from his forehead. "As I was saying good chaps, you secured the lines of retreat and supply, a duty that is as essential as those that fight on the front line. I have absolutely no reason to be angry with you." Ulrich smiled at them.

"You really are not angry with us?" Sabal was staring at Ulrich as if seeing him for the first time.

"As I said, why should I be?" Ulrich kept smiling, hot, sweaty and out of breath but still good humored, "If nothing else that little ghosty gave me quite the turn as well." 

"He really does mean what he says," Tasnar seemed stunned that Ulrich hadn't demanded they pay a price for their cowardice, like loosing a limb or something.

 "Of course, chaps," Ulrich stroked a hand over Peter's chitin, "Lying doesn't do much for team work you know." Peter whistled again, mandibles snapping with ire, still looking for something that he could bite.

"That's enough of that," Thorian strode forward. There was much debate later on as to what Thorian's intention had been, whether he had meant to slap Peter so the centipede would challenge him to a wrestling match so Thorian could help Ulrich assert dominance or whether he meant to intimidate Peter into being at least still. Either way, it failed spectacularly as the blow connected with Peter's rump instead.

Peter reared, shrilling his displeasure and took off like a thorough breed on the race course.

"Whoa!" Ulrich yelled, clinging on for all he was worth. He'd done this once before, surely he could do it again, he could...

Ulrich's grip slipped as Peter charged up the wall and span around on the ceiling and he crashed down on the floor, gasping as he rolled out of the way of Marmaduke's clumsy steps.

"Great Lord," Quenril and the other two Ash Elves rushed to his side, "Are you hurt?"

"No," Ulrich grunted where he lay, "Just a little winded."

"Oh goodie," Jeremiah clapped his hands from where he was standing at the entrance to the tunnels, "Clowns!"

Thorian crouched and then, as Peter went whipping passed, he launched himself at the charging centipede. He missed and crashed into the wall beside Kaelin and Estella.

"Oh," he said, his voice muffled where his face was mashed up against the wall, "Ow." After a moment he peeled himself off the wall.

"I just couldn't handle the length," he muttered. Estella coughed and muttered something.

"What was that?" Kaelin asked.

"Oh nothing," Estella said, "Absolutely nothing." She looked away with a blush crawling up her cheek. She closed her eyes as a husky throat rumble echoed in the back of her mind. She could almost imagine the look in his eyes, that interested smirk and for some reason it wasn't helping with the fluctuations in her core temperature.

Peter's rattling settled down on the ceiling and Ulrich lifted his head... to stare into the blue glow of a set of transparent eyes that glared at him with a serious level of irritation, almost as if Ulrich had deliberately fallen on his grave just to wake him up.

"Oh no, not again," Ulrich moaned. The ghost lurched head and shoulders out of the ground, scowling down at the prostrate Ulrich, a soul searing scream building just out of sight but already felt.

"Astral All Father protect us!" Estella yelped, backing into the wall of the cave in a single step. Kaelin's reaction was even more spectacular. She leaped about four feet in the air with a yowl and when she landed she was doing a passable impression of an enraged lavatory brush that had just suffered  a massive electric shock. Her language would have also put a sailor to shame and rivaled some of Thorian's more interesting curses.

Quenril, Tasnar and Sabal reared back, weapons leaping to their hands but then the hesitated, realizing that Ulrich was too close to the apparition to swing without risk to their Matron's chosen favorite.

Jeremiah looked over at the ghost and then turned away, affecting an aspect of total boredom.

"Seriously," he mused, "Are we not going to but the effort in today to make some decent progress?"

"There seems to be someone stuck in the floor," Thorian sniffed, "Don't know what they are doing down there. Ah wouldn't have thought it was comfortable."

 "Um a good... day... night... time," Ulrich mentally flicked through the options, trying to land on the one that might just work in this situation, "I do apologize for any disturbance we may have caused but we are trying to get out of here without causing too much disruption. I don't suppose you could give us any pointers as to the way out of here?"

The ghost pressed its lips together, scowling at Ulrich but the threatened scream of the dead and the damned dissipated without trying to stop their hearts in their tracks. It specter billowed up from the floor, hanging in the air and Ulrich retreated on his hands and knees with as much dignity as he could muster until he judged that he was most likely off of its grave. He stood up and dusted himself down. The ghost watched him with narrowed eyes.

Thorian watched the ghost, nodding slowly and pocking his lower lip out. "Yep, that's not a bad trick." Behind him Kaelin fizzed and spat like a cat backed into a corner.

"As I saying," Ulrich bowed to the phantom, "We are group of travelers trying to reach the surface world again, the world without a roof, the world of the sun but unfortunately we have wound up straying into an area that has no similarity to the maps we were given and we have unfortunately become very turned around and disoriented. I don't suppose you have any idea which way we should go to reach the surface the quickest?"

The ghost really seemed to be considering it, looking around at the group and apparently puzzled by Kaelin's attempts to impersonate a woolly bear caterpillar with a bad hair day. It's eyes fell on the three Ash Elves and its expression darkened. The Ash Elves fell back a pace as it turned towards them, billowing higher, the shriek of the damned and distraught building, ready to exploded.

"If you would please leave our servants out of this, it would be appreciated," Ulrich stepped in front of them, arms held wide. The ghost ballooned lower, staring in wonder at Ulrich, the tattered trails of its rags bellying in and out.

"I'm afraid you are about two hundred years out of date, old chum," Ulrich's expression was sympathetic as he guessed the ghost's age from its clothes, "The Ash Elves have been broken. They believed they were the masters of the world until they came across an enemy they couldn't deal with. 'Cause they had no allies they broke and now they had to serve others where they once ruled. So if you want vengeance on them, well, can you think of one better than them having to bend their knees to the very races they once considered to be little better than animals?"

The ghost was unnervingly still for a while and than it beamed, light rippling through its form.

"So glad we could agree on something," Ulrich inclined his head, "Now, so you can go back to sleep enjoying that image, could you point us in the right direction to make it back to the surface?"

The ghost thought about it and then pointed across the cave. Ulrich turned and saw the stream bubbling along one side of the stone chamber.

"Risgath did say that if you followed running water up stream you would eventually come to the surface," Estella noted and swallowed as the ghost glanced at her. Kaelin's hair was standing up so straight that it ran the risk of jumping off of her body and running away on its own.

"Thank you from the bottom of our souls," Ulrich bowed to the specter, "Come on people, let's stop disturbing them." He turned away and walked to the edge of the chamber. "Come on Peter, it's time for us to go."

The centipede coiled up in a tighter circle and whistled quietly back at him. It was not an obedient whistle.

"Now come on Peter," Ulrich canter his head at his mount, "We haven't got all day, we need to go."

A spiteful little hiss came back.

"Now Peter, you know that is a bad word," Ulrich put his fists on his hips, "The ghost is friendly, there is no need to continue this display of snit." The ghost in question seemed to have become bored with the whole affair now that he had concluded his side of the interaction and was sinking back into the floor, a sleepy expression crossing his face.

Peter curled up even tighter and whistled a whole series of notes and clicks, tapping his feet in a complex rhythm across the ceiling.

"Oh," Ulrich stepped back and rubbed his chin, "Oh I see, that does put a different light on the matter, doesn't it?"

Peter piped something short and sharp, banging several dozen feet against the ceiling.

"Ah," Ulrich observed, "Yes. You do rather have a point. It was really disrespectful, especially after all the work you have put in for us and the fact you helped keep the kervead's at bay back at the citadel without me even asking. You really have put up with a lot in the last weeks, haven't you?"

Peter hissed something that sounded like a snap of temper.

"I'll have a word," Ulrich promised and turned back to the rest of the King's Special, careful to walk around the edge of the cave to avoid stepping on any other graves that might be hidden below the surface. As he did so Kaelin finally managed to claim down and started rubbing her hair flat again.

"Here, let me help," Estella whispered quietly and produced the small hair brush from a pocket. Stepping up behind Kaelin, she started brushing Kaelin's bushy mane on the top of her head, gradually bringing it back under control even if she couldn't fully tame it.

"I say Thorian old chap," he said, "You've really rather ticked Peter off with that whole rump slapping business. I don't suppose you could give Peter a heart felt apology to smooth things over?"

"The only thing I did was try and stop him chewing yah leg off the first chance he got," Thorian protested, "I thought that you would be grateful for that."

"As much as I appreciate the thought," Ulrich noted, "I had already brought him to a stand still and most animals don't appreciate heavy handiness. Gentleness and firmness is much more successful than blows."

"Well I didn't know that," Thorian folded his arms, "You want to try gentle with a woolly horned yak? I'd like to see you try, fancy pants man, after you've gone off the cliff."

"Alright," Ulrich admitted, "I don't know how you have to handle the wildlife of the mountains but would you please trust me to ask you if I need your help with Peter in future?"

Thorian considered it.

"Alright," he said slowly, "I promise."

"In that case," Ulrich pressed his hands together and bowed, "I ask you to say sorry to Peter for whacking his butt like that."

Thorian narrowed his eyes at Ulrich as he realized that he had been rather neatly herded into giving that promise but then he huffed and relented.

"Oh alright," he rolled his eyes.

"Thank you," Ulrich tapped his pressed fingers against his forehead and then straightened. Trying back to the cave he took a step towards Peter, looking up at his mount as he clung upon the ceiling.

"Peter, Peter my old chum," Ulrich called, "If you come down Thorian will say he's sorry."

Peter muttered and mumbled something in a series of clicks and whistles.

"I don't think he thinks much of your apology," Ulrich said regretfully to Thorian.

"Oh well, that's an embuggerance," Thorian scratched his scalp, his horny nails scraping over the tough skin.

"Wait here one," he held up a finger as a big think struck him.

"Wait one what?" Kaelin asked as Thorian went charging back down the tunnel towards their camp site.

"Oh I do say," Jeremiah blustered as he stumbled due to Thorian shoving passed, "Do you think you could perhaps watch where you are going?"

"Wonder what he was in such a hurry for?" Estella observed as she patted the last of Kaelin's hair into place and pocketed the little hair brush. There was a startling sounding crack and then a long scrapping that gradually became louder. Thorian burst back into the cave dragging a couple of the giant crab's legs.

"Here, Pete," he beamed as he held up the crab legs, "I is sorry I gave you a pat on the rump. Can I give you these to make for it?"

Peter's antennae twitched and then twitched some more. After a moment he raised his head from his coils which meant he lowered it towards the King's Special and their allies. His antennae twitched some more. He uncoiled some, trundling across the ceiling and then hanging his front half down towards the crab legs, antennae beginning to wave through the air. Thorian grinned and held one of the legs up higher. Peter's mandibles snapped shut on it and Thorian let go double quick time as Peter fed the leg in to his maw, pieces of shell falling like snow as he crunched and cracked his way through the offering. As the last of the leg disappeared Thorian started walking backwards towards the wall, waving the second crab leg like a lure.

"Come on Peter, come on," Thorian called, "There's a good little bug." Peter tapped forward, following the point of the crab leg, following it down the wall until he was back on the floor. The blizzard of shell fragments ensued as he munched down the leg. After the last length of crab leg disappeared into Peter's mandibles he waved his antennae at Thorian and whistled something that sounded a lot more friendly.

"Awesome!" Thorian beamed and then gave Peter a hug. If the centipede had the ability to change color he would have undoubtedly turned a deep shade of red and possible swollen at the head end. As it is he whistled like a compressed kettle and waved his legs, is many, many legs frantically.

"Um," Ulrich stepped forward, "As much as I'm sure that Peter appreciates the gesture, do bare in mind he doesn't have any ribs!"

"Oh," Thorian exclaimed and stepped back, "Sorry buddy." Peter wavered from side to side, whistling and shivering.

"Well I do hope we have all made up," Ulrich patted him as Peter's head end sank to the floor. He stroked Peter's shell for a few more minutes and then tried sliding on to his back. Peter let him do so.

"Alright people," Ulrich call, "Let's get this show on the road." He swung Peter's head round and headed to the edge of the stream. Out of sheer habit he looked to the right... and slumped on Peter's back as Marmaduke marched up beside him.

"You have to be kidding me," he said quietly, "You just have to be kidding me."

"What is the matter Sir Ulrich?" Quenril asked as he stepped up beside his sister's favorite.

"There is the glow of a fire," Ulrich pointed down stream to another cave opening, "Nearly out but just visible. Tell me, who do we know who has been lighting fires down here, hum."

"Er we did," Quenril pointed out.

"Exactly," Ulrich said with the brittle brightness of someone forcing themselves to not scream, "We light a fire. Therefore that is our fire. That is our camp, which means if we had just followed the water up stream all of this would not have been necessary. Lady Estella what was that utter wonderful curse word you used earlier?"

"Em, hell's fectating balls?" Estella looked embarrassed to mention it as she stroked on of her talismans, settling them after their fright with the ghost.

"Yes," Ulrich agreed, "Precisely. Hell's fectating balls." Ulrich drew a deep breath and let it go slowly. "Oh well, let us get on with it." He nudged Peter but Peter dithered at the edge of the stream. "Oh of course, I am sorry, my head really does seem to be on backwards today. Marmaduke, forward and center, I need a ride on your shoulder."

Marmaduke creaked and stepped forward, ceasing Ulrich round the waist and placing him up on his shoulder.

"All right team into the breach," Ulrich called.

"Easy to say for the man who is going to have dry feet," Jeremiah muttered. For once and most privately, Kaelin actually agreed with him. The water was utterly icy cold. Kaelin's breath hissed between her teeth as she put her second foot into it, wincing as it found a way into her new shoes. Behind her Estella gasped and Jeremiah muttered something that was definitely not a prayer.

"Oh woah!" Thorian alone sounded like he was enjoying the sensation, "I haven't felt something this cold since I was bathing in the pond back home. At least this time we won't have to listen to the goats trying to spit after we're done."

"Thank you friend Thorian for that wonderful image," Jeremiah rolled his eyes.

"Come on chaps, let's not dawdle," Ulrich called as he lead the way up stream, Peter scuttling along on the wall beside him. Gritting their teeth the others followed him up stream as he snapped another standard light stick and held it up to lead the way into the dark.