Well having just managed to finish one chapter, we promptly had the next gaming session that evening so here we are again but I'm not sure the characters know which road they are supposed to be going down.
Chapter Five: Close Encounters of a Draconic Kind
"Calypso," Jeremiah instructed his new 'dog', "You are to follow mister Thorian here around and do what he says Ok?" The dog stared at Jeremiah for a long minute, shook itself and snorted before turning and trotting over to Thorian's legs.
"There you go Thorian," Jeremiah smiled, "You wanted to have a dog, now you have one. Just don't squeeze him too hard."
"You're giving me your dog?" Thorian frowned.
"Absolutely," Jeremiah smiled, "No need to thank me now though, I'm sure I'll think of some way you can say thank you later on. What do you say?"
"Oh he's lovely!" Thorian dropped to one knee, making a huge fuss of his new pet, "Who's a good dog then? Who's a good dog?"
Ulrich looked on and slowly shook his head.
"That just isn't natural," he observed.
"You're talking about a guy who's favorite childhood game was to out run dire wolves," if Kaelin had worn glasses she'd have been looking over them at Ulrich.
"Good point," he noted, "Any way folks, shall we be heading on?"
"Okay dokey," Thorian was was still beaming as he stood and called Calypso to heel, "On to adventure and glory!"
"We few, we lucky few," Ulrich muttered.
"We band of buggered," Kaelin said again. The companions pushed on deeper into the forest but after a while they found that they were no longer having to push their way through branches and underbrush to make head way. The foliage became sickly and limp, only to fade out all together and they found themselves walking through the bleached boned pillars of long dead timbers, the ground below turning into a thick black surface that lacked the luster of healthy loam. This was not black country soil that would feed a nation for years on end, this was somehow wrong, a suggestion of clinging slime more than soil.
"Now I know why this place is called the Dead Swamp," Ulrich looked with distaste at what was stuck to his shoe and bumped into Kaelin. She'd stopped dead, one fist raised and she silently pointed to a gap between the dead trees ahead of them.
The things that coiled there were long and low and had many, many, many legs. Their mandibles scissored and sheared through the air. Ulrich nodded silently and together they started stepping back, one foot at a time...
"What's going on?" Thorian's voice shook through the air like a horn in the silence, "Why you walking backwards? We're supposed to be going forwards." Large, multifaceted eyes blinked as armour plated heads swung towards them. Thorian saw the rippled plates of horror in the same moment.
"It's Thorian time!" his gleeful bellow echoed round the swamp, his great sword swinging through the air with wild abandon.
"Oh great!" Kaelin rolled her eyes and then her jaw bones crunched as they extended. Thorian crashed into the first of the giant centipedes and his sheer bulk forced it back, it form bending in unnatural ways to absorb the impact. Jeremiah drew himself up, chanting words that whipped the shadows to a frenzy and then... the shadows coiled in on themselves and detonated in soundless explosion of fragments. Jeremiah, stood mouth open slightly and blinked, one hand raised in a pose that would have been intimidating if it wasn't for the idiot look of surprise on his face. Ulrich's blades were already bouncing off the shell of one of the centipedes. It turned towards him, mandibles scissoring inches from his face and received Kaelin's attack like a full broadside. Kaelin's teeth snapped closed on its face just above its clicking mouth parts and things went pop in yellow sprays of viscera, then she wrenched her head backwards and force of it lashed through the entire front half of the centipede, segments pulling apart, splitting connective tissue and shredding its skull.
Despite the sight of Thorian's heavy blade chopping the centipede in front of him into diced bug, the last centipede charged towards him, only to collide with its surviving mate. The affront insect turned on its companion and battered it with several pairs of front legs.
Jeremiah stood beside the confused Calypso and laughed until he shock like the price winning jelly of a country fair at the sight to the two oversized crawlies smacking ineffectually at each other in a moment of peek. His merriment only seemed to increase as the bugs' distraction with other resulted in both of them being turned into chopped shelly by Thorian and Ulrich's blades. As he calmed down he noticed something. Pulling back his sleeve he unwound the bandage swaddling his forearm. The wound dealt by Hartseer was shrinking and fading, a fine white scar taking its place. Quietly he breathed a prayer of thanks to his God, wondering what bit of chaos he had caused that his God approved of. Thorian cleaned his oversized sword and then called Calypso to his side. After a moment, Jeremiah nodded. The orc crossbreed would do foolish and dangerous things, things that would attract trouble to his team mates, to protect his dog. Jeremiah smiled; it was strange how rarely people recognized a poisoned chalice when you gave it to them.
"Either the Captain's friend is having trouble of his own or he really doesn't like visitors," Kaelin noted as she chewed on a centipede's leg, crunching through the hard shell like a bird prying open a crab's leg.
"It doesn't bode well for us if its the latter," Ulrich noted as he cleaned his swords.
"It could be the former," Jeremiah tugged his beard as he sombred, "And it could be you are right, Ulrich, with this thing in the lake being tied to the trouble at Nether Wallop. Other than the bandits we faced, and one of them was carrying a sword from that place, all the creatures that have attacked on this journey have been creatures that live in the Underworld."
"The Underworld?" Kaelin looked up as she started chewing on another bug leg.
"A series of caves, caverns, tunnels and voids in the bedrock of the world itself," Jeremiah explained, "Think of it as a parallel world to ours."
"Sounds like a fun place to visit," Thorian said as he tried to feed Calypso some centipede but the zombied dog wasn't interested.
"Not really," Jeremiah observed, "Not unless you like the idea of never being able to go to bed in a dark room ever again. Let's put it this way, one of the reasons dwarfs don't like your kind is that your ancestors original came from that place and the dwarfs don't forget that you first fathers literately cut their way through the dwarfs to get out of the Underworld."
"Oh," Thorian's ears drooped, "That rather explains a lot."
"So things from this Underworld place are coming up topside," Kaelin observed, wiping her hands on the front of her shirt, "Guess they've decided they want a piece of the sun."
"That's the point, they shouldn't be," Jeremiah frowned, "They don't like the sun and we don't like their eternal night. I'm not saying that there hasn't been raids in the past because there has been, but nothing on a scale like this."
"So what?" she asked, "It's not our problem. Our job is to get to this Nether Wallop, sort out the problem there and then we're free to go our separate ways so let's get on and get this done."
"Sounds like a plan to me," Thorian grinned and straightened up, "Let's get going. Come on Calypso, follow me."
As they pushed on, Kaelin's ears began to twitch.
"Can you hear that?" she asked.
"Here what?" Thorian shrugged, "I can hear you asking questions, I can hear our footsteps, I can hear the wind, I can hear..."
"No," Kaelin held up a hand, "Not all that nonsense, that!" She pointed into the dead stands of wood.
"What?" Thorian asked again, "I can see the sky, its rather cloudy, I can see the dead trees, I can see..."
"I see the goblins charging us again," Ulrich's swords jumped to his hands.
"Oh lovely jubbly!" Thorian unlimbered his sword and swept a few practice swings to loosen up his arm.
"That's not all I see!" Jeremiah yelled, "They're not charging us, they're running from that!" His finger stabbed towards the bright orange, flat jawed dragon larger than a cart horse charging after the goblins running towards them.
"GET OUT OF OUR SWAMP!" the roar shook the dead trees until they rattled. Even as the dragon bounded forward it was sucking in its breath. The jaws opened, the glow inside rose... The dragon stumbled, tripped, a sound that was half way between a belch and a sneeze erupted from its jaws and a globular gout of... something splashed down into a pool of water so murky the King's Special hadn't even realized that it wasn't slimy mud. It hissed and spat and glowed and...
"Duck!" Jeremiah roared and grabbed Kaelin, flinging them both down. Ulrich smacked down into the goo with a groan, Thorian only just making it down before...
The pool erupted with a detonation that stomped on the party like the foot of an angry God but the wash of heat and flying debris churned up from the bottom of the pond rolled over them, merely splattering them with mud, the still standing goblins were not so fortunate. Engulfed in the chemical explosion half of them just ceased to be. The other half screamed almost as a single entity and started fleeing away from the source of the explosion, scrambling over a rise in the ground and disappearing into the distance still yelping and yipping.
The dragon coughed and spluttered, thumping herself on the chest, hacking and choking until something shifted in her throat and she spat a lump of something on to the floor, something that started steaming after a moment and then ignited with a cheerful little flame that spluttered and popped. While she was doing so Jeremiah scrambled to his feet and pulled his companions to their feet, muttering as he did so.
"Put your weapons away right now," he said, "Don't do anything aggressive, don't be impolite and what ever you do, don't try and challenge her. She is one of the most dangerous dragon types in existence and even if we could kill her there is the very great chance that her body would explode in our faces the moment she stopped breathing."
"Why would it do that?" Thorian scratched his head, "Dead things don't usually go bang." Jeremiah just looked at him for a moment before he could bring himself to explain.
"She just breathed up a lump of something that turned that pool of water into a bomb," he managed to speak levelly, "If her internal processes go wrong then the same thing will most likely happen inside of her. You can't get much more wrong than death as far as living internal processes go."
"Oh," Thorian said and then paused, "I think I get it, I think." To Jeremiah's relief Thorian put his sword back in its scabbard and so did Ulrich. He turned to where the dragon now stood, watching them with interested eyes.
"Sorry about that," she said as she started forward, "I swear that doesn't usually happen."
"You have absolutely nothing to apologize for your majesty," Jeremiah smiled warmly and performed a very fancy bow, "We, your humble servants, are overwhelmed by your willingness to save such undeserving creatures such as ourselves."
"Your Majesty?" the dragon preened, lowering her eyelid coquettishly, "Oh you are such a flatterer. Nobody has ever called me Majesty before. Big sister, yes, she gets to be 'your Majesty' but I'm... oh well, never mind that. She's not here and you're so charming. Maybe I should keep you all to myself."
"Um," Jeremiah flushed bright red, "I... I'm afraid that I am under an oath not to get involved in anything of that nature."
"Oh I'm sure that I could make it more than... blissful," she snaked towards him, her bright orange scales almost blinding, arching her head back over her shoulders, a move that thrust her keeled breastbone forward.
"I... um..." Jeremiah was shining himself and his eyes darted about, desperately seeking an escape route.
"We're afraid that our Lord, the King, would be terribly unset if you prolonged such an important and integral part of our team." Ulrich stepped forward and laid a protective hand on Jeremiah's shoulder.
"Your team? You're a team?" she looked from one to the other and then her whole body drooped, her glow decreasing, "You're a King's Special, aren't you? Oh bother! He is such a spoil sport!" She heaved a huge sigh.
"I'm sorry, my dear, but for such small creatures such as ourselves, duty really is everything," Jeremiah apologized with another bow. She sighed again.
"I understand," she said, "No really, I understand, my people know our duty as well. One must serve Grandmother. Still it would have been nice to, I am so curious about... well never mind." She perked up suddenly, "After all, these always the future." She smiled at Jeremiah, who looked just about ready to bolt. "So if you're a King's Special what brings you here? I didn't think the messenger would make it through so soon and I was under the impression that the King was more than satisfied with our progress."
"We were looking for a... wizard who moved here in the last few years," Jeremiah said slowly obviously trying to make sure that he didn't say anything that could be misconstrued.
"Wizard? Wizard?" she mused, scratching her muzzle with a long claw, "No I don't know of any wizard. There is Elisha the Mastersmith and he could be the man you mean."
"Ah that could be a problem," Jeremiah admitted, "You see, we were sent to find a magic user who could help us get across the lake as there is a great deal of trouble with that at the moment."
"Oh he uses magic for sure," the dragon laughed, "Just not like you mean. Some wizards even consider his kind to be a source of spell components, how disgusting is that? Seriously, sometimes you bipeds really are preverse. Across the lake though, I'm not sure what he could do... Might be best if you talk with him, I'm more than likely to mess something like this up."
"Could you show us the way my dear?" Jeremiah said, "I'm afraid we really aren't familiar with your territory and the directions we were given were really rather vague."
"Now that I can certainly do, it will give me a good excuse to spend more time in your fascinating company," she turned and started padding away into the dead forest but Jeremiah hesitated. "Come along duckie, you can walk beside me you know, I'll only bite if you ask real nice." Jeremiah closed his eyes and whimpered under his breath but stepped out after their unmissable guide, gaining from her that her name was Amelia Rainan. Following behind them Kaelin suddenly batted Ulrich's arm with the back of her hand and when he glanced at her she pointed silently at the floor. Pacing over the rises and falls of what should have been a lush forest the orange dragon was leaving footprints of green. Where ever she walked the hollows of her foot falls were sprouting fresh, young spring grass. Looking back, Kaelin and Ulrich could see a trail of green patches stretching off into the distance.
"I think I can guess what our guide meant by progress," Ulrich said quietly, "My guess would be that she and this Elisha are meant to reforesting this place and bringing it back to health." Kaelin nodded, turned back to follow said guide and froze. Amelia and Jeremiah had come to a stop and over the top of the ridge they had been climbing a very strange sight greeted them. A tall, willow elf was riding through the Dead Swamp but what he was riding was not a horse, instead it was a truly enormous lizard, its long forked tongue flicking in and out of its mouth as it swaggered forward and the elf in question was not the usual pale skinned sort but rather a dusky charcoal grey. Swaggering beside him was a tall, brawny older... being who might once have been a man but now... Now he looked as if he had been blended with a wolf of the very worst sort, his eyes a shiny red in their sockets, his lips constantly rippling back from his fangs. Round them others of his kind, though slightly smaller than him, walked until one of them spotted the companions and stopped.
"Concern yourself not," the Elf was saying, "You will have what you want once we have what we want." Then he spotted what had arrested the attention of the werewolf pack. "Ah," he grinned, "Sport." He drew a long sword of the same type as Ulrich had looted off of the dead bandit. It was a mistake.
"It's Thorian time!" the orc crossbreed bellowed and the werewolf in front of him went down like a nine pin. Even as the rest of the pack drew breath to howl their counter challenges Amelia got in first. This time her roar was true and a jet of metallic grey sludge struck not only the two werewolves in front of her but also the elf up on his mount. Even as Kaelin closed with the werewolf on the left of the line of destruction her nose burned with the salty stink of it. Jeremiah barked a set of burning words and a werewolf was reduced to a howling, whimpering pile of burnt fur as the black shadows of embers engulfed him. The elf span his mount and bolted off into the forest, mercilessly whipping his mount.
The werewolf alpha leapt nearly straight up into a tree's skeleton, proving that werewolf packs were a perversion of a real pack as he abandoned two of his pack mates to the edge of Thorian's sword. He didn't even flinch as Thorian's blow sank said sword dead into the heart wood of the tree, making the whole thing shake below him. Instead he just watched were Kaelin managed to bring down her enemy and made sure he wasn't going to get back up again.
The whole scene was suddenly bathed in a lured light as the metallic sludge ignited with a noise like 'wooph'. The two werewolves coated in it choked on flames as they tried to scream and then their corpses cracked, bending into unnatural posses as the flames twisted their muscles but mercifully they were still. In the distance, they could hear the screams that denoted that the elf was in the same trouble as the werewolves but Kaelin only had eyes for the elder were he crouched in the tree. He pointed a steely claw.
"Grandpa wants words with you, young 'un," his voice was all base growls and snarls. Kaelin shivered and couldn't keep it hidden but she wasn't sure he saw as he was already bounding away through the trees. Thorian yanked and wrenched at his sword until it came free.
"Who was that fancy pants?" he asked everyone and no one at once.
"I'm not sure," Amelia admitted, "I've never seen his sort before." She started following the trail of burn marks where the drips of sludge had ignited and flared. When they found him the elf was most definitely dead, reduced to a mere smear of ashes. His mount was also crumpled, the fire having scorched through its spine. Amelia nosed it over.
"Like nothing I've seen before," she admitted, "There was something similar in shape on one of the islands but not this big. Good eating on that. Er, do any of you want it?"
"No," Jeremiah said, "Carry on."
"Don't mind if I do," she beamed and separated one of its haunches from the rest of the corpse with a neat flick and twist of her head. "Not bad," she observed as she chewed, "Could do with some more salt though."
"That wasn't what I meant," Jeremiah said in the tones of the long suffering but quietly, quietly so that he didn't attract her attention, then he drew himself and concentrated.
"Oh for pity's sake," Ulrich snapped as the power thread shadows tangled and writhed through the air, "Do you have to try and collect one from every single fight we have? You're almost as bad as a dragon, if you'll pardon me Ma'am."
"What?" Amelia looked up from her lunch and blinked at the sight of the battered, spine broken, three legged lizard pulling itself slowly to its feet. She blinked some more, "That is not something you see every day of the week," she admitted. Jeremiah suddenly realized that he might have done something not so sensible. The other thing he realized was that they were being watched.
The lady on sat on the back of another of the giant lizards, its tongue tasting the air as it stared at them. She was also of the elvish persuasion but again she had the ashy grey coloring that had marked the elf that had been talking with the werewolves, as were the heavily armed elves standing on foot around her. She gazed down her shapely nose at them all.
"My Lady," the one standing nearest her stirrup said, "They have killed Lord Deslin, shall we punish them?" The tensed hands on weapons showed exactly how that punishment would play out.
"No," her voice was steel and ice forged into something as deadly as it was cold, "Deslin was weak, we do not avenge the weak. Let our pets deal with these vermin." She turned her mount's head and her body guard swung round with her. As they moved away, the companions saw the eyes, the many and many eyes, all looking at them, some of them high up in the silk... swaddled...trees.
"Oh no," Kaelin groaned.
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