Draconnic Shennanigans - Episode 21

 Chapter 21: The Void Likes to Play

 Jeremiah looked round from his assessment of his remaining attributes, watching with an amused smile as Kaelin and Thorian continued their work of disposing of the fallen of the battle along side the handful of elves Zilvra had detailed to the task. He didn't notice that he was scratching at the bandages round his wounded arm while he did so. He glanced down at the now thoroughly deceased werewolf at his feet and considered retrieving his money from where it was lodged in the beast's throat. It was dribbling. Eyes still bulging, locked in its twisted end by asphyxiation, it was none the less drooling all over the floor. Jeremiah stepped back, fighting to keep the look of disgust off his face; the darn thing had nearly dribbled all over his boots and seeing as he had holes in his boots, that meant it had come disgustingly close to soaking his socks. Jeremiah shuddered at the thought and turned away.

Casually as he could manage he wandered out of the main gates and once the Ash Elf disposing of the bodies had headed back inside for yet more of the fallen, he risked a look over the crenelates into the chasm that separated one side of the cavern from the other. Far down in the depths, so far down that Jeremiah felt a moment of dizziness swept over him, a blue glow was building as streams and waterfalls of kerveads poured down into the cliff faces, hunting the smell of carrion through the tunnels of this subterranean world. Jeremiah found it to be most pleasing to the eye, watching the flow and tumble of light through the dark. Then the Ash Elf stepped passed him, more hastily than usual and tossed the hairy body he was dragging over the edge with less care than usual and a lot more hurry.

"My good sir," Jeremiah smiled ingratiatingly, "What ever is the matter?"

The Ash Elf didn't answer but instead pulled a small jar out of a poach and started swinging it back and forth across the bridge, a bright red powder sifting from the open mouth of the pot to settle as a barrier across the span of stone. Jeremiah was about to inquire why such a precaution was necessary when he saw what was coming towards them. He felt his mouth go dry as the torrent of bugs swarmed across the stone, their glow so bright en mass as they were that it hurt the eyes to look at them. His skin crawled as he realized that he could hear them. For the first time ever he could hear them, the buzzing clatter of all their hard exoskeletons rubbing together and the scratch-scrap of their hundreds of thousands of legs scuttling over the stone. There was also a click-clicking as mouth parts snipped and snapped in eager anticipation of the feast they had found. The tidal wave of insects speed towards them... and met the barrier of red dust the Ash Elf had just put down. It halted, the swell of clattering, scissoring horror juddered to a halt and mounted up, buzzing with frustration at the edge of the barrier drawn. Jeremiah stepped back, Hat droning with distress on the top of his mitre and nearly collided with the two Ash Elves that were barreling out of the main gates. Jeremiah only belatedly realized that they hadn't bothered to remove the heads of the fallen elves as the grizzly burdens flopped over the edge. He looked once more at the throbbing mass of bugs and then stepped back inside the courtyard of the citadel, only just avoiding being splashed with something horrible as Thorian thumped passed carrying two of the dead over his shoulders. Even Kaelin had dispensed with her precautions, scurrying around not unlike a bug herself, to collect all the smaller pieces she could find.

Jeremiah watched her bolt out of the gates and watched as she started throwing the pieces with all her strength along the bridge. The horde of insects drew back as it closed in over the offerings she'd give it.

"What are you doing, surface dweller?" one of the Ash Elves demanded, rounding on her.

"These thing can climb walls right?" she didn't stop throwing. The Ash Elf frowned, puzzled by a lower race answering with a question.

"They'll just climb round the powder on the outside of the bridge walls," Kaelin explained, "Unless you can guard every damn window we need to get them off the bridge, all the way off and encourage them to follow all the others down into the chasm or they'll just climb over on the underside of the bridge."

The Ash Elf open his mouth to say something, even while he was lifting a hand to strike her... then Jeremiah saw the moment that the image of what she was saying filtered through to him because it had also struck him. The Ash Elf grabbed the feet of the next corpse that was being brought out and twisted it so that it was thrown over the line of powder. The light surged back a pace to consume it and he was scattering powder down on the revealed stone, even as he was yelling what he'd been told to his comrades in his own language, gesturing with his free hand. They looked unconvinced until they noticed a lone kervead wandering along the balustrade towards them. With shrill yells they scattered powder down in the path of the bug and fled back inside to fetch more of the dead, although Jeremiah was sure that one scampered off inside the citadel. He smiled grimly as he approached his puppets. Every race had their cowards.

"You!" he snapped, pointing at his three blue eyed Ash Elves, "Pugh, Hugh and Dibble! Pick up all the dead pieces of Elf and Werewolf in this castle and throw them over the side of the bridge outside of those gates there." He pointed imperiously to the main gates. The Ash Elves gazed at him silently for a moment and then bent to begin their work.

Smiling to himself Jeremiah turned to the dead that still lay untended in the courtyard. He drew himself up and muttered under his breath, fingers weaving through the air. For a moment he felt his god's attention stir and then it faded away. He sighed in frustration. Apparently, it was too early to call again on his god's favor, or perhaps his god was becoming bored with him doing the same tricks over again. That was not a comfortable thought and he scratched his bandage while he considered it. He stopped as he realized something.

 "Kaelin! You child of a mangy dog! What have you done?" he roared, baring down on her like a pyroclastic flow.

 "You mean other than stopping you from becoming bug lunch?" she asked as she grabbed another body that needed disposing of.

"This!" Jeremiah bellowed, waving his arm about like a conductor's baton, "What filth have you put in me? You illiterate flea bag!"

She turned from feeding the swarm some more, the powder clinging to the soles of her boots. Jeremiah staggered a little as the Ash Elf he'd seen dash inside the main citadel squeezed passed him in the door way, clutching an armful of jars, out of which he started sprinkling the red powder as fast as he could go, covering up the bare patches were peoples footprints showed through the covering of powder. The realization that he had misjudged the Ash Elf's motives did not improve Jeremiah's temper.

"What vile poison have you inflicted on me? You tail wagging cur!" he thundered, making the cavern ring. There was a sharp crack from above followed by a whistling sound and then a sharpened chunk of dripped stone smashed only a hand's breadth from their feet, spraying shrapnel as sharp as razors in all directions.

The silence rang, disturbed only by the rustling of the swarm as it devoured.

Kaelin put a finger up to her face and wiped away a trail of red before turning without a word and heading back inside the courtyard to continue the grizzly clean up procedure.

One of the Ash Elves, senior in age if the look of him was anything to go by, turned to Jeremiah.

"We tolerate your presence, surface dweller, for the sake of the Lady and because you have proven yourself to be useful to the clan," he said coldly, "But you are more ignorant of the realities of life in the Underworld than any living thing has right to be here. Learn to curb your tongue and control your voice before you call down monsters that even your foul magics will find impossible to control."

"Oh I don't know," Jeremiah smiled back, "I think you are underestimating just how powerful I am." He lifted a hand and gestured to where, expressionless and tirelessly his three Ash Elf puppets were emerging from the main gates of the citadel to dispose with some more of the fallen. Several of the Ash Elves on the bridge twisted their fingers in gestures to ward off evil and misfortune as they edged round the blue eyed once members of their race but the older one seemed unmoved.

"Maybe I am," he admitted, "Or maybe I am not. Either way, the question is, do you want to bet, little surface man? Do you want to bet with your life?"

Jeremiah draw himself up and set his face, unwilling to admit that the Ash Elf's stillness was bothering him, then he turned away with a humph and strode back inside the citadel, finding himself a corner where he could nurse his arm in peace. It was tingling under the bandage now, as if dozens of hot ants were running over the surface of his skin round the wound. That wolf girl was going to pay for this, she had no right to inflict her dirty curse on him.

Inside the citadel, Ulrich lifted a hand from Peter the Centipede's chitinous hide and laid it over Lady Zilvra's fingers were they locked together round his chest. He could feel them shaking. She was trying to suppress it but he could still feel them shaking.

"How did they get in?" her whisper was strained, "How, by all the gods under Hestia, did they get in?"

Ulrich looked again at the destruction around him. The main entrance hall of the citadel was not directly connected with the main audience hall of the building, instead it seemed to be composed of many long corridors, joined at right angles at their ends to form a spiraling structure. It appeared at first glance to be funnel shaped, wide at the end with the door but narrowing sharply but that was a trick, each corridor being divided by angled walls that the defenders had cover while providing little to none for the attackers. In short, it was designed to turn each foot of space into a killing field but it seemed to have spectacularly failed, the bodies of Ash Elves sprawled across the stone floors, in some places piled high like snow drifts, their white hair stained red and brown as the liquid sea they were islands in clotted and set.

Ulrich realized that the back of his jacket was becoming wet. What chilled him all the more was that her crying was soundless. Even faced with the total destruction of her home, Zilvra couldn't give voice to her distress and there was something off about the pattern, the way the bodies had fallen. He sat a little straighter as he saw what she had seen.

"They were fighting from the inside out," she said it before he could give it voice.

"Does the citadel have a back door?" he asked, a frown ceasing the space between his eyebrows, wondering if their hairy, unwelcome, uninvited guests could come back with reinforcements for a second try.

"A what?" she shifted her head against his back, snapping out of her wretchedness.

"A back door, an escape tunnel, a second way in that a werewolf could have detected with their nose and forced open?" Ulrich explained as they turned yet another corner. Surely they had to be close now?

"We are not stupid, surface dweller," she snapped, something of her old imperious manner coming back, "We know that such things are a weakness that we cannot afford. If a clan cannot defend itself then it deserves to die." She stuttered to a halt.

"Hard, isn't it? When you have to pass that judgement on your own people," Ulrich asked after a moment, "Just how many clans have died in the last few seasons?"

Her hands trembled against him again and for a moment he thought she wasn't going to answer.

"It started in the time of water," she admitted as they turned into another corner, "When the flood tunnels raged. Patrols started disappearing and not some silly, greenhorned youngsters, old veterans of the Underworld's moods. They would vanish and their packs be found days later, their camp attacked but not in a way we recognized. Or they would be injured and come back to us changed, speaking of a great hunt to come and a natural order in the world. They would leave again, leave without permission and they would turn on us, their own clans, if we tried to stop them. Slaves would be killed as they worked the mushroom caves and the algae farms. We thought it could be the normal predators, maybe driven up from below by unusually high floods but then the predators started turning up dead or malformed and we knew it wasn't that. Then, three time candles back, the fortress of the Kraken clan..."

She coughed on a mouthful of air and Ulrich rubbed her knuckles reassuringly.

"The fortress of the Kraken clan slid into the Undersea with no warning," she cleared her throat and sniffed.

"The fortress collapsed?" Ulrich looked back over his shoulder at her, disbelief in his eyes.

"I was on my way to claim a breeder from them," Zilvra burrowed her face into the back of his jacket, "I saw it with my own eyes. The whole cavern started shaking and there was this noise, like rock tearing and the whole fortress just slide sideways into the Undersea, all... all falling in on itself and splitting apart and then there was just dust and noise and when.... when it was quiet again... nobody came up out of the water." She shivered against him and Ulrich had to fight not to shiver too. He guessed he knew now what had driven the white Kraken out into Lake but what, by Heaven and Hestia, could just knock a whole citadel off its foundations like it was a house of cards? They were dealing with something that was a heck of a lot bigger than they had reckoned for.

"We few, we lucky few," he murmured.

"What?" Zilvra asked.

"Sorry," Ulrich said, "Just reflecting on..." He trailed off. They had found the main audience hall.

It was without doubt a complete and utter disaster. It appeared that some courtly function had been going on when what ever had struck had arrived, long tables flipped over, glasses and food scattered across the floor and the bodies piled high and thick. The Ash Elves had, to give them their due appeared to have fought like demons, at least to begin with, as there were a greater number of werewolf dead among the bodies that had fallen but that defense had obviously come undone at some point, though as to why...

Zilvra threw herself off the back of Peter the Centipede and ran, stumbling through, the bodies. She staggered several times as the space she thought was clear turned out to have an out flung hand or foot in it. She didn't turn or look back as Ulrich called after her, didn't seem to hear as the centipede's multitude of legs rippled over the gory carpet of the slain. She bounded up the steps of the dais and fell to her knees by the body stretched out on its side by the shattered remains of a grand chair.

Ulrich pulled the centipede to a halt as Zilvra's shoulders shook. Now he could hear her, a muffled, wretched whining, like a beaten child.

"Oh no," he breathed, "Is that...?"

"The Matriarch," Zilvra was openly and honestly crying now, "What do I do? What do I do? Nephthys help me, what do I do?"

"Shat," Ulrich breathed. With the Matriarch gone the back bone of the clan had been well and truly broken, especially if... Ulrich turned, swinging down from Peter's back, looked at the bodies. There, an older looking, more superior Ash Elf woman at the bottom of the deeply recessed stairs that lead up into the citadel's left side. And there, another one with status symbols near the doors leading out into the corridor that lead eventually to main doors. One after another he found them as Zilvra cried.

"How many Seniors did your Matriarch have?" he asked, cold with the certainty of what the answer would be.

"We had ten Sisters of the Depths," Zilvra replied, looking round at him. Ulrich realized that she had left the body of the Matriarch and had wandered across the dais. Well, if her mind was already occupying itself then hopefully she wasn't going to panic at any moment.

"I hate to tell you this," he began.

"They are dead," the tears were still streaming down her face but her voice was more level, "Who ever did this thing knew how to hurt us most. Look." Her finger pointed implacably at the dais behind the chair. Frowning Ulrich stepped up beside her and looked were he was commanded.

Parts were obscured by the fallen and the bloody spillage over the floor but the over arching pattern was still plain to see, branded as it has been into the very stones.

"Oh hell!" Ulrich crouched and pressed his fingers to the marks but they remained dormant under his touch, "It's the same ones as that Aft End used to bottle out after we flag stomped him! Shat, this was planned and by someone rocking a lot more power than any werewolf I've ever heard of before." He stood up, looking about distractedly, "Just what the hell is all this for?"

"I don't..." Zilvra stopped, her face turning ashen.

"What..." Ulrich started to reach for her.

She turned and bolted up the steps leading into the right side of the citadel.

"Zilvra?" Ulrich yelled, just as her body guards made it to the main hall. He didn't pay them any attention, whistling to Peter instead. With a rattling surge, Peter flowed over and around the fallen to reach his master's side. Ulrich swung on to Peter's back so fast the centipede didn't break stride as their speed after Zilvra. Even as they charged through the corridors Ulrich noticed something was off about the fallen here to. They had been retreating from the main hall and had then suddenly been ambushed from both sides... except that wasn't it either. The ones from the main hall had been retreating away from that massacre when they had backed into another group retreating from what ever Zilvra was now running towards.

Her break neck speed led them up stairs and down corridors until she ran up to a opening where the door hung askew and cracked across its middle. She stopped there, one hand flung out to catch at the frame of the way. Ulrich pulled Peter to a stop as he heard the dreadfully whinging keening noise that escaped Zilvra's shaking shoulders. Cold with what he thought he was going to see, he swung off Peter's back as Zilvra slid down the door frame, choking on her every breath. He heard her body guard clatter to a stop behind him but he didn't look round, this was too important for distractions. He walked slowly up behind her as she continued to shake and whistle with the grief trying to force its way out passed all her years of training.

"Zilvra?" he crouched slightly behind her slightly to one side, laying a hand on her shoulder. Then he looked in the room. For the rest of time he wished that he hadn't done that, he really wished he hadn't done that. The room had been the nursery for the youngest members of the clan, with the emphasis on the words 'had been'.

"Oh dear Gods," he could find nothing more to say.

Zilvra hissed with in drawn breath and then she threw back her head and screamed!

"What the..." Kaelin jerked round, the newest body slipping from her fingers to crack against the floor, smearing the red powder keeping the kerveads at bay. The scream was a ripping sound that shook the cavern and came laced with blue power. The swarming flood of insects swirled as it rolled over the top of them and then Kaelin saw the forms billowing out of the small smoke holes that dotted the top of the citadel towers. Small, four legged, their scales were a dry rustling as they came, swirling across stone, nearly the same color as the rock beneath them, bright eyes blinking. They congregated at the bridge, following along it and over it, scurrying over the inside of the balustrades and up and over the edge, clambering over the outer face of the bridge walls with no apparent fear of the fathoms deep drop below. Kaelin looked over the edge and swore she saw one slip over the edge, on to the underside of the bridge, as if it was merely walking down a set of steps. The little forms, no longer than the span of a hand paused at the far edge of the red powder, facing down the plague of kerveads as if considering the quality of the buffet before them and then little faces began darting forward. Pin toothed jaws snapped and snapped again on crunchy bodies while great round eyes blinked and blinked. Throats pulsed as mouthfuls were swallowed and then heads darted forward once move. Then Kaelin saw the others that had come to the dinner. Spiders the size of saucers, spiders the size of dinner plates, spiders with bodies the size of cricket balls, picked their way daintily between the lizards, rushing forward to seize bright bodied insects in their grasp and then retreat back with them into the safe zone of the red powder to pierce and suck dry their prey.

"Well that is something new," one of the Ash Elves observed as he straightened and knuckled his back.

"You what?" Kaelin shook her head slightly to snap her attention away from the hypnotic scene in front of her.

"Our pets don't usually leave the Eublepharidae alone like that," he stretched with an audible pop of a joint in his spine, "Usually the lizards are lunch for our pets but I guess the bounty is such...." he trailed off and looked back over his should at the citadel, "Unless, it is worse than I thought. If this is a reaction under extremeness... Oh Gehenna."

"That doesn't sound good," Kaelin hazarded the guess. The Ash Elf took a deep breath and walked back into the citadel to collect another body. The courtyard was just about cleared but the entrance hall was still choked with the dead.

"If our Lady is now the Matriarch," he said quietly as he lifted a body, "Then she could, under extreme circumstances, summon the guarding wards built into the very stones of the citadel. One of those wards is the commanding of the base creatures that live within the citadel to protect our people from invaders."

Kaelin kept pace beside him as she dragged a body of a werewolf behind her.

"If the Matriarchs can summon the creatures to protect you then why were we fighting the werewolves with no help?" she asked as they reached the bridge again. The Ash Elf tossed the body he was carrying over the railing and watched it disappear into the light below.

"Because she was already dead," he said dully and closed his eyes. "Would you... do me... a favor, is that the word?"

"If you want me to do something on the understanding that you'll do me something in return at an unknown future date then yes," Kaelin said cautiously.

"Would you go and discover what has happened to cause the Lady Zilvra's outburst?" he didn't look at her but his knuckles were white where he gripped the railing of the bridge's balustrade, "We will be able to manage the clean up now that we have the creatures of the citadel to aid us."

Kaelin glanced to where the geckos and spiders were still crunching their way through the ever shifting wave of kerveads that ebbed and flowed at the edge of the powder boarder line.

"Sure," she said after a moment and turned to head into the citadel. Thorian clumped out on her way in, dragging the bodies two at a time, Jeremiah's Ash Elves following him. Kaelin felt a stab of uneasy when she noticed that one of the blue eyed puppets wasn't carrying the body like a sack of potatoes to be thrown away but as a body of someone it had cared for. She glanced over to where Jeremiah sat in the shadows of the courtyard, nursing his arm and his bruised ego. Just how sure was he that he had control?

She turned away and pushed the thought from her mind. She had more important things to worry about now, including the stink filling the corridors beyond the main doors. The smell of terror and death, of rage and pain hit her nose like a punch on the snout. Squinting against the acid feeling in her sinuses she walked the spiraling corridor to the main hall. Tracking Ulrich's scent led her to the runic circle. The hair stood up along her arms.

This was where Greely, that shat bag, had got in. His smell made the beast crawl up her throat and snarl, the change bubbling just under the surface. Damn it, he'd been prepared. They'd known just who to hit and damn it, they must have known when. Kaelin doubted if a people so used to scheming and lies as the Ash Elves regularly gathered their whole ruling class together in one place. Shell crack on a dragon egg! They had some how known. They must have had...

Kaelin kicked a battered chair into the wall with a resounding smash. They must have infected someone inside the clan, someone who had been strong enough to resist the early symptoms but weak enough that they're loyalty to the clan could be broken. That or someone who would willingly trade away their clan for their own desires. That book of Ulrich's might say that such a thing was rare to almost be unimaginable but there again so were Ash Elves who were willing to leave not only clan and kin but the Underworld all together and they had met such a one running Nether Wallop for pity's sake. If an Ash Elf could leave then an Ash Elf could turn on clan and kin as well. With Werewolf venom running in their veins, distorting their perceptions and thought patterns even more then, well, the result lay all around her.

Kaelin swore for several minutes. This was where her screwing blackguard of a grandfather was getting his troops and then he was entering arrangements with some of the Ash Elf clans, who were undoubtedly ignorant of the fact that he was the source of all their trouble in the first place, to pull in even more. She didn't doubt that he'd play them along for as long as he could and then turn on them the moment he was sure that he could infect as many as possible.

She kicked another chair. This was what came of not making sure of the job herself. Well, she was well served. The next time she and her sadly unlamented grand sire crossed paths she'd do the damn job herself and this time she'd make sure that he burned.

Argh-gan-gah-gan-argh! Haggis agreed. Kaelin calmed herself down patting him and then turned her attention back to trying to find out were Ulrich and his lady friend had gone. It didn't take her long to follow their scent but she stopped at the sight of the Ash Elf bodyguard standing in the corridor looking confused while someone sobbed uncontrollably. Her mouth thinned to a line, Kaelin pushed through their ranks until she could see Ulrich knelt in a door way, the Lady Zilvra a sobbing, gasping mess in his arms. He looked up as Kaelin drew closer.

"They hit the nursery," he said in quiet, dead sounding voice, "You don't want to look. Trust me on this, you don't want to look."

"It's the end of the clan," one of the Ash Elves said, his thousand mile stare looking through everything before him.

"You what?" Kaelin asked.

"It's the end of the clan," he repeated, not looking round, "They have destroyed the other women and we are all brothers and cousins of Lady Zilvra. Only close family were allowed to go with her to the temple. We are the last of the clan and we cannot breed. The Snake Clan is ended."

Kaelin looked at the rest of the body guard in the corridor but none of them moved to gain say him. Her stomach dropped as she realized that all he had spoken was the complete and utter truth, hence why none moved to chastise him. It was also why Lady Zilvra had gone to complete and utter pieces. She had known the truth the moment she had seen the wreck of the nursery. The werewolves had been out to totally destroy the clan and in all ways that mattered they had succeeded. She turned away, a sour taste in her mouth as she realized that they weren't even bothering to blame her for the disaster and they must all know that she was connected to the pack now; in the face of such a disaster even vengeance was not enough to rouse them. Even vengeance was no longer enough to give life meaning.

Kaelin bit her lip as sympathetic pain pushed water to her eyes. For so damn long she thought no one could relate to all the gruesome ways in which she was damaged, to the ways in which her grandfather had damaged her and now she had finally found them, first her pack and now her family and they were people that others would never forgive for the raids that had been happening on the surface.

"Kaelin," Ulrich called quietly.

"Yes," Kaelin's voice stuck and then she managed to clear it, "Yes?"

"They were fighting from two directions at once," Ulrich explained, "Zilvra said there is no back door into the citadel. I'm sure you saw the runic array in the main hall." He paused while she nodded. "I'm sure there are others some where in the citadel. If we can find them, then perhaps we can tell just who helped them get in because I am sure that no werewolf alone pulled off this stunt."

"You are right there," Kaelin fought not to snarl as Ulrich wasn't the one she was angry with, "Unless grandfather has managed to bite a wizard of some high degree and bring them to heel and I highly doubt that."

"Could you have a quick sniff around and see if you can find it please?" Ulrich looked down at Lady Zilvra, "I think I'm going to be here a while."

"On it," Kaelin nodded and turned back down the corridor. She reached the end and stopped and sniffed. The smells were too mixed up. She looked back at the others.

"I'm going to have to change," she said, "I can't sort all the smells out like this so no need to freak out, I'm not losing control."

The Ash Elf body guards looked at each other, looked at where Lady Zilvra lay crumpled against Ulrich and looked back at her, a guard weariness in their eyes. Kaelin took that as permission and turned her head away as she let the beast rise up. There was a savage sounding crack as her bones reformed and she fought down a growl, telling the beast that they were there to do a job, not start another war. It did not like this idea, it wanted violence and it wanted violence right now but it came to heel.

Kaelin sniffed again and in her mind the corridor light up like a firework display. The smell from the nursery was a stomach churning mixture of gore red, pained brown and black death scent. The scent from the Lady Zilvra and Ash Elves were a depressed mix of sickly blues and yellows over their base natural grey. The werewolves... Kaelin sniffed deeper and sneezed as she tried to deny the evidence her nose was giving her but there it was again. The werewolves were a muddy, musky brown shot through with the reds of rage and fury and hunger but that was a cover coat over what they had originally been. There were a fair number of humans, with their sharp, acrid stink and even a Overworld Elf, if the bright silver of the tarnished scent was anything to go by but what worried Kaelin was the sheer number of werewolves that had a grey undertone to their scent. She had known it at an instinctive level but to have it confirmed... Her grandfather was becoming even more powerful if he could now turn someone against their family so damn quickly. She shivered and rubbed the hair on her arms flat.

Setting off down the corridor, she sniff and snuffled her way back down the trail. It was deeper into the substructure of the citadel than she'd expected but she found it. She snatched her head back, snorting and rubbing at her muzzle. What ever had made this circle of cooling runes was definitely not a werewolf, not by the way it smelt. That was worse than sniffing up a fluff bunny, felting like she'd just sniffed silver filings up her nose. She rubbed harder and shuddered as the beast retreated, her bones cracking as they realigned.

"Right," she looked round at were she was, "The barracks, makes perfect sense. Ow." She rubbed her nose again, sniffed and sneezed, explosively. It took her a few minutes to find a piece of cloth that she was willing to use to clean up her face. "Oh, well that's better, I suppose." She gave her nose a final rub and looked again at the circle. "Bother it, I can't make this out at all." She rolled her eyes as she realized who she was going to need to ask. "Double bugger it." With a final huff she walked out of the room.

Jeremiah was still sat outside in the courtyard even though, by main effort Thorian, the living Ash Elves and Jeremiah's puppets were making good in roads on the mess in the first corridor. Kaelin checked the bridge and between the efforts to clear the bodies and the predation of the citadel's animal inhabitants the harrowing light of the kerveads was being kept at bay. With that worry assured, she turned to the more pressing problem.

"Oh most brilliant and esteemed blubber house," she began, unable to completely swallow her pride, "Most wonderful and intelligent priest of the great nameless god," she also refused to say that name, just thinking of it made her hair try to crawl off of her scalp and the beast whimpered, tucking its metaphorical tale between its legs, "Oh mighty and powerful student of the hidden and unknown arts. Would you fore bare to look down upon us lowly beings and bless us with your knowledge?" There, that ought to do it, she pandered to his pride enough.

"Oh," Jeremiah said, rising to his feet, "Oh, I see how it is. Now that you have a use for me, now that you want something out of me, now you are willing to come and give me the respect I deserve. Well you can go and take a running jump off of that bridge as far as I'm concerned, you and all your vermin ridden kind!"

"And as far as I am concerned I really ought to have bitten you on the face so everyone and anyone who meets you would know you are a back stabbing toady who's crawling to the sort of god any rational person would run a million miles away from," Kaelin replied, folding her arms.

"Oh looks who's talking," Jeremiah's face turned red, "The illegitimate spawn of a werewolf or three or four! Since when did you have the right to be all high and mighty, huh? Seeing as your unholy kind is trying to over run the Underworld, causing all this mayhem in the first place! If it wasn't for you and yours we won't even be here. This is all your fault!"

"So you'd rather the King didn't have a job to send us on?" Kaelin raised an eyebrow, "Now how would that have worked out? Let me see, ho hum. Oh yes, it would have resulted in all of us dancing the hemp fandango about two weeks back now. Didn't think about that, did you?"

"Oh doh!" Jeremiah seemed on the verge of exploding with frustration, "You jumped up, snippety, little fuzz ball!"

"And you're an over weigh pudding pie doll, who's only losing weigh because we're been on the march for so long. Worn the fat off of your feet yet?" Kaelin retorted, almost smiling. Urgency aside, this was almost fun, picking a verbal fight with the disgraced priest. She hadn't had a spat like this in months. In fact the last time she'd had a spat like this had been her litter mate, Dismon. Neither of them had liked their grandfather's way and had found the easiest way to avoid being called out as weak was to have noisy 'fights' with lots of inventive insult yelling and rolling around in the dust. It always seemed to work at keeping Grandpa's attention away. Part of her hoped that Dismon had survived and got away.

"My feet are none of your concern!" Jeremiah roared, "What should be your concern is this!" He began waving his arm around again, looking for all the world like an insane conductor trying to control a orchestra of monkeys.

"What's wrong with your arm?" Kaelin raised her eyebrows, "The way you are waving it about I would presume that it is nearly healed already. I assumed that your god had helped you out again, seeing as you bought his favor with just a minor amount of betrayal."

"That is just it!" Jeremiah thundered, "Klu'ga-nath had no hand in this healing. Just what have you done to me? You mangy, dim witted cur!"

"I bit you," Kaelin rubbed an ear. Really his voice was becoming over penetrating and did he forget what happened the last time he raised his voice. "I bit you as punishment for murdering Stink of the Midden and his friend. I bit you for betraying our allies. I bit you for your treason to the pack. Maybe you should remember that if you hadn't committed murder then I wouldn't have bit you."

"I don't care if you think you had reasons, you impoverished, squalid mongrel! I want to know what you have done to me!" Jeremiah was definitely in danger of bursting something in a moment, "I want to know what I can do to stop this wretched infection! I do not want to be a worthless, dog breathed bimbo!"

Kaelin looked down for a moment as if she was contrite. She was actually biting her lip to not burst out laughing in his face. It would have taken a lot more than her bite to turn him into a bimbo but she could not explain that with a straight face.

"You can rest assured that you will not be a worthless, dog breathed bimbo," she managed to say with a straight face as she lifted her head but she was never sure how she managed that effort. "It would take a power far beyond mine to be able to perform such a feet. The only thing you are likely to need to worry about are the fleas once a month."

"What do you mean by that?" Jeremiah demanded, arm finally lowering.

"Only that roughly once a month you are likely to need a bath and possibly a razor with which to deal with the extra growth of hair," Kaelin observed, "You can however rest assured that you will never need to worry about going bald."

Jeremiah glared, not entirely trusting her.

"Of course, someone of your amazing knowledge and book skill should surely be able to find out if there is any cure for such a condition," Kaelin continued, "Come to think of it I wouldn't mind it myself if someone could find out a way of making the animal a little easier to control. I wouldn't even mind it if it was a case of having to take a potion each and every day for the rest of my life, as long as it wasn't too ridiculously expensive. After all, if they prices me out of the market I might have to resort to killing people in order to pay for it. I'm not entirely sure that the King has a bounty hunter system in place but I'm sure that I'd be able to find someone willing to pay." She smiled as she half turned away, cupping her chin with one hand, "Come to think of it, there's a certain Abbey which I'm pretty sure would be very interested in paying for the return of a certain ex-member of the clergy there. I wonder if I should look in with them on the way back to the capital."

"You won't dare," Jeremiah blustered.

"Well seeing as nobody has come up with that potion I don't really have a need to do I?" Kaelin let her hand flop over, "But if someone should come up with that potion then they should consider the fact that they will get a whole lot more customers if they keep their profit margin reasonable, wouldn't you say?"

Jeremiah frowned as he considered it.

"That maybe half way sensible," he admitted at last, "But I want to be able to go through the library in the Wizard's Tower on our way back to the Capital."

"Now that's an easy thing to agree to," Kaelin nodded, "So in the effort to speed up us getting there, how about you come and have a look at the runic circles we've found inside? If we find out where they came from then we might be able to stop all of this in the next few days and be out of here."

Jeremiah closed his eyes and practiced deep breathing until his color had just about returned to normal.

"Fine," he grated out, "But only because I want access to those books as quickly as possible."

"Deal," Kaelin held out her hand on instinct but was glad when Jeremiah huffed passed her without taking it. Sometimes his rudeness really did help the world to go round better.

Jeremiah huffed and puffed along the corridors, not quite complaining about the 'mess' that was still all over the floor. He was minimally interested in the grand circle on the floor of the main hall but it was when Kaelin led him to the one in the barracks that he really became interested.

"Well now," he smiled as he bent over to peer more closely at the marks beginning to fade out on the floor, "Maybe you are useful for something other than collecting fleas."

"You're welcome," Kaelin rolled her eyes as she muttered.

Jeremiah flexed his knuckles and set to work, muttering under his breath as he passed his hands through the air above the circle. The fading symbols sharpened, their forms looking as if they were raising back up out of the stone of the floor until they lay there more perfect and clear than even when Kaelin had first found them. Jeremiah continued muttering, fingers beginning to trace symbols of his own in the air. A sickly yellowish green light began to infuse the runes, crawling through them. Kaelin felt the hair on her arms beginning to stand up on end.

With a sharp fizz and crackle the runes flared and burnt out, leaving only the nose tweaking stink of burnt hair but Jeremiah grinned expansively.

"It turns out that you were more intelligent than your usual standard when you brought this matter to my attention, my dear," his grin reminded Kaelin of a pike fish grinning at its prey just before it struck so she folded her arms and said nothing about his back handed complement, "They used three of those runic circles to break into the citadel and I know exactly where to find the site of the last one."

"And we'd want to find it because?" Kaelin asked deadpan.

"Because I think it is still active," Jeremiah's grin did not falter, "There is a vast magically signature in the cellar area of this complex and if I'm right then we might be able to catch the last few stragglers as they leave." 

"They were leaving?" Kaelin raised an eyebrow, "Now that does surprise me."

"Really my dear," Jeremiah smiled, "Do you really think that they would have all stayed for the after battle feast?"

"Yes," Kaelin was blunt, "What surprises me was that Grandpa could convince any of them to leave once the dinner gong had sounded, normally...." She trailed off.

"My dear Kaelin, are you feeling alright?" Jeremiah asked with sickly sweet concern.

"He was here," Kaelin's eyes were wide but her pupils had shrunk down to pin pricks, "Holy heaven help us, he was here!"

"My dear, I don't understand, who..."

"Grandfather!" Kaelin roared, "Grandfather was here! He was here in person because he's the only one who could have forced them to leave off chewing up everything inside this place!" She continued to curse and swear for several minutes, turning on the spot, unable to decide what she wanted to hit or throw.

"There's something else you need to know," Jeremiah said carefully but not out of concern for her but rather trying to judge how much distress he could cause her.

"What?" Kaelin stilled, "What else?"

"Oh, just a little something," Jeremiah looked away and scratched his arm. Hat buzzed on the top of his miter.

"What else!?!" Kaelin roared, the whites of her eyes turning red with the force of it.

"Oh just that some of the werewolves that attacked here were Ash Elves, once upon a time," Jeremiah shrugged as he said it. Kaelin's face went pale again.

"Oh squit," she breathed. The secret was well and truly out of the bag now. Her intellect had told her, her nose had told her and now someone who had every reason to tell the truth because he knew it would hurt her had told her.

Ulrich and Zilvra arrived in time to see Kaelin sitting down on a cot, holding her head in her hands to stop her fingers trembling. She was taking long deep breaths but appeared to be shivering with each one.

"What did you do?" Ulrich's sardonic tone was totally lost on Jeremiah.

"I merely answered the question she asked me," Jeremiah spread his hands benevolently. 

"Do you remember Elisha telling us that there were more and more of the 'men-beasts' that could match a Damned Soul on the battle field?" Kaelin asked, "Do you remember the fact that he said some of them fought as if they were being driven by a will outside of their own?"

Ulrich frowned for a moment and then snapped his fingers.

"First day we were there," he stated, "The dinner on the terrace."

"Yes," Kaelin nodded, "Do you remember how I said 'they'll be infecting people, whole towns at a time'?"

"Ye-s-s-s-s," Ulrich said slowly, a nagging suspicion rearing its ugly head.

"We just found the town," Kaelin confirmed that suspicion in an instance, "They are infecting the Ash Elves, whole citadels at a time. What we are seeing dead here are the ones strong enough to fight, fight the infection and fight the will behind it. The weaker ones are being forcibly recruited and once they are infected there's no going back." She looked at Zilvra. "You had better check the bodies in the main hall again. Grandpa would have wanted one of the Matriarch's favorites as his new breeder."

Lady Zilvra put her hand to her mouth, her skin going dove grey, eyes wide with horror.

"I thought that wolves mate for life with only one partner," Jeremiah's smile wasn't pleasant.

"Wolves do," Kaelin confirmed, "Werewolves on the other hand, or at least werewolves of my grandfather's bent... My grandmother wasn't the only women he had at his beck and call and none of them were his true mate. None were his equal, all he was interested in was having his full quiver. Why do you suppose that natural wolves despise werewolves almost as much as humans do? Werewolves are a perversion of both human and wolf, the worst traits of both and none of the decency of either. If I hadn't run when I did, well you saw Greely. My guess would be that I had been promised to Grandpa's right hand man as a reward for being his most loyal minion, if I was..." her mouth twisted, "Worthy of having a litter. Guess I should be grateful for always being the runt."

"Do I really want to know what constituted being 'worthy of a litter'?" Ulrich asked.

"Strong enough to survive in the wild forest but still submissive and meek to Grandpa and any others of the 'Pack'," Kaelin hunched her shoulders, not looking at him, "Some of my sisters were providing pups for the Pack before they finished their second decade."

Lady Zilvra hissed something between her teeth in her own language, the lilting tune of it gone flat and bitter with disgust.

"So how did they get in?" Ulrich asked, looking form one to the other, "That was what you were trying to find out when you left us at... at the nursery." He swallowed. He really did wish that he hadn't looked in that room. He'd never considered having children of his own, as a no-blood himself he hadn't wanted to lumber another generation with the taint of having unmarried parents. No way would his father have given permission for him to marry before he'd left the family estates and afterwards, well the life he'd been leading hardly lent itself to settling down but what had been left in the nursery... Gods above but there were some creatures that needed putting down.

"The runic circles," Jeremiah smiled, "Three of them but I do not think that they were crafted by a werewolf. The pack used them to come through and retreat with their prize but the magics used to hold those portal open were not werewolf in origin."

"Were they Ash Elf?" Ulrich asked.

"You dare?" Zilvra rounded on him.

"I do not mean someone in the Fastness of the Snake Clan," Ulrich held up his hands, "But when we were on the surface we came across Greely, the werewolf who spoke in the courtyard, leading a small squad and they were with one of your people."

"What?" Lady Zilvra whispered after a moment.

"They were with an Ash Elf, someone called..." Ulrich clicked his fingers a moment, "Deslin! The other elves there called him Lord Deslin. He was telling Greely and I quote, 'concern yourself not, you will have what you want once we have what we want'. Now I maybe misreading the situation but it sounds to me like one of the clans, some where, have a working agreement with Kaelin's Grandfather."

"Impossible," Lady Zilvra backed away, shaking her head, "None of the clans..."

"Maybe not one of the clans," Kaelin interrupted, earning a censory glare from the body guard standing in the doorway, "You said yourself that some of the weaker members of the clans sometimes leave and make it to the surface. What if this is a collection of such individuals? What if they believe that they can become a clan in their own right if they use the werewolves to weaken the other clans down here first?"

"That is a deliciously treacherous idea, my dear," Jeremiah smiled, "But it is incorrect I'm afraid. The being that created and controlled the circles has the taste of both dragon and the fey."

A cold silence fell as they all stared at him.

"I think I prefer it being a renegade group of Ash Elves," Ulrich said after a full minute.

"I take it that the fey are not nice people?" Kaelin asked, "But hang on, Felicity the Chest Weasel was a fey... thing. She didn't seem so bad."

"Speak for yourself," Jeremiah muttered.

"Unfortunately that is the problem with the Fey," Ulrich said, "Some of them are no worse than children who have had too many sweeties and not enough smacks on the bottom, others of them, ugh." He shuddered. "Have you ever heard the term 'hag ridden'?"

"Yes," Kaelin admitted.

"Well that's the very least of what a hag came do to you," Ulrich explained, "If a hag gets hold of you, you'll be lucky if you get out of there with all your limbs still on the right way round."

"Some say that you are lucky if she just straight up skins you for her cooking pot," Jeremiah interjected, "And if people would stop interrupting me I was going to tell you all, once again, that one of the circle is still active down in the cellar."

They all looked at him and as one turned to the door.

"Any idea of the numbers?" Ulrich asked as they trooped down the corridor, his centipede crawling along the wall beside them.

"I'm afraid that I only know that about thirty came through," Jeremiah replied as he walked along beside them, "As far as I can tell none of them have returned back through the circle."

Ulrich looked at Lady Zilvra and after a moment she nodded and stepped back among the ranks of her body guard. Wordlessly they clattered down the steps that led into the bowels of the citadel. It reminded Kaelin of the King's dungeon were they had been held before they were wielded together to make the current King's Special. However, the King's dungeon had not included the blood stains on the walls or the smears of something unnameable on the floor. Here and there, bits and pieces still lay on the floor. The werewolves had enjoyed their fun down here as well only...

"Jeremiah," Ulrich called, "I hate to break it to you but you've misjudged your magics."

"I beg your pardon?" Jeremiah demanded.

"I said you misjudged your magics," Ulrich crouched, one hand brushing the floor, "Cause I've just found the circle down here and it is as cold and dead as the werewolves that have been relieved of their heads."

"That's impossible," Jeremiah pushed through the shadows to his side, frowning as he gazed down at the circle of runes, "I can still feel that it is active and it's... over... there?" His anger faded as he realized that he was pointing at a heavy door that hung askew and split on its hinges. They stood facing the gaping maw of the doorway and Kaelin shivered as the hairs on her arms stood up on end. There was something subtly wrong about the way the shadows were moving, spilling out of that doorway like a questing tongue that slowly tasted the air and beckoned them in.

"My Lady Zilvra," Ulrich spoke over his shoulder, "I believe that it would be prudent for the sake of your family if you remain back here with your brothers while we investigate this."

"The clan is dead..." she began.

"But your family is not," Ulrich replied, "While you live your family endures. You are the last living part of the clan, while the family line endures with you then the clan has the chance of rebirth in a new form. If you die now then the clan remains dead. The Kraken clan is dead, the Snake clan has a chance of continuing in your blood line."

She opened her mouth to reply and then looked down at her hand. The tattoo of the serpent twitched across her skin and flicked its tongue. She lifted her head and said something to her brothers in her lilting tongue. They withdrew to one side of the cellar, down one of the side corridors so that they were out of the direct line of fire from the doorway.

Ulrich looked back to the doorway to find Jeremiah already filling it. Kaelin just shrugged, perfectly happy to let the unpleasant priest to take the risks for a change. Ulrich's curiosity compelled him to go closer. Rising on to his tip toes he craned to look over Jeremiah's shoulder. Beyond Jeremiah's bulk he could see a room built for the more valuable slaves. Laid out more like the barracks upstairs with proper, if simple beds, in two rows and a fire place at one end it never the less it seemed empty at first glance but then Ulrich spotted the crowd of men at the back of the room. The patterns of burn scars on some and the rock dust in the hair of others said louder than words that they were metal workers and stone masons but right now they were crowded against the left hand wall of the room like they really wished they could walk backwards through the solid stone, their eyes locked on...

On one of the beds on the right hand side of the room a young girl sat, her red bob cut hair falling around her face as she carved the small wooden figurine in her hands.

Jeremiah stepped into the room and something crunched under his foot. He looked down and saw what was unmistakably a rib bone, suck dry and bleached white, stripped of fat both inside and out, broken under his foot. Beside it lay a wolf skull but larger, more domed than any wolf skull could hope to be. As he looked up he realized that it was not the only werewolf skull littering this room. The girl on the bed was looking up at him, blinking through strange crystal lenses held in wire rims.

"Hello my dear, who are you?" Jeremiah asked with what he thought was a pleasant smile.

"I am Estella," she replied, brushing wood shavings off her foreign dress, "Estella Blackstar. And you would be?"

"I am merely a humble servant," Jeremiah bowed, pressing a hand over his heart. She looked like a girl, she sounded like a girl but there was the feeling of dragon magic about her and he remembered the feel of the Fey he had sensed earlier. It was never a good idea to give your name to the Fey.

She sniffed and tilted her head slightly.

"I think you are lying," she stated, "I don't think you are a servant and I don't think you are humble either."

"Well people of your age are rarely good judges of character, my dear," Jeremiah smiled again, "I assure you that I am the most humble and willing servant of King Tatsuya."

She frowned some more.

"You are," she stated, "You are lying. He doesn't like liars, he doesn't like liars at all."

Jeremiah frowned, stepping furthering into the room so he could face her properly. The craftsmen on the other side of the room cowered.

"I beg your pardon, my dear, but who doesn't like liars?" he asked.

Some thing squelched behind him. The noise was both fluid and solid at the same time, like bones being twisted out of their joints and then slowly being pulled from their flesh, a grizzly wrenching, twisting sucking sound and then the hot breath puffed on the back of his neck.

"Excuse me but do you know where around here I might find a completely soulless husk?"

The voice somehow both rumbled and bubbled at the same time, lovingly drawing out the last word.

Jeremiah twisted round so he could look over his shoulder. Some thing stood there, something that was straight out of a nightmare.

To call it a black dragon would have been way off the mark. It was black and it was a dragon but it was not just a black dragon. It fit inside the room but somehow the space around it seemed distorted, giving the impression that it was a much larger being seen at a distance, that it loomed over Jeremiah in all its liquid glory, the dark matter of the void of stars made form. Nebula shifted and flowed over its hide, a hide that rippled and swelled even when it was still. It wasn't liquid but it wasn't quite solid either, struggling to hold its form. It eyes were the sick glow of dying super novas.

Jeremiah didn't pee, not quite.

"Well I do believe that there is a whole courtyard of werewolves that have no further use for their mortal forms, you could take your pick," he suggested.

A tail, miles long and yet contained within the room, lashed.

"No I mean a still living soulless husk," it gurgled and hissed in the same breath.

"Well there is a still living werewolf outside this very room," Jeremiah fought not to smile and scream at the same moment, "I believe that some theologians consider werewolves to have bargained with the devil for their unnatural powers. After all, it is a well know fact that curses only afflict those that deserve them. Everything is god's will, such banes are the mark of moral failing..."

Wings, in which the light of ailing stars sputtered and shifted, flared at the same moment that Kaelin called, "I heard that!"

"No!" the festering voice seethed, "I mean a..."

It stilled or at least tried to, its form sagging in layers and then hauling itself back into shape, regarding Jeremiah with greater intensity. Jeremiah suppressed the urge to whimper and run. Targeted by those world ending eyes, he gritted his teeth to stop them chattering.

"Oh," it seeped, "Oh you're close, you're very close. You are quite the sack of shite, aren't you?"

Jeremiah glowered as he heard Kaelin snigger outside the room, then he closed his eyes as a muzzle of liquid jet and perishing suns lowered towards his, breathing in his scent.

"Gah!" the thing exclaimed, backing away, making the room bend around it to do so, sneezing and rubbing its muzzle, "Oh foul... disgusting... odious." It seemed to be struggling to clear whatever had offended its sensibilities out of its nasal passages. "Gah, you are one of his! Oh of all the ill luck, five hundred years of searching and the first truly deserving vessel has already tainted itself with HIM." It snorted and spat at Jeremiah's feet, a puke of a wriggling black sludge that writhed before curdling and evaporating.

"Oh very well," it sighed, dragging its claws over the flagstones, "I shall have to settle for the arrangement I already have."

Jeremiah heard Estella stand behind him.

"What arrangement would that..." he began, hating the fact he couldn't keep the nervousness out of his voice.

With a wordless cry of effort the thing liquefied fully, flooding passed Jeremiah in a raging torrent of dark goop. Jeremiah jumped away from it with a terrified squeak, turning in time to see it strike Estella full on. Her body jerked and flailed, arching backwards as it was embroiled in the tidal surge. Someone, and Jeremiah never admitted who, moaned in terror as he realized that it was forcing its way down her throat. Estella's upper half flopped forward as the last of it disappear but somehow she remained standing, then she straightened and Jeremiah stepped back, fingers arching in the Holy gesture of the god he had abandoned. Her eyes were completely black. She blinked, once, twice, thrice and the black faded, allowing her real eyes to look out at the world. She smacked her lips several times, a look of puzzlement crossing her face.

"Now I'm hungry," she said.

The craftsmen broke. Jeremiah found himself buffeted and shoved as the terrified men pushed passed him, heedless in their desperate need to be out of the room where Estella stood, sobbing in their terror. Their pounding footsteps faded into the distance.

"I think you scared them," Jeremiah observed to Estella. She sighed.

"Silly people," she shook her head, "If I was going to do anything to them I could have done it days ago and I don't like my food warm and wriggling." She bent, fished a small satchel out for under her bed and trotted out of the room. She looked up at Kaelin as she left and smiled.

"Hello, I don't suppose you know where the kitchens are?" she asked.

"Um, that way," Kaelin pointed to the stairs nonplussed.

"Thank you," Estella said cheerfully and bounced away through the dungeon and up the stairs as if this was all just routine for her.

Inside the room Jeremiah sank down on to one of the beds and waited for the shaking to stop.

Outside the room, Ulrich had been trying to keep the guards distracted with tails of his exploits while he was a member of the King's Special as well as some of the amusing situations Jeremiah had gotten himself into on their travels. Having seen what had boiled out of the shadows behind Jeremiah, he'd had no ready wish to step inside the room and potential draw its ire. Part of him had admired and been appalled that Kaelin had stood listening at the door and spoken loud enough to be heard inside the room.

As he had regaled them all, Lady Zilvra had openly smiled at his description of the deception he had carried out on board the Armored Dragon and even some of her brothers had started fighting not to smile. Ulrich took that as a win. He had faltered in his telling when the young girl skipped out of the room with a carefree smile on her face to greet Kaelin. Kaelin's response was more than he could have managed.

One of Zilvra's brothers went to bar the girl's way, an ugly look on his face but Zilvra stopped him, a hand on his wrist. Her brother looked at her with a great deal of fear in his eyes but Zilvra paused a moment obviously trying to formulate what she wanted to say.

"No," she said quietly, "We cannot stop her."

"Is this because of her power?" her brother replied carefully, a look of being ready to cower in his eyes, "Do we not need to keep her controlled?"

"No, or at least, not like that," Lady Zilvra corrected herself and paused again, pinching the space between her eyes, "We are without clan, without fastness, without power. We must learn the ways of the powerless, the ways of building alliances with others by making them want to be allies for the alliance's sake. We... we must learn the ways of the small, of the weak, for now... now we are one of them. We do not have the power any more to demand and have others do our will merely because we say so, we must be able to give on equal terms to those we wish to do our will. We..." She faltered again, struggling to find words for so massive a break with a life time of training.

"Give and so get," Ulrich finished, "It is not the whole of how we of the weak do it but it as good a place as any to start and it need not be a physical thing that you trade for what you want. After all, we of the King's Special traded our services as warriors and adventures in exchange for our lives so it maybe time to consider what skills you can offer to those of the surface in exchange for sanctuary."

"The Surface?" Zilvra was startled at that suggestion.

"Where else do you have to go?" Kaelin asked, "Can you safely stay down here in the Underworld? Yes you have this fortress but even I know you need a basic number of guards to man a place like this. Do you reckon you have enough? 'Cause I'm pretty sure that once the word gets round that the kerveads were drawn here by their thousands the other clans are going to know you've been well and truly mullered. Will they leave you alone? Or will that dragon spider hatchling of yours go to the highest bidder?"

Zilvra looked at Kaelin in shunned amazement and for the first time, discipline broke down among her bodyguards as they turned questioning, frightened gazes at each other.

They didn't have the numbers, Ulrich knew that at a glance, they wouldn't be able to hold this place, they would be little better than rats in a barrel. Kaelin went to say something more but Ulrich lifted a hand to still her. Zilvra's gaze had turned inward and she needed time to process everything Kaelin had just said.

Ulrich gestured Kaelin a little way away from Zilvra and her brothers faced up to the fact that their world was falling in on itself and they hadn't even really had a chance to defend it.

"Are you absolutely sure no one in the werewolf pack could have pulled off a stunt like those runes?" he asked quietly, "Gramp's couldn't have bitten a wizard and made them do it for him?"

"No," Kaelin shook her head, "Even if it was a dragon kin, which would explain why Jeremiah picked up a dragon signature to the magic, that wouldn't explain why he sensed Fey as well. A human wizard won't have tasted like dragon and fey plus there is the fact that a wizard would be too strong willed to be dominated by my Grandfather. You have to keep a strong hand on your sanity when you're a wizard or you wind up like the one Elisha dealt with and he was too insane for my Grandfather to get his claws into. No whatever this is, it is something that allied itself willingly with the pack and no I have no idea what Grandfather could be offering in return."

"Ah well," Ulrich shrugged, "Worth asking." He sobered. "Not really reassuring though," he observed.

"Tell me about it," Kaelin muttered then added, "Oh look out, here comes trouble." Jeremiah had just left the cell.

"Maybe we ought to ask Thorian to hold him down for a change," Ulrich murmured back, "Hang on, that's a point," Kaelin observed, he looked around, "Where is Thorian?"

"He was working in the courtyard to help clean up the mess out there," Kaelin remembered but she didn't get any further as Jeremiah stormed up to them.

"I thought we were the King's Special," Jeremiah looked like he was towing his own personal thunder cloud about on his brows, "I thought we were supposed to be a team!" Kaelin raised an eyebrow at that. "And where were you when I was facing down a monstrosity of the outer dark masquerading as an innocent? No where!"

"Well, dear boy," Ulrich smiled, turning Jeremiah's mannerisms back on him, "You seemed to be handling it quite well on your own. It seemed such a shame to interrupt and steal your thunder."

"Steal my thunder?" Jeremiah quivered, "I was having the fright of my life opposing an eldritch horror and the witch disguised as a child that undoubtedly the cause of the destruction of this clan and you think you would have been stealing my thunder?" Kaelin couldn't work out if Jeremiah was angry, still frightened or offended.

"Well you did accuse Hartseer of stealing Thorian's thunder that one time when we were in the Dead Swamp," Ulrich explained, "I did think you would object in the same way if I interfered and drove it off before you had the chance of dealing with it yourself."

"You... I..." Jeremiah spluttered. Kaelin raised her eyebrows. It was unlike Jeremiah to be this agitated and she wasn't sure why. Granted she hadn't seen exactly what had been in that cell with him but it had smelt of the clean, crisp deep frost of winter when the last reds of autumn were still on the trees, the sort of night that made you glad to be able to see the stars.

"I could have been its host!" Jeremiah burst out.

"Oh how terrible," Kaelin muttered, "What ever would we have done if Jerry had a new personality?"

"You I'm sure you would have been fine old boy," Ulrich said, "After all, if you have faith enough you can tell the mountains to go and throw themselves into the sea. I believe that is a quote from the Holy texts of the abbey you came from so it would stand to reason that your god would have protected your soul, even if you had to be the passenger in your own body for a while."

"Well you wouldn't have been!" Jeremiah yelled, "How do you think you would have stopped it if it had possessed me and then decided that you looked like a tasty little snack?"

Kaelin and Ulrich just looked at each other. Jeremiah glared at them, opened his mouth to say something more but then read their expressions.

"You wouldn't have..." he took a step back.

"I'd say that we would have had a lot more justification than the murderer of Stink of the Midden had," Kaelin's expression was one of flat dislike.

"Come on now people," Ulrich held up his hands, "Let's not brood over what didn't happen. I think we have had enough of a spite for one day. If nothing else we all need to decide where we are going from here and I for one would like to discuss it in much more comfortable surroundings than we are in at the moment."

"You want to go up to where that child-thing has run off to?" Jeremiah demanded.

"Well I can't see any other way of getting out of here and if she wanted us dead, then she probably could have done it already," Ulrich shrugged and turned to Lady Zilvra, offering his arm, "My lady, shall we?"

After a moment she smiled, even it that expression was a little tired and sorrowful, before laying her hand on his arm.

Kaelin meanwhile bowed sardonically to Jeremiah.

"After you sir."

He glared at her but started huffing and puffing his way into main part of the fortress. As they reached the top of the stairs Kaelin started sniffing.

"What is it?" Ulrich asked, hand going to one of his sword hilts. If those mangy curds had come back for a second go...

"Frying," Kaelin said after a moment, "I smell something frying. I'm not sure what but something meaty is frying and I also think I can smell hot bread. Not butter though, I can't smell butter."

"What is butter?" Lady Zilvra asked. Kaelin went to look at her as though she thought Zilvra was as thick as a brick but Ulrich shook his head at her. Kaelin frowned.

"I believe that the Ash Elves are not that familiar with the beast known as a cow, are you?" he smiled at Lady Zilvra to show that the question was not meant as a disrespect to her or her people.

"What's a cow?" she frowned, that adorable little frown that made the end of her nose tilt up. As they wandered through the corridors Ulrich tried to explain what a cow was and therefore what such things as butter, cream and cheese were. Kaelin was pretty sure that Zilvra didn't believe a word of any of it. They pressed on, traveling closer to the smells of cooking and gradually others of their party picked up on different smells. They traveled through the fancy parts of the citadel and into the more utilitarian areas of the fortress. As they were walking do a plain but wide corridor something small nipped out of an open light doorway on the left hand side ahead of them. Jeremiah jerked his mace up as the small thing hoovered in front of them. Kaelin also blinked as it fanned its feathered wings in front of them, creating a noise not unlike a bumblebee. It chirruped and swiveled its pointed ears towards them, tiny paws posed in midair, its two toned brush flicking behind it. Kaelin found herself leaning towards the tiny, feathered winged fox, a creature so small that it could have sat in the palm of her hand. It chirruped again and then flipped in the air and speed back through the doorway.

"After you good sir?" Kaelin looked at Jeremiah.

"My dear, I have already been through a doorway first today," Jeremiah smiled at her, "And what I saw is going to haunt me for a very long time. I may not be the sharpest knife in the draw but I do hope that I can learn from my mistakes."

"If that is what you call it," Kaelin grunted and cautiously looked around the door frame.

Thorian sat at a long table in the middle of the room, a huge fire place with something equally huge turning on a spit behind him, a platter with some greasy looking meat heaped beside door stopping hunks of bread on the table top in front of him and a huge mug of something foaming in his hand. He was grinning and watching Estella as she finished putting the last touches on the little finch in her hands. She held it for a moment and then the color rushed up through it, turning it a deep crimson. It swiveled its head from side to side and then hopped round on Estella's hand to look at her before twittering to add its song to the six other strains of music that were chattering, chirruping and bleeping round the kitchen.

Thorian laughed in delight and then noticed Kaelin's upper half craning round the doorway to stare.

"What?" he asked, "I was hungry."

Kaelin opened and shut her mouth several times before she managed to shake her thoughts into any form of order.

"We wondered where you got to," she took the risk of stepping into the room. The little creatures swirled round her but flitted away when Estella called to them. Emboldened by that Kaelin stepped further into the room.

"As I said, I was hungry," Thorian took a swig out of his drink, "Its heavy work cleaning up all the mess in this place and you lot disappeared. Aye will say that her people were better than that." He gestured with his mug to were Zilvra was hovering anxiously in the doorway. "They stuck with me at the job until some of their friends who'd been with that funny dragon chick thing came to give them some time off. Found some wheel barrows some where so their getting faster at clearing this place out. When the first lot downed tools I thought I'd join them in having a break. Plenty of work to do here, still be there when I finish."

"And how did you come to meet our little enigma?" Lady Zilvra asked, sliding on to the end of the bench opposite Estella, watching the girl with a guarded expression.

"She walked in with her little friends," Thorian shrugged, "Cute little things." He rubbed the back of a rather lumpy looking toad on the table top. It inflated and then warbled a string of notes that sounded that they were made by a violin, turning a shifting pattern of purples as it did so.

"Now you don't see that everyday of the week," Ulrich slid on to the bench beside Zilvra.

Jeremiah stood near the door, arms folded and a glower on his face. The magical signatures of the little things around Estella were tiny, tiny and of a nature he didn't understand. It was sort of like the Fey but there was a dozen different threads woven into it as well. They buzzed and thrummed with life, a life that was brim full of the joy of life, a bubbling, blooming joy of life. He hated it. The winged fox swooped near him.

Everyone in the kitchen jerked round as the little fox screamed, Estella nearly falling over backwards as she tried to leap to her feet only to be imprisoned in the gap between the bench and the table. The winged fox was engulfed in a fist of embers and sparks that bored holes though it until its writhing form disintegrated. The other little creatures whirled in panicked circles, each yipping, yelping or crying in their own manner before diving back at Estella and piling back into her bag.

"Why did you do that!?!" Estella cried, tears gathering at the corner of her eyes.

"I agree," Zilvra stood more slowly, "What need was there to destroy the creature?"

"What's the matter, my dear?" Jeremiah's smile made Kaelin want to vomit, "A little uncomfortable now that your passenger has been diminished?"

"What?" Estella asked after a moment, apparently unable to process what he was accusing her of.

"You passenger," Jeremiah didn't stop smiling, "That perversion of a dragon that rides within you. Tell me, does he ride in your lungs? Or is it your stomach?"

"Stop being mean about Valodrael!" Estella bristled, "He's my friend!"

Everyone stared at her.

"Er, who are we talking about?" Thorian asked after a moment.

"This little girl," Estella clenched a fist at his words, "Has a passenger riding within her, a warped mockery of a dragon that apparently calls itself Valodrael. It is what is powering those little models of her. Just how much power did he lose when I destroyed your little parody of a living being?"

Estella drew herself up to her full high, eyes flashing. "Valodrael doesn't 'power' the talismans any more than I do! They're talisman wood, I only carve the form free of the excess. If you really new anything about magic you'd know that!"

She slipped into a foreign language that seemed to be mostly consonants and a couple of nasty sounding vowels. Nobody round the table knew exactly what she was saying but they all knew what she was saying. For once, Jeremiah didn't seem upset by the tirade but rather amused by the little slip of a girl trying to insult him. Estella drew an even deeper breath to yell some more and abruptly snapped it off behind her teeth, head jerking sideways as if listening to someone nobody else could heard. Expressions played themselves across her face, the play of a conversation conducted internally. Her eyes roved over the others at the table and then turned to gaze at Jeremiah. Her expression was more calculated and something about it made Jeremiah take a step back. It was no longer funny.

"Are the talismans something Valodrael taught you?" Zilvra asked carefully.

"Other way round," Estella said back down at the table and helped herself to a piece of bread, "I met him because of the talismans. Carving them had always been my way of escaping being lonely and my usual supply of the wood had been destroyed..." She trailed off for a moment and then rallied, "So I'd gone further a field than I usually did hunting for another supply. That and I needed some time away to find the strength to keep somethings under lock and key. And that's were I found him. He was hiding out in this crumbling shack in the back woods, surviving off what animals wandered his way. With..." She stopped a game, listening to that silent voice. "With his help I was able to leave home so we've been on the road ever since."

"And how did he wind up in a... shack?" Lady Zilvra asked, frowning with effort. Gently questioning a non-Ash Elf was not her forte but she was no longer a member of a powerful clan. The wheels of the world were turning in another way and she had to turn with them or be run under by them.

Estella shrugged.

"It was as far as he got after he had to flee the other continent," she took a bite of bread.

"The other continent?" Ulrich blinked.

"Yeah the other continent," Estella repeated and then looked up at their dumbfounded expressions, "You know - the other continent, the one beyond the eastern sea." They continued to blink at her. "Haven't you ever heard the rhyme? Further East than east, beyond the eastern shore, the burning land does to heaven soar." She waited a beat. "You really haven't ever heard of it?"

"I have heard of the eastern lands," Ulrich admitted, "But not that there was a land beyond that sea."

"There isn't, not really any more," Estella agreed, "It burnt about five hundred years ago. Valodrael managed to get out in time but precious few others did and they were all mortal races, they would have died ages ago."

Ulrich lent back on the bench as Thorian drew Estella's attention, asking her if she could carve him a talisman all of his very own. Hartseer had said several times that he had been stomping across the continent for four hundred and ninety seven years, looking for redemption but he hadn't said what exactly this Domili he had spoken of had looked like.

"Trouble in heaven?" Kaelin asked quietly.

"Just wondering how on Hestia you can contain something like Valodrael," Ulrich muttered, trying to hide his voice underneath Thorian's booming excitement, "And whether or not he is sometimes a little free in his interpretations of Estella's wishes. I'm wondering just how far away from himself he can work his magic from himself."

"You think Valodrael could have been the one who opened the portals? Without Estella noticing?" Kaelin asked, leaning towards him.

"He certainly seems like the sort of creature that would thrive on chaos," Ulrich murmured, "So I'm beginning to wonder if he could be the source of all the trouble down here..."

"No he's not," Estella interrupted in a sing-song voice, "If he was why would we have spent goodness only knows how long sat in that dismal little room? And why would the werewolves try to eat me if he was the one calling them in? Though..." she pouted a moment, "I suppose we could be why the trouble came here if the other dragon sensed Val and didn't want to share its territory."

"The other dragon?" Ulrich blinked.

"Yes the other dragon," Estella replied, "Val's been smelling her all over these caverns. It's why we were coming down here in the first place. We wouldn't have come near these caves if we hadn't smelt her. I know there's that big dragon down here but he smells old and lazy whereas this one stinks to high heaven of magic. That's what we were after. Val needs to find a way to get a new body of his own and to do that we need to track down some of the rarer sorts of magic, so if you're after her as well then I think we could work together on this."

"And what would Valodrael want in return for helping us to find the cause of all the troubles down here?" Ulrich asked carefully.

Estella closed her eyes for a moment, listening to some internal conversation.

"He wants first dibs on her library," she opened her eyes.

"And he won't try to eat us?" Ulrich dug for clarification.

"You? No," she turned and glared at Jeremiah, "Him? Possibly." Jeremiah smiled and bowed to her ironically.

"I do not think that he would much enjoy the experience my dear, after all my god might have words to say about such things."

"Indeed," Estella's eyes were flat with dislike.

"Well what to do?" Ulrich sat back and tapped his fingers together, "Who's more trustworthy? Jeremiah or a dragon? Jeremiah or a dragon? Jeremiah or a dragon?"

"It's Jeremiah we're talking about," Kaelin said wryly as she lend across to him.

"Good point," Ulrich smiled, "Dragon it is."

Estella smiled and then her eyes changed, the black of her pupils spilling out until they consumed the entirety of her eyes.

"We have an accord," the bubbling, rumbling voice spoke from her throat, "And I will see it honored." She/it turned their head to look at Jeremiah with a warning rumble before the black retreated back to where it should be.

"I am so glad that my companions agreed to launch themselves on this suicidal path before consulting me," Jeremiah said sourly. Zilvra tapped the table to get his attention.

"I think that you should know that if this Valodrael is what he says he is then he far more knowledgeable by far than any of us here," she informed him, "We have legends that the Void dragons and the Astra dragons were the only dragons that did not turn against the Begetters in the Time of Betrayal. It is said that they fled some where incredibly far away but their life spans put even other dragons to shame. The only ones that came close were the Titan-Silver dragons and they turned on each other in the god war that followed the Time of Betrayal. No one has seen either of them since. Valodrael maybe the only one who can tell you some of the power you so desperately seek."

"Oh," Jeremiah raised his eyebrows and looked back at Estella with a renewed light of interest in his eyes but she didn't change her expression from one of flat dislike.

"Try harder, Padre,"  she said flatly, "You hurt our friends. I learnt long ago not to forgive that easily."

"What joy," Jeremiah snarked, "We've picked up another unpleasant free wheeler, thanks to the inconsideration and impulsive decision making of my thoughtless companions."

"Well, technically it was Ulrich who made this decision," Kaelin passed the buck, "I'm just along for the ride to see how far we get before our new draconnic friend condemns your soul. Should be interesting to watch you have to play nice to keep on our young friend's good side. Got any particular rules or do you just make it up as you go along?" She turned to Estella.

"You are too nice," Estella, despite her youth, had a good grasp of irony, "But Valodrael doesn't trade in souls. His," she jabbed a finger at Jeremiah, "Patron claims that right, the right to judge souls worthy of existence but Valodrael doesn't. The Void Dragons never did, they allowed the small races to judge who among their number they didn't want so there no danger to your immortal souls just because you're going to journey with me."

"So which way do we go?" Ulrich asked cheerfully.

"Out of the building?" Estella suggested, making Kaelin snort to cover up a laugh.

"May I suggest that you rest here for a sleep cycle?" Zilvra offered, "It will take some time for the kerveads to clear, even if we manage to empty out all the dead in the next few hours and it will be dangerous to travel close to them while they are still swarming in such numbers."

"That sounds like a capital idea, good Lady," Ulrich smiled at her, "Would it also be permissible for us to resupply from your stocks?"

"You may as well," she said sadly, lowering her head into a hand, "Truth is that I don't know where to go. You are right that we cannot stay in the Underworld, with the clan so diminished we have no chance of protecting ourselves from our enemies but the surface world is foreign to us and we can hardly expect a warm welcome when the other clans have been raiding so frequently into the upper world."

"And you weren't?" Jeremiah folded his arms, not quite sneering.

"We had more pressing matters to concern us," Zilvra narrowed her eyes at him and then smiled as something slinked into the room, "Matters such as this little one." She reached down and rubbed the top of its head, making it close its many eyes in ecstasy. Ulrich frowned as he looked at the spider-dragon hatchling.

"Is it me or is he bigger already?" he asked of no one in particular.

"There were wounded beasts in the scholars dome," one of the Ash Elves that had arrived with the Hatchling informed him, "Ceann Mor has hunted well in his first hours."

"Splendid," Ulrich suppressed the shudder, "As for where you could go, you could try the Wizard's Tower." Lady Zilvra frowned. "It is in the area we surface dwellers call the Dead Swamp and at the moment he could do with a hand driving of the werewolves and the Ash Elves who are allied to them away."

"And you think he would accept us?" Lady Zilvra frowned.

"He is a... inactive member of the King's Special," Ulrich found the right word eventually, "He should understand that people sometimes have no choice but to change. The other one you could try talking to would be Risgath of Nether Wallop. He is an Ash Elf like yourself. Again they are being besieged by the other Ash Elf clans but he is the one who asked us to come down here and find out what all the trouble was about so he should have an open ear." He trailed off as he saw her expression of ecstatic joy. "Was it something I said?"

"Risgath? As in Risgath Zaphruan?" she asked, the light that had died when they discovered the body of the Matriarch finally back in her eyes.

"Yes," Ulrich nodded and fished out the book, "He gave me this, said it would help with our journey down here." To his astonishment Zilvra burst out laughing, a sound that he didn't believe her capable of. The spider-dragon hatchling chirruped in confusion. Still laughing she scratched its head again.

"I'm sorry," she still laughed, "I'm sorry, its just after all these years, finding out that little brother was right about everything..." She laughed again. After staring at her for a few more minutes Ulrich turned his head to look at the other Ash Elves. One of the oldest there cracked his mask of indifference enough to answer Ulrich's questioning look.

"Lady Zilvra was born as a twin to the one known as Risgath," he informed him, "Risgath left our clan, our people and our land many time candles ago. He was one of the canniest preys I have ever hunted and bares no scars because of that. Though it is frowned upon I always respected the fact that he had escaped us before we even realized that he was making the attempt. There is strong prey that can fight you into retreat but the strongest prey is that escapes you without a fight at all."

"As to what he was right about," Lady Zilvra wiped her eyes, "He told me once that our unkindness, our lack of care for other races would one day be visited upon us ten times over and we would be the ones left weeping in the ashes left behind. He told me that one day we would be the hunted and we would find all doors closed to us because we closed the doors in the faces of others. I thought he was a fool at the time and it turns out, he was right." She nodded, "We will try to... ask my brother for help. Maybe we have some skills that this King of yours will be interested in trading, especially if we can... bring some of our slaves to him, if we can find them, you seem to have scared them all thoroughly." She arched an eyebrow at Estella.

"What can I say?" Estella shrugged, "Lots of people find Valodrael off putting."

"I can't imagine why," Ulrich said cheerfully but found that cheer hard to maintain as she turned her gaze to him and something dark stirred behind it.

"Can't you?" she asked and there was something not young girl behind that expression, something that had fangs all of its own.

"Still," Estella continued, clapping her hands as she stood, "If we are going to be going on a journey tomorrow I suggest we have a feast so we don't leave much behind for the scavengers. Who's with me on this."

"Sounds..." Thorian burped, "Good."

"Well help me out then," Estella suggested and turned to the range.

While his friends and Zilvra's brothers began the task of preparing a big dinner for them all, a task hindered by the fact that most of the Ash Elves seemed unfamiliar with kitchen jobs, Ulrich lent over to Lady Zilvra.

"Just so you know," he murmured, "Though there are other countries that practice it, King Tatsuya does not permit the practice of slavery, so if you wish to bring your craftsmen with you then it would be best to present them as such without their chains. Personally, I would say that though the clan has practiced slavery in the past that you have no wish to continue it and that your craftsmen are free to go where ever they wish, if it goes as far as you having to seek an audience with h... the King." He corrected himself at the last moment. He still didn't believe that she was ready for the idea of a male King.

"No slavery?" she asked, "Then how do you... have anything built or grown or created. Who does those tasks?"

"People," Ulrich replied, "Simply people. Yes they are still seen as the bottom of the social status but they are still people, not slaves. It gets back to the give and so get principle. They give their labor to build and grow and create and in return, at the very lease, they are given shelter, food and other material needs. And if the standard of what they are given is not enough, they can leave. Conversely, if the quality of the labor they provide is not good enough, then they do not receive their material needs. It is not always perfect as a system but it does encourage mutual respect of fellow people. It is how such small people like us can drive such big people as Thorian's out of the plains and into the mountains. Does that help?"

"I think so," she said after a few moments, "I think so." She lent her elbows on the table top, mouth hidden behind interlaced fingers, frowning as she gazed at something not in front of her.

The wheels of the world turned.

Draconnic Shennanigans - Episode 20

Chapter Twenty: The Battle of Snake Clan Hold

 "That, my dear Thorian, is what we call brokering an accord," Jeremiah grimaced as he wound a bandage about his arm, struggling to pull it tight. Nobody was offering to help him with it and it did not seem as if his puppets understood the instructions for such work. He resorted to using his teeth to get hold of the end of the bandage and pull it tight.

"Shame you killed one of your best helpers," Kaelin muttered as she cleaned her face. Jeremiah glared at her.

"It means," he continued as if Kaelin had not spoken, "That they will not try to gut us and we are not to try to remove their heads in return, unless of course they break the pact first." He smiled at the nearest Ash Elf, a not nice smile that spoke volumes. The look he got back said plainly that as far as the Ash Elf was concerned then Jeremiah was less than something he had found stuck to the sole of his boot.

"Dispose of the bodies," the Ash Elf Noble snapped in a clipped tone, "We dare not bring the vermin here." 

With murmurs of acquiescence, her body guards cleaned and returned their weapons to their scabbards. With disgusted looks they bent to the task of moving the bodies of the fallen to a shallow pit hidden in the shadows of the room. After a moment Thorian shrugged and bent to help, Kaelin falling in beside him to lift the bodies of the goblins. Her warning glare put the Ash Elves off touching the small green corpses but her eyes were wet as she laid the mortal remains of Stink of the Midden and his fellows down in a neat row in the confines of the pit.

"Sleep well," she murmured as she brushed Stink of the Midden's eyes closed, "Sleep in peace. They'll never kick you ever again. And if I get the chance I'll kick him for you."

 When the last of the fallen had been placed in the pit, one of the Ash Elves lifted the lid of an urn that stood to one side of the pit and scattered handfuls of a fine white powder over the bodies. The other Ash Elves backed up as the corpses turned pale under the shifting snow of what looked like ash and Kaelin took her cue from them, ushering Thorian back, a slight frown on her face as she watched these silent administrations. The Ash Elf carefully dusted the powder off of his hands and recapped the urn before he lifted a fire stick and light it.

The fire sprang up with a coughing bark as it engulfed the bodies, its flames bright white and smokeless, the heat making Kaelin's eyes water and curling the hairs inside her nose. She held the sneeze until the Ash elves had turned away and gone back to their lady's side. Kaelin wasn't sure what the protocols for an Ash Elf funeral was and she had no wish to be the dwarf with the shaved face. This alliance was far too new for that. She had the feeling from the sneering looks that they were getting that Ash Elves were not used to having to make alliances with any body, much less do menial labor themselves. The air was thick with tension.

 "I have to admit that the inhabitants of this realm have given us quite a hard time," Ulrich was quietly speaking to the Ash Elf Noble as she crouched over one of the eggs in the pile in the center of the room, "But I must confess myself ignorant of the purpose of this room. I would have thought that such places of reverence would be more deeply embedded within the walls of say, one of your grand citadels?"

"And what do you know of our citadels?" her brief flick of a side look said that she was trying to disguise how interested she was in the answer to that question.

"I have spoken with someone who had spent some time within the society of the Underworld," Ulrich admitted carefully in return, "When our King sent us to discover what was the matter in this corner of the world, this person was very informative as to what we could expect, though I have to say that even then we were still not prepared for how exceptionally challenging and protective the wildlife down here would be."

 She considered it, her hands stilling on the shell of the egg for a moment.

"I see," she said with a tilt of her head and then her eyes widened. A second later Ulrich saw the egg quiver under her hand. Quiet murmurs ran around the room, the Ash Elves stirring in time with the egg but instead of staying near it the noble rose and back a couple of steps away. However, she didn't look away from it and she began murmuring a string of words that sounded either like a welcome or an attempt to bind the mind of the creature within the egg.

Ulrich frowned as he watched the now rocking egg. It wasn't so much as cracking as slowing tearing , the shell more fibrous than the crunchy, almost bony shell of a bird egg or the soft, leathery eggs of some reptiles. A black nose jabbed at the opening it had created and the nostrils drew in several flaring breathes before their owner went back to work of breaking out of the confines of its birthing prison. Claws scrabbled at the edges of the opening.

Thorian frowned at that one. The claws didn't look like the dragon claws he remember Amelia, the coral dragon of the Wizard's Tower, having. Instead they reminded him more of pincers. The egg humped up slowly as the youngster inside it braced its back against the roof above it and heaved with its shoulders. Then with a sudden ripping the egg broke clean down the middle and with a flick of its head and its residual wing stumps the youngster flipped open its home of the last few months. It stretched out its long neck and blinked its many, many onyx eyes at the bipeds staring it. It opened its mouth to mew, very, very mobile fangs swinging out of the basal segments on either side of the front of its mouth. It yawned, wiggling its jaw experimentally and eventually worked out how to retract its fangs. Its residual wing stumps fluttered, despite there being no wing membrane attached. It mewed again.

The Ash Elf Noble put her face in her hands and sobbed, just the once but it was most definitely a sob. Ulrich looked at her and realized just how young she was. Even by human standards she looked like she'd not long hit her second decade, for an elf she was positively still a child and what ever this creature was, it was obviously important to not just her but also her people. In that unguarded moment of emotion he saw that she had been saddled with a duty that she really wasn't ready for but pride and survival had dictated that she couldn't turn it down. Either the Ash Elves really were desperate or this was a move of their internal politics, trying to black mark her that badly she'd never recover to be a threat to more powerful members of the clan.

The Ash Elf Noble drew herself up and cast a glance over her people, her moment of emotion completely absent from her face. Her body guards immediately dropped their gazes, heads bowed in submission. Her scrutiny zeroed in on one who bore the marks of the fight they had with Ulrich and his people. She snapped a string of words and flicked a finger at him. He jerked like a puppet that suddenly feels the hand upon its strings. Blank eyed, he tottered forward and knelt before the hatchling. It squeaked... And struck!

Thorian put a hand over his mouth as, without a sound, the hatchling's fangs sank deep into the side of the Elf's neck and he jolted. Within seconds the elf collapsed into himself, skin transforming into a loose, empty bag that the hatchling shook and thrashed before it stopped sucking it dry. It's black tongue ran over its fangs and it gave a hiccuping burp.

"Welcome Ceann Mor," the Noble pressed her open left palm to her right shoulder as she bowed to the hatching. It wiggled its way out of what was left of its egg, hide still glistening with hatchling fluid, eight legs delicately tapping over the flagstones as its tail, tipping with some sort of double barbed stinger flicked in the air behind it. Trilling, it butted its head against the side of her knee and then gaped in ecstasy as she scratched its eyebrow ridges and the base of its still soft horns, uttering high pitched gulping sounds of pleasure.

"We are honored to be present at your birth, mighty one," Ulrich coped the gesture the Noble had done when the hatchling turned its face full of eyes towards him.

"Indeed," Jeremiah smiled unctuously, "You do us a great honor to allow us to witness such a momentous occasion."

An Ash Elf guard turned to him with a sneer, apparently not bound by the diffidence with which he had to treat his mistress and her chosen toy.

"Hold your tongue," he barked, "It is only by the Lady Zilvra's will you still breath, Surface dweller! If she choices you will feed the Ceann Mor. It would be best for us if you do, such of your bulk would satisfy him for a long time."

"I wouldn't," Thorian observed, "That would be an early heart attack for the little one." Said many eyed little one tilted its head, observing Thorian with interest and a chirp.

"He's not wrong," Kaelin agreed as the Ash Elf rounded on Thorian.

The Lady Zilvra's silvery laugh cut through the air and the Ash Elf immediately subsided.

"Your pets really are entertaining," she said to Ulrich, earning her Kaelin's flat, unfriendly stare, "The green one may even have a point, the large one might not be the healthiest option for Ceann Mor's breakfast." It was Jeremiah's turn to bristle.

"Correct me if I am incorrect but I believe that the Mighty One is very important to your people," Ulrich smiled, "And I mean no disrespect when I say this, but it appears to me that the clan had left you with fewer numbers than they should have done if my pets have left so many of your people hurting to protect him."

Lady Zilvra's mouth went thin but Ulrich didn't look away, even as the other Ash Elves ducked their heads. Ulrich's apparent show of either strength or defiance made Zilvra narrow her eyes but as Ulrich still didn't cower, she let it drop after a moment, a look of intrigue entering her eyes.

"You are right," she admitted at last, "We have found ourselves short of warriors in these latest times and as such our position among the clans has become... delicate. They are so short sighted that we were given this duty in the belief that we would fail and prove that we had not the power to defend ourselves any longer."

"Well, I would say that you have risen to the challenge magnificently..." Ulrich flattered.

"Only just," she interrupted, waving a hand around the room, "Despite our every effort, so many of the eggs have perished. Be it by vermin or disease they have wasted. Some have even muttered about the endeavor being cursed." Her gaze swept around her own warriors again, picking out a few for special attention. 

"She's right, Ulrich," Kaelin called out from where she was crouched sniffing at other pile of the eggs, "I'm not picking up any trace of something alive in this lot. Lots of rot but nothing alive." She stood and backed away, "Looks like they had only one good one in the whole batch."

"But now Ceann Mor has blessed us with his life then, if we keep him alive, the other clans will have to eat dirt for their doubts," Lady Zilvra smiled as she looked down at the Hatchling butting up against her leg, "As for you, if you wish to have the permission of the Matriarchs to live now that you have witnessed him then your greatest chance of obtaining that will be by making sure he stays alive."

"Then I take it that we will be accompanying you to the citadel of your clan?" Ulrich asked.

"That will be correct," she smiled and there was something slightly puzzled in it, "I do hope that you can convince the Matriarch that you are worthy of life, I think I rather like you, Comradai Ulrich."

"I am flattered, Lady Zilvra," he bowed to her and she preened a little. Turning to her warriors, she snapped something in that lilting yet penetrating tongue that had them formed up around her and the Hatchling. Ulrich whistled up his centipede and swung on to it, the Ash Elves looking at him with distrust. Kaelin and Thorian waited until Jeremiah had called all his pets to heel and then pointedly stepped to the other side of the main block of their allies but Jeremiah seemed oblivious to their censorship.

Lady Zilvra bent down and lifted the Hatchling up in her arms. It chirruped and wrapped all eight legs about her as far as they could go before yawning hugely and letting its head flop over her shoulder. She turned and stepped out, her body guards stepping with her and the companions following along as best they could.

There were certain advantages to traveling with the foremost masters of the Underworld, creatures that would have tried to take a bite out of them if they had been on their own picked up the scent of living Ash Elves and thought better of it. Even Lashers only watched them out of slit eyes as they marched past and Kaelin doubted that they would have even found the path they were following if they had been on their own. Considering that they had managed to waste enough time going in a circle the day before, she suspected that they would have been months about finding a way to make contact with those who could change what was happening down here if they had stuck to their usual routine of simply killing everything in their path.

As they went deeper they gradually passed into larger and larger caves, some boarding on caverns. In  some forests of gigantic mushrooms caused Kaelin pull her shirt up over her nose and Hat to buzz uneasily on Jeremiah's Miter. The Ash Elves seemed to be amused by her reaction but she didn't care, she'd had quite enough of having a headache that she could see digging its pointed little chin into the top of her head. She kept an eye on Jeremiah to make sure that he wasn't going to go runny at the edges again and start denouncing breathing without his god's permission.

At last, they exited a tunnel into a cavern so vast Kaelin could feel the air moving with its own weather system, heated by the fiery core of the world, rising, only to cool among the gigantic stalactites and drift slowly back down again with a damp coldness that brushed fairy fingers across her skin. But it was not the size alone that caused her to open her mouth and then snap it shut again at the entertained expressions of the Ash Elves around her. On the fair side of the cavern, stretching from below them on the cavern floor up to a neck cricking height, a mighty bastion reared, the stone of it some how reminding Kaelin of the Wizard's Tower but she wasn't sure why. There where vast sweeping arches, domes that seemed impossibly balanced on their slender stems... Ah, that was it. This building was not something built by dwarfs or humans, with hard geometric shapes and mathematical precision, there was the organic flow that suggested that the stone had grown into this shape to please the beings that lived within it. However, this the Wizard's Tower was a stone tree of impossible size then this citadel was a microcosm of the lower plants, mosses, fungus fibers and mushrooms rite large, stretching across the entire wall of the cavern, twining round the branching roots of the mountains that twisted together to make the cap stones of the arches.

"Behold the Fastness of the Snake Clan," Lady Zalvra paused and stretched out her hand, "The glory of our people, the most ancient and powerful of the clan holds."

"It is impressive," Ulrich praised, "Indeed I was taught eloquence from my cradle but I struggle to find words that do it justice. There may be more massive structures in the word but none can match the flow of form and function here."

"Indeed," Jeremiah smiled unctuously, "It does make the palaces of kings and prince's seem small and dull in comparison. Why the fortresses of gods seem to be mere hovels compared with this."

Lady Zilvra turned a smile on him that said louder than words that she knew that Jeremiah was trying to smarm his way into her favors but for the moment she did not find him annoying... at the moment.

"Shiny," Thorian nodded as he gazed that the monstrous bulwark of the Ash Elves, apparently unconcerned about the fact that once they stepped inside it they may never leave. Lady Zilvra seemed to decide that he was beneath her concern and turned instead to leading them down the road way cut into the cliff face, its span comfortably wide enough for five of them to walk side by side as it descended gently towards the floor of the cavern. Even as they walked Ulrich realized that the distances were deceiving as they stepped on steadily for hours at a time and the citadel seemed to come no closer, merely change its aspect, turning a slightly new face to them, a vast and brooding entity that knew they were coming and with held its welcome, still calibrating their worthiness.

As they continued to walk, Kaelin started noticing that the Ash Elves were casting more and more glances at their home. She had expected their taciturn guides to loosen up a little now that they were within sight of home but their silence began ever deeper and Kaelin's nose started picking up the faint threads of stress scents on the breeze. Even as they keep their stony facade, the Ash Elves were concerned about something. She looked again at the fortress herself. There were lights in various windows but there was something off about the imposing bulk. Her eyes narrowed. One ear flicked. It flicked again, more strenuously. The third time it flicked she lifted a hand to it and rubbed, trying to settle the nervous tick. Then she realized what the problem was. It was too quiet. Even with such a dour people there should have been a murmur, a buzz of lives being lived and work being done. Even if everyone had been struck dumb then the movement from room to room would be making a sound, a resonance that she would hear, even at this distance. Something caught her eye and she peered at it. It appeared that there was a banner draped over the battlements but there was something subtly wrong with it.

Lady Zilvra also seemed to have picked up the fact that something was wrong. She turned her head and said something in that lilting tongue that sent two of the Ash Elves at the front of the column into a trot that soon had them out of view. Jeremiah noted that they had their small, mechanical crossbows in their hands and called his puppeted pets into a tighter circle around him. On Zilvra's shoulder the Hatchling lifted its head and chirruped in her ear. She calmed it with a murmur and a stroking hand.

"Is there something up?" Thorian asked with a frown.

"Anything that is not down, my dear Thorian," Jeremiah smiled, "So at the moment the lowest thing we have around here are your knees."

"And they would still be higher than Jeremiah's morals," Kaelin shot back before Thorian had to think of a reply.

"Morals?" Lady Zilvra frowned, "What are morals?"

Kaelin thought about it for a moment and still managed to jump in before Jeremiah opened his mouth.

"It is the want to do no harm to the society that you live in," she said, "Think of how you would feel if one of your own damaged the clan." Lady Zilvra tensed up. "Yep, well someone who is willing to harm the clan for their own gain is someone of low morals."

After a moment Lady Zilvra nodded.

"I think I see," she said, "However, that begs the question as to why this Jeremiah one is still part of your clan?"

"Not by any choice of ours," Kaelin said shortly and said nothing more. Puzzled Zilvra turned her gaze on Ulrich.

"We were not given much choice about being a clan," he tried to explain, "We were all kicked out of our original clans for not managing to come up to the standard that they wanted us to. Unfortunately, on the surface such things are not allowed by the King, that is the one with the highest authority, so we were told we either became a clan together and acted as guards against the things that were harming the rest of the clans or we, well, the King would have us killed."

She frowned again, that adorable little pout that tilted her nose tip up. Ulrich wondered how much she did, or even could, understand. He had tried to put it on terms that she could understand, glossing over, for instance, the fact that the King was a man. He figured that such an idea would be so alien to her culture that she would reject it out of hand.

"I think I understand," she said at last, "There have been a few that have realized that they are not worth anything to the clans and so have left. They usually provide a fair sport but there have been one or two that have made it to the surface. Undoubtedly the one who told you of the Underworld was one such being."

"Do you not pursue them once they once they reach the surface?" Ulrich asked.

"We do not bother," Lady Zilvra stated, "Let them suffer on the Surface. One Stump on their own is merely easy prey for who ever wishes to kill them and surface people are not as adverse to slavery as they claim. You only seem to object to it when it is you yourselves that are wearing the chains. As long as you can claim that your slaves are some how other to you then you are utterly fine with doing it."

"What a fascinating point of view," Jeremiah smiled but there was something horrible in it.

"You can hardly talk," Kaelin muttered.

Thorian was puzzling over something else.

"Er what's a stump?" he asked.

"I believe that it is the correct name for the dwarven people of the Underworld," Jeremiah didn't lose his smile.

"Oh," Thorian nodded, "I se..." He saw Kaelin's thunderous expression. "Hang on, are you trying to treat me like a bulbo again?"

"Bimbo," Kaelin said, rolling her eyes with disgust, "The word is bimbo and yes he is."

"I was going to say, dear chap, that if you call a deep dwarf a stump to his face he is likely to take you off at the knees," Ulrich called back, "An affair likely to rend you not so useful to me and likely to give said dwarf an inflated opinion of himself."

"Nah," Thorian grinned as he shook his head, "One dwarf on his own isn't up to that much, you need a good six or so to have a proper kick around with the clan, two-teen if you want a challenge."

Jeremiah's face gradually changed into the pained expression that said he was fighting not to ask a question and knew he was losing the battle before it began.

"Just what, my dear Thorian, are you talking about?" he queried.

"Dwarven football of course," Thorian looked at Jeremiah as if he couldn't believe that a learned man could be so very thick, "You need at least six of them for a good game. Granted they usually only have black thorn clubs when you are having kick about but my Uncle Big Guff lost a knee cap to one of those little boggers and cousin Gruul had two of them give her a good whacking over the head in one game. She never were quite the same after that, used to wander off in dreams."

"My dear Thorian, dream walking is what most people do when they are asleep," Jeremiah explained as if to a little child.

"In the middle of the day with her eyes wide awake?" Thorian frowned back, not convinced, "She used to say some weird stuff as well. Granted, saying that, all that stuff about the warrior of silver iron with blades of four kinda makes sense now when you think about it. Wonder what she meant about the sorcerer of dark crystals and all that stuff about the melting man poisoning the world. That was some weird stuff."

Kaelin turned her eyes to Ulrich and raised her eyebrows. He, looking back over his shoulder, nodded silently once and then turned to face forward again. It sounded rather like Thorian's cousin Gruul had become something of a seer when she'd had her head battered by two dwarfs. That of course begged the question as to how many of her visions were true and therefore worth listening to. That fact that she had some what rightly described the King's Blade was a little concerning.

Lady Zilvra laughed.

"What an entertaining concept, I was not aware that your kind could conceive of something so amusing," she smiled, "Tell me, what do you do with the stumps once you have finished kicking them around?"

"Oh we usually let them escape," Thorian shrugged, "That way they go back to their people and tell them that they'll have to fight better the next time they want to come stomping into our mountains. Means we get more fun next time round and if we manage to catch any of them the next time they come stomping then we'll have another kick around."

"What a delightful notion," Zilvra went to say something more but closed her mouth with a snap as the scouts she'd sent ahead came back with what was unmistakably a scurry in their strides. They came to a hasty stop in front of her and bobbed short bows that obviously displeased her, causing the Hatchling to swing its many eyed head round as if it caught the whiff of possible snacks but her hand went up to still it as their report came tumbling out.

Kaelin frowned. It more she had listened to the Ash Elves' own language, the more she was sure she understood at least some of the base ideas on emphasis, tone and rhythm alone, rather like a dog understanding what its human master was saying. As much as she hated that likeness she couldn't deny that it was proving to be very useful at that moment in time, the scouts' tone and demeanor revealing a worry, no a fear, if what she was smelling was correct. She was pretty sure that the guards that they had expected to find were not in the best of health and she looked again at the citadel. That flag draped over the battlements was looking less and less flag like.

"Weapons ready," she muttered to Ulrich and Thorian, "We're got trouble ahead."

"What sort of trouble?" Thorian asked, his jaw tightening. As he said it, Lady Zilvra turned, handed the Hatchling to one of her underlings, who went wide eyed as the Hatching gripped on to his clothes and looked at him as if sizing him up. Zilvra uttered a series of instructions in her lilting tongue that were unmistakable even through the language barrier.

"The sort of trouble that makes her worried," Kaelin nodded, patting Haggis before slinging him behind her by her strap.

"Parp!" Haggis uttered miserably.

"Ah, I see," Thorian put a hand to his sword.

"Without a doubt, old girl," Ulrich straightened up even more and started a careful routine of upper arm exercises that were calibrated to loosen up his fighting arm without unsettling his mount. Even still, the centipede lifted its head, antenna questing, tasting the air.

Six of the Ash Elves, including the one now carefully cradling the Hatchling, peeled off the side of the group and made their way to the back of the group, far behind Jeremiah and his pets, while Zilvra's body guard closed ranks around her. When they started cocking their bows and loading in the first bolts, Thorian drew his big two handed sword, while Ulrich remembered to use only one in his right hand, the bandage on his left arm a reminder of the spider bite that had nearly claimed his life. Zilvra narrowed her eyes when she saw what sword Ulrich was holding but said nothing through her pursed lips. Kaelin could smell her anger though as the wolf rose up high within her, claws and teeth lurking just below the surface. Jeremiah smiled and clicked his fingers, his blue eyed elves drawing their swords, receiving dark looks from Zilvra's body guard.

At a quicker pace they set out down the road, the citadel and the bridge that stretched to it, coming ever closer.

By the time they were drawing close to the gate house that stood guard at the end of the bridge on their side of the cavern, Kaelin was sure something was extremely wrong. The oppressive silence had not been broken as they drew closer to the bastions bulk and she was now sure that the 'flag' on the battlements was no flag at all but rather a body that hung head down, white hair cascading towards the ground but never reaching it. Then she smelt them. Even as Lady Zilvra and her body guard were drawing ahead, Kaelin knew what they were going to find in the shadows of the open gate way. She hanged back as Zilvra crouched and lifted the head of one of the now very mortally challenged guards, his white, blood matted hair tangling round her fingers. As Lady Zilvra stood and turned to gaze up at the open bastion doors, Kaelin stepped forward and forced herself to look. She bite her lip until she felt the blood pulse below her fangs.

The guards hadn't been shot or stabbed or even cudgeled to death, no they had been brutally, savagely torn apart, clawed and bitten until they had gone down shredded and tattered to streamers and ribbons, mauled to pieces by something that attacked with a violence that was beyond animal.

"Cack, cack, cack, CACK!" she swore furiously.

"Kaelin?" Ulrich glanced back and saw that her eyes had turned a haunting amber yellow. "Oh," he said and looked back to the grand door of the stronghold. Perversely, he started to grin. This was going to be a nice little fight.

Crossbows up and level the Ash Elves pushed their way through the great gates of the citadel and into the courtyard. Even their iron hard conditioning against compassion cracked, suppressed exclamations of horror forcing their way passed unwilling lips. Ulrich's lip twisted with disgust and even Thorian gave vent to an orcish expletive that crawled away into a dark corner to die.

The carnage in the courtyard was complete and total, bodies scattered in pieces across flagstones slicked with red and other, darker fluids, white hair matted and trailing in the stinking pools, scalps flapping from denuded skulls. What is more, the massacre wasn't even finished, the stifling silence broken by the splintering of bone and the tearing of meat.

Zilvra let loose a cry that shook and bounced off the walls, as high and shrill as a sea bird, the sound of desolation give voice.

Red painted and gory, the feasting werewolves looked up from their feeding, fangs dripping with their repast. A few tongues licked fangs as the monsters eyed the squad that had wandered into their midst. Stillness, terribly pregnant with violence filled the space.

Kaelin shouldered her way to the front of the group, fangs sliding out of gum sheaths, claws creaking quietly as they forced their way out of her finger tips, distorting the pads at the end of her digits. Several werewolves flicked their ears forward, as if they recognized her. Others snorted, wondering why this little girl was challenging them. Then the biggest one, straightened from his feeding on the dais in front of the main doors to the citadel. There was something about him, the coloring or the shape of his muzzle that made Ulrich narrow his eyes, recognition tugging at his brain but he couldn't quite place...

"Nice to see you again, pup," the werewolf rumbled from between red fangs, "Seems you'll always come home in the end."

The one that got away in the Dead Swamp, Ulrich nodded to himself, that's were he'd seen this twisted son of a bitch before.

"Hello, green face, you're uglier every time I see you," Kaelin's sneer was impressive, all fang and bile but instead of being angered by that show of defiance the pack leader grinned and licked his fangs.

"I take it that you know this... being," Ulrich had to search for a moment to find a polite term he could use in reference to the grinning, gory soaked thing that was gazing her down.

"Johnson Greely," she snarled, "Grandfather's right hand dog and a fecker that needs to die."

Greely grinned even wider, ears perking forward and a more than interested gleam in his eyes.

"I always said one day you would be worth of a litter and now I'm proved right," the light in his eyes turned Kaelin's guts cold, "Your Grandfather will have to recognize my right to be the first, seeing as I will be the one who'll bring you back to the pack."

"Not on your Nelly!" Thorian shouted, stepping in front of Kaelin and hefting his sword in both hands, "You can keep that sort of talk behind your teeth! Kaelin is mah friend and she ain't going no where and certainly not with you!" Behind his back Kaelin unslung Haggis and started blowing into his bag.

"Oh ho, so the mushroom wants to play," the pack leader turned his grin on Thorian, "Well I suppose dinner first will give me fuel for the fun afterwards."

Haggis let rip with a wall of sound that echoed and leapt off the walls, scorching through the air, howling a challenge to the werewolves that roared its contempt of them. Thorian threw back his head and thundered an answering roar, veins swelling along his arms and up his neck, eyes losing their focus as all he saw before him was enemies.

The werewolves bellowed in return, many of them appearing to swell as their fur stood up on end. Greely snapped at the ones immediately around him but he was too late, four of them bounding forward, snarling and snapping, eyes blood hued as they hurdled towards Kaelin. Thorian swung his double handed sword in a great, glittering circle and ripped the first up the middle in a bloody arch.

Lost completely in their frenzy, the werewolves fell on the front rank of the group, claws and fangs rendering spiders limb from limb with wild abandon. The spiders were not about to accept this treatment as their due and swarmed forward, entangling one of the werewolves in a mass of hairy legs and biting, biting, biting until its bloated corpse was still.

Ulrich crashed into another knot of the beasts, sword whipping a gash across the face of one and the back hand swing taking its head clear off its shoulders, even as his centipede mount buried its venom laden fangs in the abdomen of another, ripping through bulging muscle as if it wasn't there.

With a hateful hiss the bolts of the Ash Elves took flight, smacking home in burly targets, dropping two out right as clawed hands groped for bolts that had smacked home in shaggy throats and another werewolf span on the spot, screaming clutching that the feathered end of the bolt erupting from its eye.

As Jeremiah stepped into the courtyard, surveying the destruction like an Emperor purveying his prize garden, Thorian rammed his sword through the chest of a werewolf and then punched it on the end of its muzzle so hard its skull burst as his fist smashed through it, finishing the move by kicking the offending body off the end of his sword into the faces of its fellows.

Drawing himself up, Jeremiah lead his personal assemblage to the right of the main battle, intercepting the band of werewolves that had resisted both their leaders call and Haggis' challenge to continue their feasting. They looked up at Jeremiah, eyes shining greedily as they looked at his bulk. Jeremiah lifted his chin and started to chant a prayer to his god. A werewolf threw back its head, howled and the group sprang forward as one, teeth bared and claws out stretched. Jeremiah thrust his hand forward and a jet of embers and sparks, nearly white hot, leapt from his palm to meet them.

"Thus are the unworthy judged and condemned," Jeremiah sneered as two of the werewolves writhed at his feet, whimpering and sobbing as the embers and sparks peeled them out of their skins, fur blistering off in a stinking cloud, "May Klu'ga-nath have mercy on your soul." He doubted that through as he felt his god's approval and almost, almost heard a howl of terror as a couple of souls saw what was waiting for them on the other side.

Greely snarled as he saw his own going down like ninepins. Drawing in a breath that swelled out his chest, he threw his head back and unleashed a howl that ripped along the nerve endings of everyone in the courtyard.

A door above them banged and shaggy forms barrelled along the battlement, snarling and barking from red lined throats. The werewolves down on the flagstones slashed at the rank of spiders protecting their Ash Elf masters but the arachnids had the measure of their foes now and became a swirling, flicking mess that flowed around the beasts' attacks, leaving the werewolves growling in frustration as they tried to fight an enemy that was about as easy to hit as punching holes in water.

Kaelin, shaking with the effort, carefully set Haggis down but the moment he was safely on the cobble stones, she gave in. The smell of blood, the battle cries, the screams of the wounded, all of it and instinct banged together inside her head and thought had to jump out of the way as the beast forcibly took control. She threw back her head and let loose a howl that was more scream as her bones snapped into a new form and then she smashed into one of the werewolves trying to flank Thorian. The bigger beast yelped with surprise as it was force back, Kaelin's claws raking over and over again across its chest and belly, ripping burning red lines of pain through its flesh as her fangs snapped and clacked a mere hairs berth from its face. But her brute force attack had carried them to the bottom edge of the stairs and with a grin that was all sickness, Greely bounded down, seizing her round the waist from behind and lifting her from her feet. Even as she wriggled and writhed in his grip, he was licking behind her ears.

Thorian roared and bowled the two werewolves in front of him apart. Greely smashed Kaelin on to the floor, driving the breath from her lungs and rounded on Thorian, a snarl twisting his face. Thorian's blade smashed the expression off his face, raking through no only him but two others as well.

"No one touches mah friend!" Thorian bellowed, rounding on the rest of the pack as they swarmed towards Ulrich as he was the nearest threat.

With a calculating expression, Jeremiah started chanting another prayer, this one aimed at Ulrich as the beasts closed in on him. Even as Ulrich grinned and laughed at the mounting odds, he felt the strange pressure he'd perceived when he was reading Jeremiah's book return and suddenly his sword arm was twisting and turning almost of its own will, keeping the werewolves at bay as Thorian strode forward, bawling an orchish battle chant that seemed to fill his friend's veins with fire. Even Lady Zilvra lifted her voice, fingers twisting in the prayer gestures of the snake clan, silvery power wrapping around Ulrich and his mount.

Once she was sure her favorite was safe, Zilvra turned her attention to the rest of the vermin swarming in her home, her eyes darkening as she view the wreckage of her people. Her silver voice grew an edge of venom as her fingers traced a new pattern and then she held out her right palm flat and the spectral form of a snake lifted from that hand and flared its hood open wide, baring pearly fangs that dripped with smoky venom. It lunged, lashing across the werewolf pack and the one Kaelin had wounded screamed and dropped, already stiffening, face twisted with horror, while the one that had the bolt embedded in its eye simply crumpled to the floor, twitched a couple of times and then laid still.

Roaring, the werewolves lining the battlements leapt into the fray, heedless of the drop, an oversight that snapped the leg bones of two of them but the rest charged forward.

Zilvra snapped the words of another prayer as her fingers flicked through the twisting moves of prayer gestures.

"For you my lady!" Ulrich yelled as her power buzzed through him and a werewolf lost its head, quite literally; it went bouncing and bumping over the cobble stones. A buzzing thrum of elvish bolts whistled through the air and another werewolf span and dropped, turned into a pin cushion of fletched needles.

The werewolves rallied, howling in unison. One lashed out and raked its claws down Kaelin's back. She twisted and screamed. As Thorian turned towards her a werewolf lunged, jaws clamping down over his wrist.

"Oi! Get off!" Thorian shouted and punched the werewolf in the throat, crushing its windpipe and leaving it choking to death at his feet.

Jeremiah yelled a prayer to his god as the pack that had leaped from the battlements bounded towards him. The blue eyed centipedes reared up, clicking and snapping their jaws, even as the puppeted Ash Elves shuffled into place. These werewolves however, hadn't completely lost themselves to the blood rage and worked as a pack of wolves should, several members concentrating on one target and working together to bring them down. With brittle cracks two of the centipedes were savagely dissected, mouth parts ripped from their heads and antenna snapped off, while two werewolves clawed at their mouths and spat black blood, the torn remains of a puppeted Ash Elves at their feet. The whole pack took a step back as light threaded shadows writhed free of the corpses and billowed through the air back to Jeremiah, the eldritch glow pooling in his eyes, making them glow a ghastly blue for a moment before they settled back into their usual brown. Jeremiah smiled at them and something about his smile made all their fur stand up a stiff as needles.

It didn't slow the rest of werewolves, their blood up so high they didn't count the number of dead they were leaving their wake. Two bounded towards, drooling and blood slicked. They leapt, claws outstretched. Thorian span like a hammer thrower and the pair of them came apart in the middle, tumbling and skidding across the flagstones, leaving a red wake behind them.

One loomed over Kaelin, intent on taking advantage of her injury.

"PAAAARRRRP!" Haggis bellowed, notes rippling up and down the scale even as he lay unlooked for near Zilvra's feet. The werewolf flinched back, shaking his head and pawing at his ears as Haggis' music thundered in his ears.

However, not all the werewolves were distracted by Haggis somehow singing even though no one was playing him. As Jeremiah lift his hands to gesture, the werewolves facing him rallied and pounced on another centipede, yanking it apart by main strength. Ulrich turned one more time to grin at Zilrva... and the werewolf hit him in the small of the back so hard that he flew off his mount's back, ribs crunching as he landed. Before he could think of rolling, his attacker leapt clean over the living centipede's back and landed on him, ribs shattering under the weight. Zilvra opened her mouth and screamed.

Jeremiah hissed words of condemnation as two more of him puppeted Ash Elves went down, pulled apart and trampled under foot. Flicking his fingers, he called the two blue eyed centipedes that had been hanging back up to plug the gap but their pincers missed the mark.

The last two pet spiders of the Ash Elves scuttled forward, fangs clicking and clacking. The werewolf standing on Ulrich, turned, grinning to face the eight legged snacks... and then one of them bunched its legs and jumped. The werewolf screamed as it got a face full of palps and fangs, the second spider locking on to leg and pumping venom in. The werewolf went down, gurgling and choking as its face swelled up and its leg went mushy.

At a barked word from Zilvra an Ash Elf darted towards Ulrich's prone form, lifting something from a small pouch. It looked like a small, bronze spider, at least until the Ash Elf pressed it to the top of Ulrich's left arm and tapped its back. It promptly flicked out metal fangs and bit Ulrich, sinking its fangs in deep. Ulrich bucked and gasped, a tracery of blood vessels lighting up under his skin as his eyes rolled back in his head but various creaking and cracking noises sounded from his chest as it seemed to reinflate.

The other Ash Elves steadied their hands and slowly squeezed the triggers. Kaelin ducked instinctively as a bolt slashed through the air above her head and thudded home between the eyes of her assailant. One of the werewolves, crawling forward on broken legs, panting and snarling, gagged on the barbed shaft in his gullet and rolled over, never to get up again.

Kaelin straightened, nodded to the Ash Elves and bounded towards the knot of werewolves closing in on where Ulrich lay. Thorian charged beside her and Kaelin had to skew sideways to avoid the massive over hand blow he started. Warned by her move, the first werewolf successfully ducked, the other two... the second splattered under the impact of the blow, the third simply lost his head, neck and left arm.

Jeremiah spat the words of a prayer, only nothing happened. A werewolf grinned at him and strode forward. Jeremiah muttered again and clicked his fingers. Nothing happened. He clicked his fingers again and then again as nothing happened. The werewolf drew back a hand to slap Jeremiah's head off his shoulders. Jeremiah grabbed his symbol of office, yanked it up and over his head and threw it at the werewolf. The werewolf blinked, startled at this move and then it yelped as the silver chain settled about its neck. Screaming and yelling, it span on the spot, clawing at the silver charm that now rested on its chest.

Zilvra took a deep breath and twisted her fingers in a new pattern. Ulrich yelled as hot fire poured through the marrow of his bones but then the tidal wave receded and he was able to breath with something that felt close to comfort. He rolled over and fought to get his knees under him.

Jeremiah's centipedes reared up beside him and lunged at the spinning, squealing werewolf and it went down as their pincers snipped and snipped and snipped again. Ulrich struggled to his feet as his mount span and span again, keeping the werewolves at bay but having to move to quick to land a solid blow on any of them. Ulrich swung but his head was still spinning and the blow went wide of the mark.

Kaelin span back into the fight and a werewolf with ash grey fur and a white mane knuckle slapped her so hard that her teeth clicked together and she span on the spot, star bursts scattering before her eyes and her ears ringing.

The last werewolf still facing down Jeremiah's body guard roared and leapt straight up, to come down feet first on a centipede. Reaching down it, seized the bug's head and wrenched it upwards. With a creaking, tearing sound the centipedes segments parted and the werewolf heaved its head aloft with a guttural cry of victory.

This display did not seem to impress the group of Ash Elves that were walking in through the gates with the Hatchling in their midst. The Hatchling swung its head from side to side and the scurried quicksilver fast across the flag stones to start trying to chew at the werewolf with a broken leg. The shaggy beast screamed as it tried to lurch out of the way and twisted its leg at a truly painful looking angle.

Zilvra's fingers left patterns of light in the air behind their movements and Ulrich yelped as his head seemed to be seized in a vice. For a second the pressure built towards skull bursting and then it released. Ulrich straightened with a grin and whoop, feeling better than he had done since that morning. Even his injured arm no longer felt a sore as it had done. Kaelin yelled as white lightning licked up her spine from her tail bone to slam with blinding force into the base of her skull, then her vision cleared and growl rose in her throat as new fire filled her belly. She turned on the last members of the werewolf pack. Finally the werewolves realized that they had taken on a enemy that was too much for them to handle, stepping back a couple of paces, except for the idiot who was still howling his victory over Jeremiah's centipede.

Jeremiah rolled his eyes and felt in his pocket. With a smile, he pulled his fist out and as the werewolf turned its gaping maw towards him, he threw what was clenched in his fingers.

The werewolves hands flew to its throat as it coughed and choked, eyes bulging in their sockets, its eyelids turning purple, purple and swelling. It gagged, fingers scrabbling at its neck as its flesh balloon, tongue bloating in its mouth, lips puffing up so greatly that they rolled outwards. Its breath whistled in its gullet as it fought to breath round the silver coin lodged in its throat. With one final wheeze it rolled over at Jeremiah's feet.

"For Klu'ga-nath," Jeremiah smirked.

Zilvra's fingers traced the pattern of another healing spell but her tongue tripped on the words of the prayer and before she could recover it, the chant disintegrated and snapped back in her face, her goddess giving her a brutal slap for her moment of inattention. She reeled.

Jeremiah looked amused and then uttered a pray to his god as smooth as butter. Thorian grunted as his muscles swelled under his skin. The werewolves facing him finally had enough and turned to run. Thorian lashed out and caught one of them a cracking blow with the flat of his sword that sent them stumbling.

The one with the broken leg kicked out at the Hatchling with his good foot and then crawled away to the base of the wall, scrambling up it by main upper body strength. Jeremiah's last centipede lashed after it, crawling up the wall as if it was normal flat ground until it was above the werewolf and could swing its head down and snap at the offending flea bag. While a yelp the werewolf lost his grip and tumbled off the wall, screaming as his broken leg took the impact.

Zilvra's body guard leveled their crossbows one last time and squeezed the triggers. The two werewolves fleeing towards the inside of the citadel collapsed on the steps, backs studded with bolts. One of the only two that were still holding their ground screamed, yanking at the bolts studding his arm. Thorian saved him the hassle, blade cleaving through both of them in one swing.

"It's a real bother, isn't it?" Kaelin laughed at broken-leg, "When you don't have a leg to stand on!"

The werewolf rolled towards her, teeth bared in a snarl. It was a mistake. The Hatchling pounced, fangs flicking out successfully. The werewolf screamed as the Hatchling latched on to its shoulder and tried to tear the Hatchling off but its arm was turning floppy and loose even as it lifted its hand. The Hatchling thrashed the bag of skin up and down before shaking it from side to side, growling faintly as it sucked its dinner dry. Only when it was utterly sure that said bag was empty did it let go and wander back towards its protectors with a happy little burp and a yawn.

Thorian lowered his sword and rested the tip against the floor, bending over to breath heavily for several minutes.

"Well, that was something else," he straightened and cleaned off the blade. Lifting to return it to his over shoulder scabbard he winced. "Oh frek!" he yelled as he really noticed the bite mark in his wrist. "Oh frek! Oh help! I don't want to turn all hairy!"

"Oh calm down!" Kaelin snapped marching across, "Let me have a sniff."

"Er wot?" Thorian frowned as Kaelin took hold of his wrist and bent her nose over it. She sniffed deeply for several moments.

"As I thought, you're good," she nodded and dropped his wrist, "Grandfather still hasn't worked out how to over come the fact you're part plant so you're safe. Just keep it clean so it doesn't go rotten and you should be fine."

"Er what do you mean I'm part plant?" Thorian scratched his head again.

"It's why you're green," Kaelin shrugged, "I heard a couple of sages talking about it once. Apparently you have a type of plant living in your skin, which is why your people can't be infected by the werewolf curse or vampire infection but it means you really don't do well in deserts. Grandfather..." She stopped as a scorching buzz assaulted her ears and a sickly yellowish glow light up the courtyard.

Greely, bleeding and gasping, one clawed hand holding his belly together, was crawling towards a swirling portal that hovered above the dais, casting its sickly acid glow across the stones. Kaelin snarled and snatched a dagger from her belt.

"He's too close!" Ulrich yelled as he swung on to his centipede mount, intending to grab Kaelin and haul her out of the portal before it could snap shut and cut her in half but it turned out that Kaelin had no intention of trying to follow Greely through. With a hop and skip run up she hurled the dagger, flicking it end over end as Greely pulled himself into the portal. There was a scream and the lower, still visible half of his body jerked.

"This pup already has a pack! And it isn't yours!" Kaelin yelled as Greely's legs disappeared and the portal closed with a snap, leaving the runes that had activated it and held it stable sizzling on the flagstones.

"Well said," Ulrich nodded as Kaelin turned back to them. Kaelin gave him a wan smile and then turned to the bodies scattered around the courtyard. Drawing her sword she lift one of the bodies by the ear and set about sawing through the neck column with the edge of her weapon.

"I don't mean to be rude," Ulrich said after a moment, "But why are you doing that?"

"Because somethings are too damn dangerous to be brought back, even if you think you have them on a leash," Kaelin grunted as she jabbed to point of her sword between two of the vertebra and pried until they came apart with a crack, "After all, you pet lizard was supposed to stay dead in the Dead Swamp but its now guarding the ship back at Nether Wallop. Personally, I don't give a flying fig about these but I am not running the risk of our zealous friend bring some of them back by mistake!"

"My dear Kaelin," Jeremiah smarmed, "Anyone would think you don't trust me."

"No that's the problem," Kaelin snorted as she heaved up another body and sliced, "I trust you to try and build yourself an undead army that you are more than likely intending to try on the lot of us without a moments notice so, sorry and all that, but I'm going to make sure that it is made of creatures I might have a chance of beating back into the ground. This time you are not having these as your play things."

Lady Zilvra looked at Kaelin with a level gaze, truly seeing her for the first time. Her gaze turned to the depleted ranks of Jeremiah's body guard, particularly the blue eyed, silent Ash Elves, or at least the three of them that were left standing and she came to her decision.

"Do as she is," her voice snapped, sharp as a bull whip, her finger indicating three of her body guard while her other hand beckoned the Hatchling and the other Ash Elves over to her, "Dispose of the bodies... all the bodies." Her breath actually caught on that last phrase and Ulrich realized again just how young she was. Her stoic expression hide it but this was hardly the welcome she would have expected upon her triumphant return home.

As if to bare out his suspicions, the elves she had chosen started on the work without even a flicker of disgust, one holding up the body while a second hewed the head off and the third started dragging the pieces out of the main gates to fling them over the balustrade of the bridge into the chasm below, faces dull with exhaustion and distress. The Ash Elves may have discouraged any form of compassion or connection of a more personal level but this was their clan members that they were have to dismember and dispose of on mass, with too many of them for even a few words of goodbye.

"Bloody hell," Thorian muttered, looking round himself again as if seeing the extent of the debris for the first time, "This weren't a fight, it was a bloody war."

"That would certainly describe it fairly accurately," Jeremiah sat down on a piece of the wreckage and took a count of his little pets. One centipede and only three Ash Elves left. Maybe he had been a little hasty in joining the fight when he did and keeping the goblins on side for longer might have been more sensible but he'd surely find some more recruits soon enough. After all, the Ash Elves were known slave takers, some where in this citadel would be the pens and then he could pick and choice who he offered up to Klu'na-gath so he could have the use of their bodies afterwards.

"Oh well, clean up time," Thorian bent down and unceremoniously twisted a werewolf's head off, "Do you think I could have one of their skins as cloak though? I think that would be right shiny and give your Grandfather a turn if we ever meet him."

"Please yourself," Kaelin's reply was gruff but she almost smiled.

"You could always have the skin that Ceann Mor has finished with," Jeremiah pointed to were the werewolf skin lay crumpled at the base of the wall, "I do believe that he has ever cleaned the inside of it for you."

"Really? Cool," Thorian replied, though what the temperature had to do with anything Kaelin wasn't sure of. He walked over to it, pausing to kick some bits and pieces into a pile on the way.

Ulrich nudged his centipede in the side and steered it towards Lady Zilvra. He was thinking of naming it Pete, after his elder brother, if nothing else just for the look on said brother's face if he ever rode it up to the front door of his father's estates but now was not the time for such pleasant thoughts.

Lady Zilvra frowned as he held his hand out to her. Ulrich smiled and patted the centipede's shell behind him. Zilvra frowned and then her expression cleared. She hesitated for a second and then she sat down on the centipede's back and wrapped her arms around his waist. That was most definitely a step on the right direction. Ulrich smiled, even as her body guards frowned in censor. He jabbed the centipede with his heels and swung its head towards the doors of the get hall but as they rode up the steps of the dais before those doors he felt her arms suddenly tense around his middle.

"The Matriarch!"

Draconic Shennanigans - Episode 19

New allies, old enemies but someone else finally knows Jeremiah's god.

 Chapter Nineteen: Dark Enticement

 Ulrich woke up and rolled over. He rolled back with a yelp of pain as his left arm contacted the floor and pain flared in his upper arm, as hard and as sharp as if someone had just pressed a red hot poker into his muscle.

"What the..." his hand felt a very odd shaped lump in his arm under the bandaged wrapped tight around it.

"Well you're awake," Jeremiah observed from where he was heating up the ever pouring kettle over the flame of a small oil stove, "We did rather worry that it might be beyond you after yesterday."

"Why old boy, you actually sound as if you were worried there for a moment," Ulrich tried to lever himself into a sitting position and struggled with it. Thorian reached out and helped him but his hands were not made to be gentle.

"Ah! Ah, ah," Ulrich gasped for a moment, "Thank you Thorian, thank you very much. I reckon you just made us level for my not realizing just how much of a headache that drink I gave you after Calypso died was going to give you. Yeash! This hurts!" He leaned back against the tunnel wall, put a hand to the bandage and then wished he hadn't.

"Ah! Just what happened?"

"Thorian was playing with a huge, hairy, eight legged friend," Kaelin sat up in her blankets, "When you decided that you'd break up the party. Only problem for you was that you didn't realize that said friend had brought a brother to the party and said brother bit you and bit you good. Pretty sure that we could see bone in the bottom of the hole by the time we finished clearing it out. And oh, you owe Thorian for saving your life. Him and your big bug of a mount. Have to say I'm impressed, the darn thing hasn't tried to eat anyone while you were asleep."

"I think that maybe because I haven't given it a chance to eat anyone," Jeremiah smiled at her as he poured boiling water into the teapot and clicked the lid into place before pouring out a bowl of boiling water.

Kaelin chewed it over for a moment, quite literally.

"Yeah, O.K. he may have a point there," she admitted, glancing at the heap while Ulrich's mount lay surrounded by the blue eyed bodies of its former fellows. It was quivering slightly.

"Well guess I owe all of you a huge thank you," Ulrich smiled wanly and then frowned as Jeremiah plunged his hands in the bowl of hot water, "Just what are you doing old boy?"

"Getting ready to give that arm of yours another look," Jeremiah grimaced, picking through the rolls of bandages. He selected one and unwound a length, which he promptly cut off.

"That's a little short you know," Ulrich pointed out.

"It's not for wrapping round your arm," Jeremiah informed him as he soaked the still rolled up part of the bandage in 'For Healing' potion, "It's to pack the wound."

"Oh I'm sure that my arm is utterly fine with what you have done already," Ulrich grinned, sweating slightly, "You really don't need to be bothering yourself over such a little thing."

"Thorian, pin him down," Jeremiah stated without looking round, "Kaelin, hold his arm still for me."

Ulrich yelped as he found himself back on the floor with Thorian's not inconsiderable weight on top of him, while Kaelin got hold of his arm and twisted it out to where Jeremiah could work on it.

"Seriously people, you do not need to go to this length over a little spider bite," Ulrich complained from the bottom of the heap, then he realized something as Jeremiah started unwinding the bandage round his arm, "Just where has the sleeve of my jacket gone!"

"Battle casualty," Kaelin informed him, looking away from where Jeremiah has finished uncovering the wound, "You wouldn't have wanted to keep it any way, that spider had dribbled all over it. Burnt holes clean through it."

"If it had done that then how come I still have an arm on my left side?" Ulrich demanded.

"Thunder Mage do good magic on you," the goblin leader nodded as he picked up the thieves lantern and shone it on the injury for Jeremiah, "Mighty, mighty magic, showed old many eye's poison the back door."

"It doesn't feel much like magic right now," Ulrich turned grey as Jeremiah's fingers wiggled and worked the roll of bandage out of the wound.

"It's magic alright," the goblin nodded, "Otherwise you be deaded. You be deaded and food for old many eyes, or maybe food for us when you gone." He grinned, showing lots of yellow teeth.

"There's no need for that, Stink of the Midden," Kaelin admonished quietly, trying not to looked to closely as she dripped a potion marked 'Wound cleaner' into the hole in Ulrich's arm. Thankfully this one didn't smoke on contact and Ulrich actually relaxed so it might have been numbing his flesh. When she did dare to look there actually seemed to be a covering of muscle over the bone so it wasn't as bad as she remembered.

 "Why not?" Stink of the Midden grinned some more, even while he held the lantern steady, "Doesn't goblin child wind up in cook pot when hue-mans find nothing else to eat? Hue-mans always saying nasty goblin mens stealing bab-be to eat, yes? To cook up on fire and munch crunch, yes? Well why we do that, huh? Why we do stupid thing like that? We know that hue-mans always want excusable thing so they can come clumpy marching down to the burrows and dig us out and jump up and down on us. Sides, we don't have cook fire, all smoky in den, all cough and choke, no want food then. So we don't want hue-man child, no use, no need, see? But hue-mans, oh yes hue-mans, they have cook pot, they have fire, they have hungry-hungry tums always wanting more and goblin baby easy-peasy to catch, not as hard as rabbit, easy-peasy. Easy-peasy to fill cook pot with goblin child, goblin less than rabbit, goblin just vermin, no one care if man take goblin from another man's land, doing other man favor taking goblin. Easy-peasy!"

"Speaking for myself," Ulrich grunted as Jeremiah pushed the new, slightly smaller bandage into the hole in his arm, "I have never eaten anything that spoke to me first and told me its name."

"Maybe you has and maybe yous hasn't," Stink of the Midden conceded without venom, "How is I's to know, huh? How is I's to know you haven't munched goblin child? Sides, down here, not much to eats down here so we eats what we can find. But say this thoughs, we not eat friend while friend is still talking to us. After you is deaded though." Goblins are very expressive when they shrug, their shoulders apparently having more joints than usual to complete the gesture. "Then you not care much no more any way so no hard feelings, yes?" Stink of the Midden shrugged again and grinned as Jeremiah wound  a new bandage over the top of the packed wound.

"Well I would say to rest that arm," Jeremiah observed as he tied the bandage off, "But seeing as we are still down here then there isn't much chance of that. Just try to lead more with your right hand for a while, okay?"

"I'll try old boy but no promises," Ulrich grinned and then whinced as Thorian helped him sit up again, "I say old friend, could you try and be a little more gentle with the hauling around? My arm could do without the knocking around right now."

"Oh sorry," Thorian backed away and started digging through his pack, "Anyone else want breakfast?"

"Now that is a remarkably good idea," Jeremiah smiled and poured out the tea he'd made with the ever pouring kettle.

"You've been borrowing my stuff again without permission," Ulrich glared.

"I prefer to consider it our stuff for the duration of our travels together," Jeremiah oiled as he held out a cup to Ulrich, "But if you'd prefer to not profit from someone borrowing without permission, I suppose I'll just pour this away." He tilted the cup slowly over.

"Oh alright," Ulrich snatched before the tea could be split all over the floor, "You can blasted well borrow my kettle but, in the interest of this being equal, then I should be allowed to borrow your books whenever I like." He grinned.

Jeremiah clapped a hand down over his pocket where his books where kept but then he smiled oily, "Why Ulrich, I didn't realize that your scholarly inclinations where inclined towards theology. Of course you can have a look at my books. Here, why don't you start with this one?" Jeremiah's hand dug in his pocket and pulled out the tome he had 'collected' from the Abbey.

Kaelin frowned as she looked at it. The cover looked different to how it had looked that night in the Abbey library and she was sure that it wasn't just the fact that she was seeing it in a better light than she had then. The leather looked more brightly green, less scuffed and worn, almost new and... Kaelin leaned forward without realizing that she had done so. There was definite traces of gold work on the cover now. That had definitely not been there the night they had recovered it from the Abbey. Kaelin wracked her brain for a time when Jeremiah would have had the opportunity to practice book repair on their travels and over than when they were at the Wizards Tower nothing sprung to mind. She frowned. She didn't think he'd had enough time for such a complicated hobby while they were staying there, what with drake attacks and exploring the Tower for supplies. She frowned some more, she couldn't think of any amount of time Jeremiah could have had to work on repairing the book. Even the afternoon they were supposed to be hunting for that picture of the golden harp Jeremiah had said that he' continued looking for it even after she'd given up on the phony search. There was something strange about the whole thing.

Ulrich narrowed one eye at Jeremiah as he took the book but then he rested it on his crossed legs and opened the cover. His frown deepened as he read while he sipped his tea. It wasn't that the book started out that aggressively, more a basic outline of the order of the universe and the hierarchy of beings, thought there were some vague promises of deep knowledge and esoteric power. It was just a phrase here and there that made Ulrich suspect that whoever had authored the book had very definite feelings about how those like Thorian and the goblins should exist... or rather, he suspected, not exist. There was a definite under current in the wording that spoke to Ulrich of the sort of people who believed that they were the top of the heap and therefore had a divinely given right to decide who had the right to live and who the world would be better off without. A very us and them, divisive outlook on the world, a divine providence granted to those that were worthy to stamp all over those that were not worthy. But it wasn't really said outright, it was more subversive, more hinted at so that if you tried to bring up single passages or sentences in an argument as evidence for your objections to what was being taught then you would sound overly sensitive, maybe even hysterical.

Ulrich frowned some more. It wasn't just what he was reading that was giving him the creeps about the book. There was a feeling to the process of reading this book that wasn't there with other manuscripts. A... pressure. As if the words on the pages were living things that were trying to wriggle their way into his mind via his eyes and even more than that. As Thorian said something about bacon being ready, Ulrich realized that he had the horrible sensation of something watching him... from behind his own eyeballs.

He snapped the book shut and handed it back to its owner, not entirely sure that he had successfully suppressed the shudder that ran up his spine.

"Thanks old boy," he managed a smile, "That really was illuminating."

"Any time, Ulrich, any time," Jeremiah's smile was greasy, "After all, friends really should help each other to see the light."

"Perhaps you should try and start the fire sometime then," Thorian sniffed as he handed out bacon rolls.

Jeremiah's expression became pained as he struggled not to ask the question that Thorian's statement invited. It was a struggle that he lost.

"And what would starting the fire have to do with enabling our friend Ulrich to see the light?" he asked at last. Thorian looked at him as if he couldn't believe just how thick Jeremiah was acting and then he suspected that Jeremiah was taking the micky out of him.

"Well duh. Fire is light, light is fire," he explained hands held out wide, lip lifted in a sneer of disbelief, "If you want to help Ulrich see the light, you should light the fire."

Ulrich and Kaelin looked at each other across the little flame of the stove, faces distorted with the effort not to laugh. Then their eyes met.

Jeremiah sat, eyes turned up to the ceiling in an expression of long suffering endurance, as Ulrich and Kaelin dissolved into laughter, the goblins following their example, possible without understanding what was going on, or possible understanding that Jeremiah had often lorded it over Thorian because he was smarter and that Thorian had just managed to make Jeremiah look like a fool. Even Ulrich's centipede lifted its head from its coils and waved its antennae in curiosity. For some reason that made Kaelin laugh even harder.

"Thank you for that," Ulrich smiled and lifted his cup to Thorian. "I needed that!" He did not say that it had just about washed away the feeling that something was watching him from inside his own skull.

"Happy to help," Thorian grinned and use a piece of bread to mop out the bacon pan. They were just beginning to pack up and reload their packs when there was a happy jabbering from down the tunnel they had escape from the day before and a couple of Stink of the Midden's goblins clattered into their camp, holding high little jars containing a blue glow.

"Are they the empty potion vials?" Jeremiah asked after a long look.

"Yes, yes," Stink of the Midden grinned, "Left them lying around, no more wanted them so we use them. Send some of the lads back to last cave. Light bugs having fun in there, all munchity-crunchity. Easy enough to pop some in the bottles. Now we don't use lights that tell dark pointy ears that we are here." His gesture at Jeremiah's puppeted Ash Elves left no one in any doubt as to what Stink of the Midden thought of them. "Going close to their places next I'll wager, no fun to be had there, not if they catch us. Plenty of fun for them, oh yes, plenty of fun for them, not much fun for us, oh no."

"Well then, let's see," Ulrich smiled and leaning forward, blew out the stove. Kaelin blinked in the sudden darkness striving to get her eyes used to lack of light. After a few moments the faces of her companions swum out of the gloom, painted strange hues in the blue light. Stink of the Midden chattered something that may have been a goblin laugh, he and his fellows nearly invisible in the blue glow.

"Now we see you, you no see us," he chuckled, "How does it feel to be the ones scared of the big clompy boot?"

"Singularly uncomfortable," Jeremiah said in the darkness, his eyes fixed on the goblin. The little pipsqueak was becoming far too familiar with them all. The runt had obviously forgotten who was the master here and who would have been lying in a road side ditch if it wasn't for him, Jeremiah. He supposed that it was the problem with encouraging their fixation with Kaelin. Well, next time he'd make sure that they knew who they really should sing their praise to because there would be a next time, that he was sure of, he just need to dispose of the garbage first.

"But at the same time we are less likely to let other people know that we are coming this way," Ulrich observed, "So I'd say that our little friend here showed a brilliant use of his brain." Stink of the Midden preened. Unseen in the gloom, Jeremiah glowered.

Carefully, Ulrich poured the last of the oil out of the stove back into the flask and capped it shut before striding across to his many legged mount and swinging on to its back. It was an odd motion as the centipedes back was only slightly higher than a regular chair so he had to fold his legs up high. The centipede rippled and turned its head as if considering whether the smell of blood on its rider meant that it could have another go at bucking him off but a dig of Ulrich's thumb in its injured back plate convinced it that such a move was not worth the effort it took. Rippling its multitude of legs it swung round to face the tunnel that lead further into this darksome world below ground. Thorian fell in at his right shoulder without a word while the goblins slid up on silent feet on his left. It appeared that the loss of one of their comrades in the fight against the centipedes had convinced them as to the danger of this place and they had lost their sense of invulnerability brought on by having an Ash Elf have to get down and kiss one of their boots. Kaelin managed to follow right on behind them, even though her spine clenched and her hair tried to stand on end as she heard Jeremiah's collection of puppets start following along behind her. She for one would be quite glad if he lost the entire lot and was never able to get any of them back. About the only thing worse than them was the shadow things that he sometimes summoned up. Kaelin shuddered as the memory of their hideous creaking moaning sounded again in her ears. They were something worse than his puppets, at least if he decided to set his puppets on them she'd have a fighting chance of taking them out where as those things...

She shuddered. Just how can you hit something that doesn't have a body? She just cope with things that had a body but something made of mist and shadow? How could you fight that? That and they were under the control of someone she still didn't fully trust. Yeah, he'd helped save Ulrich the day before but there was something off in the smell of him today. The last time he'd smelt like that it was when he was trying to convince her and Thorian to come back to the Abbey with him and she was pretty sure that he had done something terrible while they were there. The smell of blood was too distinctive for someone with her nose, even if it had not been visible on his clothes.

They pressed on into the dark, the light of the kerveads only just lighting their way so Kaelin trailed her finger tips along the rock wall, the stone uneven and time worn under her touch. The walk took on the timeless quality of a dream, eyes straining to see in the gloom, the muffled sounds of their steps susurrating back to them out of the throat of stone. Kaelin felt her mind begin to drift in the dark, the world around them becoming more and more unreal. Part of her knew that she had always seemed to be walking in the dark, always shut out of the light, her longing to find her place outside of the dark the dreams of a silly, stupid child. She had been born into the dark, it swam in her blood, it grew in her bones. Who was she fooling to think that she could leave it behind? No matter how far she ran she was always going to run back to it in the end. It was where she belonged.

She sneezed and shook her head, fighting to get her grandfather's voice out of her mind. Damn it, the only thing she wanted to run from was that damn freak. Why could he just leave her alone? She wasn't his property. She wasn't a thing. You could own things but people weren't things. And that she realized was the problem with Jeremiah, he was another one who looked at people as if they were more things than people. She shuddered at the sound of the foot steps behind her, the foots steps of many but the breath of only one. After this she was going to warn Stink of the Midden to be more careful around the Mage of Thunder. A reminder that he was a hue-man and therefore should be treated with a degree of fear might be timely, she was picking up a certain degree of dislike in Jeremiah's scent when he was talking to the goblin or rather, when the goblin was talking to him.

She jerked her hand from the wall with a wordless exclamation, muffled in haste.

"What's the matter?" Thorian's voice came out of the dark, with some degree of control over his volume for once.

"I'm not sure," Kaelin stretched out her hand again, carefully brushing her finger tips over the wall, "Any chance of one of those light vials being brought this way?"

Stink of the Midden wriggled his way back down the corridor to where she was standing, holding the vial of kerveads up high. Kaelin peered closely at the wall.

"It's been masoned," she reported, "This isn't a cave, its a tunnel."

"Surely you exaggerate my dear Kaelin," Jeremiah's voice drifted out of the dark, "We haven't crossed any threshold that I've seen."

"Well if you've ever seen perfect squares any where in nature I'm willing to be persuaded that we are not in a tunnel," Kaelin rolled her eyes unseen in the darkness, "If not, then someone has lined this tunnel with masoned stones."

"Why would they do that?" Thorian's frown was so strong it could be heard in his voice.

"My guess would be that we are approaching some where important to the at least some of the denizens of this world," Ulrich noted, "There was something in the book Governor Risgath gave me that said that Ash Elves do have a type of architecture, valuing slaves that have any skill at working stone and metal, or sometimes trading with the other races that live down here to have caves that have a social significance lined and decorated. Some of the out right caverns they'll actually build whole houses in. We haven't seen any caverns like that yet but apparently there are some really big ones down here that would have you believing that you are some where topside on a moonless night if it wasn't for the fact that it never rains."

"Well then," Jeremiah grinned in the dark, "It seems we are finally approaching the end of our quest. Lead on, Thunder warriors, lead on."

Kaelin rolled her eyes at Jeremiah's pompous tone but as she started to follow her living companions she took a moment to call up the wolf, feeling it tense and stretch just below her muscles. As far as she was concerned any where the Ash Elves considered important was going to be trouble with a Capital 'T'.

As they marched deeper into the realm of the Ash Elves the darkness actually lifted slightly, chunks of crystal set within the walls, shining back and increasing the light provided by the goblins make shift torches. Part of Kaelin wished that they didn't as the reliefs carved into the walls were not designed to bring comfort. They seemed to have a love for trampling on other races and glorified it in their artwork, coming up with ever more inventive ways of tormenting their prisoners. There was also panels that seemed to display some of their history but Kaelin couldn't work out all the details in the short amount of time she could see them. She guessed that most of them were to do with how the clans had picked their motifs but one relief however, made her pause and look more closely.

The first thing that stuck her was that it was clearly taking place above ground as a moon arched high over the scene below, a Chester cat's grin of a moon that shone down on the edge of the water, each wave carved with intricate, almost painful detail. She half expected the water to move and sigh with its never ending hunger. Gathered on the shore the Ash Elves knelt in supplication to the figure that rose from the waves, large than life, staff of office raised high over its head, if you could call that grotesque thing a head. The skull was far too long and pointed to be natural and the face had eyes that were far too far apart to be comfortable. It also had no nose or mouth, its lower face a nest of writhing tentacles that whipped and coiled as it looked down upon its adoring crowd.

"Er, Ulrich?" she called quietly through the dark, "Did that book of yours make any mention about were those Begetters happened to live?"

"Not exactly," he admitted, "Just some references about the Deeps. I have to admit I figured that it meant some where in the depths of the Underworld as that is where the Ash Elves retreated to. I figured that they were trying to rediscover their creators. Why do you ask?"

"Because the oceans have depths as well," Kaelin said, "And there are interesting things living down there on the sea floor."

"Could be..." Ulrich admitted, trailing off. Light had bloomed up ahead, revealing a corridor not only lined with shaped and chiselled stone but faux pillars holding up carved lintels. The light itself came from a doorway, the lintel of which was carved in the form of a massive spider, its legs reaching from one side of the corridor to the other, its many eyes gleaming with gems set in its carved eye sockets. Stink of the Midden and his goblins chittered with nerves, forking fingers at the image as if they thought that it was about to crawl down off the lintel and eat them. Kaelin looked at it and shuddered. Then she looked closer and wished she hadn't. The spider's body wasn't the spider's body, it was that snarling snout of a dragon that grinned down at her. The moment of the light in its gem stone eyes made it look like it was winking at her. Kaelin twisted her mouth and then stuck her tongue out at it. She knew it was childish but it made her feel better about the whole thing.

"Well, here we go," Ulrich said quietly, drawing the sword he favored for his right hand, "We few, we lucky few."

"We band of buggered!" Kaelin muttered but they were stepping through the archway.

The room beyond had a high ceiling and was ancient, the stalactites that had been hacked off and smoothed out when the cave was lined to turn it into a temple had grow back, dripping down through the gaps in the stone, looked uncannily like tree roots forcing their way through the stones of a drain. The reliefs on the walls continued the themes of death and glory and monsters that scuttled in the dark. More pressing was what the room contained. Scattered across the floor where heaps of eggs. Kaelin frowned as she stepped into the room herself and saw them. They were that large there was no doubt that they were the eggs of dragons but they were not laid out in the neat concentric rings of a dragons nest and neither were they laid in the hollows that dragons eggs would be. Instead they were heaped up in piles like the eggs of some insects and cushioned on white, spongy, fibrous looking mats. Kaelin felt her mouth go dry as she started to realize what that carving over the lintel of the doorway meant.

The bowel clenching horror of it nearly made her miss the fact that they weren't the only ones in the cave. It was Thorian's cheerful shout that woke her to the real danger of the place.

"It's Thorian time!"

She turned her head to see Thorian go crashing towards a huddle of Ash Elves and dog sized spiders that clicked and wave their paps at him, while Ulrich charged straight into the heart of the largest knot of Ash Elves, an armed guard surrounding the Ash Elf noble woman who was tending to the larest pile of eggs in the center of the... room? Temple, temple was a better word for it. Screw that, why was she even worried about what the blasted room was? The wolf jumped forward, stretching out her jaws, fangs springing through gums with the noise of nails being hammered through a plank of wood and this time the change rippled down her arms, her fingers hooking over as new cells coating the ends of her finger bones activated, pushing claws out through her skin. That was better, the world looked much simpler now. She sniffed once as Thorian's sword rang against the blade of an Ash elf. Friend. She sniffed again as a bolt from an Ash Elf crossbow whistled passed her. Foe! Her lips peeled back from her teeth and she leapt forward.

Behind her Stink of the Midden and his goblins surged to the left of the tunnel opening, hacking into the front line of spiders with glee. The Ash Elves standing further back blinked in surprise at the little green skins ferocity, then three unlimbered their swords, striding forward to meet them as the other two cocked their crossbows.

Jeremiah strode into the temple and looked round as tooth and blade crashed to his right, spiders and Ash Elf bows threatening to surround Thorian and Kaelin while to his left Stink of the Midden yelled encouragement to his fellows even as one of them fell to an spider's bite. Ahead, Ulrich grunted as Ash Elf body guard slashed him across the shoulders but failed to stop him bursting through their ranks and coming face to face with the Noble who sneered at him even as her finely wrought blade whispered from its sheath.

Jeremiah smiled and gestured for his puppeted Ash Elves to form up around him. He heard the Nobles shriek of disgust as they complied but he paid it no mind as he concentrated a moment and then the centipedes that had been crawling up the tunnel behind him boiled out to the entrance, pouring over the walls to get round the plug that was Jeremiah. Several Ash Elves stared as the tide of chitin, a mistake as it gave Thorian time to get a really decent swing in. An Ash Elf paid for his distraction with his life, coming apart at the waist, being very deceased by the time he hit the floor. Kaelin set her teeth into a spider and savaged it, snapping it from side to side with shakes of her head.

Stink of the Midden and his goblins managed to chop one of the spiders in front of them to pieces and one of the other spiders started backing away, something like fear showing in its eyes. The Ash elves of that troop pushed forward, blades hissing through the air but Stink of the Midden proved to be fast, ducking and dodging round the blows struck at him. He made a very indelicate sound up at the elves glaring down at him, causing their lips to twist into feral snarls. Stink of the Midden waggled his tongue at them.

Ulrich's blade rang against that of the Elf Noble. Her expression didn't change as her body guards closed in around him but as he evaded their strikes and blows her eyebrows rose, even as she ducked out of combat, intending to let her body guards finish the job. Her mouth pursed and a speculative look came into her eyes.

Thorian and Kaelin continued their fight against the troop to Jeremiah's right, aided and abetted by the four centipedes that he had sent that way. Granted one of his puppets took a battering as a spider tried to poison it to death the same time as an Ash Elf sheered one of its mouth parts off. To his left one of the goblins cried out as a bolt thudded home into his arm. Stink of the Midden responded with such a rage, stabbing and striking at the feet of the elf in front of him, that the elf was forced to do a very awkward, almost comical dance to avoid the goblin's little blade. Jeremiah smiled as he came up behind Stink of the Midden, the words of a vile and depraved pray falling from his lips, lined with blood as his tongue split and blistered even as it shaped the dialect of the Abyss.

Stink of the Midden didn't even have a chance to cry out as a hand grabbed the top of his head, yanked his skull back and then the cold metal sliced...

"For the glory of Klu'ga-nath!" Jeremiah's eyes shone with an unholy light as the goblin gargled and choked his last, the dark red flood pouring across the flagstones. Even the Ash Elves were stunned, stepping back as something that was not light but neither was it shadows twinned for a moment around Jeremiah and then burst. The shock wave rolled through the temple and even the noble lifted her hand to protect her eyes.

With a hideous squeal wounded spider, injured goblin and battered centipede dropped to the floor, writhed, curled up and died, eyes stretched wide by what they thought they saw in the unlight, faces set in bone chilling parodies of expressions, muscles trying to show something that no mortal could fully express. Ever hair on Kaelin's body stood up as straight and as stiff as a needle and she howled with pain, the pack's salute to a fallen comrade. The spider in front of her had about half a heartbeat before it was a greasy stain on the floor, smeared into none existence.

Jeremiah ducked as an Ash Elf cocked a crossbow and aimed at him. Seizing one of Stink of the Midden's stunned comrades, he yanked the goblin up in front of him. It jerked as the bolt smacked into its midriff, stunned disbelief on its face.

"To Klu'ga-nath I give your soul," Jeremiah smiled, even as the blood stained his beard.

Ulrich's centipede managed an grating agonized hissing shrill that could only be its attempt at a scream and lunged sideways, shaking its head in agony but Ulrich reached out with his left hand and yanked its head round by an antennae. He yelled as pain flared up his arm and burned in his shoulder but he hung on, dragging the centipede round in a circle until he faced the noble again. Something in her expression gave him an idea. A knee to the centipede's side sent it slamming between the two members of her bodyguard that had surrounded him, sending them tumbling out of his way. He dived rolled off of its back, suppressing the urge to scream as the pain licked up his arm again, and came to the knee at her feet.

"Great lady, allow me to say that of all the hidden beauties in this or any other realm we have seen you shine the brightest. No darkness could hide your radiance for it gleams in the darkness like a star in the vault of heaven, a gem in the heart of Hestia," he tried to gaze up at her with adoration.

She looked at him with a certain degree of curiosity, her eyes flicking to first Jeremiah and then Kaelin as they continued their bloody work. So far her Ash elves had held their own, their pet spiders taking the casualties but how long was that going to last? She held up her hand as her body guards stepped forward, blades leveled at his body. They paused, faces unhappy. She leaned forward, fingers brushing the bandage on his upper arm. She looked at his face and he looked her in the eye. That seemed to either impress her or give her permission or maybe both. Her finger slipped under the bandage and lifted it slightly. She lifted her eyebrows at what she found there.

"You were touched by her fangs?" her voice held a rich melody, "Her venom sank deep?"

"To the bone, I am assured," Ulrich replied, not looking down. He did not expect the smile that crossed her face and definitely did not expect the hand that took his and lifted him to his feet. Her grip was surprisingly strong and firm, her slim fingers hiding a surprising toughness. Turning slightly she trilled something in a lilting tongue that was none the less penetrating in its tones. Her body guards lower their swords, faces sullen and mistrustful. Around the Temple, Ash Elves lowered their weapons and stepped back, calling what was left of their pets to heel.

"Weapons down people!" Ulrich ordered, "Truce and parley! They are willing to talk!"

"You what?" Thorian looked round in disbelief, "Since when have pointy ears wanted to talk?"

Kaelin was already moving, a bestial snarl rising in her throat, eyes shifting through amber yellow to crimson as the object of her hate fell under her gaze. Even as she approached the last two of the remaining goblins were fleeing back the way they had come, sobbing and crying.

"Now Kaelin," Jeremiah smiled oily as he stepped smarty behind the ranks of his puppeted Ash Elves, "I'm sure we can come to an understanding."

Kaelin wasn't listening, fur bristling as she stamped forward, fangs dripping. Jeremiah flicked a finger. A puppet stepped forward, blade lifting. Kaelin's fist smacked into its wrist that hard the bones cracked, the sword going spinning off into the shadows as the puppeted Ash Elf's forearm bent backwards on its self, bones erupting through the skin. It didn't scream, face impassive even as her bull rush staggered it back. Kaelin's claws sank deep into its rib cage, twinning into its bones. Growling and snarling, her muscles bulged as she pulled. With the noise of tearing meat the puppeted Ash Elf came apart in a welter of torn tissue and black, congealed blood.

Jeremiah got his arm up, just in time. He screamed as Kaelin's fangs sank deep and worried at his muscle. He screamed again as his bones creaked under her jaw power and he flicked his free hand desperately.

Kaelin released and yanked her head back just in time as the puppet's blade whistled through the air where her neck should have been. Her back hand blow sent the puppet tumbling across the floor and she turned snarling on Jeremiah. He retreated, hand clutching his bleeding arm. It seemed that, despite all his efforts with their supplies, Jeremiah wasn't carrying quite as much padding as he used to and her teeth had met meat, rather than just fat.

Kaelin's blooded jaws opened wide again.

"You really are pleasing to my god," Jeremiah's grin was all the more vile for the pain laced through it, giving a even darker undertone to the triumph in that look.

Kaelin stopped, ears flicking forward.

"Betrayal, infighting, the break down of teamwork," Jeremiah's grin spread even more, "Klu'ga-nuth would be pleased with you."

Kaelin shivered as she fought the beast back into its cage, bones creaking and cracking as jaws and claws retracted. She didn't wipe her bloodied mouth.

"Do you know what I hope, Jeremiah?" she spat, "I hope you are judged and found wanting. I hope that other gods look at you and realized what a worthless, weak, pathetic little cockroach you are! I hope they find a way to make sure Stink of the Midden's soul is there to watch you perish and he gets to give you a damn good kick in the pants as your soul goes down to whatever hell they have chosen for you, you Freak!"

A quiet hand clap rang out. The Ash Elf Noble was applauding.

"Tell me, how did you tame her?" she asked Ulrich. Kaelin bristled.

"Not so much tamed as encouraged her to see us as pack," Ulrich explained, "The wolf is loyal to its family above all else, especially when that family is the one chosen rather than the one it was born into."

The Ash Elf frowned and very fetching the expression looked too as it made the end of her nose tip up. The other Ash Elves looked away but Ulrich admired it openly and that seemed to please her.

"I will admit that I do not understand your last statement," she admitted, "To us the clan is everything and the clan is forever but perhaps it is different for lesser creatures."

"And am I such a lesser creature?" Ulrich asked smiling.

"Let us say that perhaps I am entertaining the idea that you might be capable of being more. After all, you have some impressive pets. That one particularly," she gestured to Jeremiah, "Has a ruthlessness that would mark him as valuable to the clans."

He smiled and bowed to her, even as he still clutched his ragged arm.

"So, what brings such notable surface dwellers to the Underworld," she asked, ignoring Jeremiah's injury, "It is unusual for your kind to come into our realm and to manage so well. You must be mighty warriors of the surface world."

"Well we are not known as the King's Special for nothing," Ulrich smiled easily, "As for why we are here, we'd rather like to know why the Noble Ash Elves are now set on conquering the surface world. After all, we do know that the surface world is some what drab and dull with its insipid wild life and inclement weather so we are curious as to why you can be bothered with us?"

Her expression became shuttered and her guards moved uneasily.

"It has become a necessity," she said carefully.

"But if that necessity was removed?" Ulrich asked, "If what has been changed was changed back? Would the noble Ash Elves be content to go back to leaving the Surface World more or less in peace?"

She thought about it, casing a look over her guards. They all looked down, avoiding her gaze. She seemed to do some internal calculation.

"The Matriarchs would have to consider it," she stated at last, "But if the balance of our world is resorted then we would most likely decrease our quests of acquisition."

"Then it seems to me that we have grounds for an accord," Ulrich held out his hand, "My lady."

"Indeed we do," she smiled as she laid her hand in his. She seemed pleasantly surprised when he raised it to his lips and kissed her fingers.

"Er, what just happen?" Thorian asked.