Draconnic Shenanigans - Episode 37

Chapter Thirty Seven: Eight Legged Shrieks 

 

 (Artwork not mine, all rights go to slothbeing)

 "Ah puphed!" Tikrumpdel yawned, "Ah, what's the point anyway? It's not like I have much of a hoard left to defend any way." He sighed, ruffling their hair with a breath that smelt in equal parts of hot metal and flame grilled meat. "Some days I wonder why I keep trying. Guess the old instincts just won't shut up and go away. All I want is to be left in peace but people keep coming on by to try and poke me in the eye. I don't see why they just can't leave a body well enough be."

He tried to scratch an itch on his back, making his whole body wobble as his back foot tried to reach up and round the continental sized paunch to reach the space between his puny looking wings. Wings that would have shaded acres on a sleeker dragon looked like they didn't belong to Tikrumpdel, move like they had been graphed on as an after thought. He grunted in irritation, fighting his own love of a buffet to reach the annoying twitch. With a grumbled he rolled sideways, the cavern groaning with the shift of weigh and started rubbing his back on what was left of the block house on the left hand side of the King's Special's view. Ulrich and Quenril backed up as the walls cracked and crumbled as Tikrumpdel rippled his bulk back and forth, the battered remains of the building crashing and tumbling to the ground, some of it sliding off the cliff to splash in the river below. The ground shuddered as Tikrumpdel rolled back to the upright position so he could look down on them and see them the right way up.

Kaelin staggered and tripped, biting her lip as her knee cap smacked into the floor. She wasn't sure it whether it was broken or not. She fought the urge to swear as the floor stopped its bucking and shuddering.

"Well as I said before, Great One," Ulrich bowed to the ancient red dragon, "We had no idea that you had claimed this land or that your hoard was located here. I merely checked the entrance to your home to determine whether its residence was someone we should be worried about and having determined that you were a mighty personage, I was going to suggest to my companions that we should not disturb your rest and move on a quietly as possible. It was the personage of the Bat Clan up there who disturbed your rest and it occurs to me that if you ate him then you won't be bothered again."

 Tikrumpdel turned an eye up the cliff edge. The Bat Clan member froze where they were trying to unobtrusively scramble backwards, having been knocked off their feet much the same way that Kaelin had been.

"We were just passing through," said shape changer called from where she was standing up, bowed over to rub at her wounded knee, "It was that git up there that started shouting."

"Why are you all the way back there?" Tikrumpdel frowned at her but then looked up at the Bat Clan Elf who had scuttled back a little further. He froze again.

"The real question is can I be bothered to climb up there?" he yawned again and stretched, spreading out as he came. The whole of the King's Special and their allies backed up at that. Tikrumpdel might have been too heavy to fly and was certainly out of shape but his claws where still bigger than Thorian. Spread out he could have seized four of them in a grab with those claws.

"Well," Ulrich swallowed as Tikrumpdel relaxed, "Well, it occurs to me, why bother climbing up there when you can incinerate him from here?"

The chorus of running feet echoed around the cavern as the Bat Clan Elf gave up all semblance of caution and bolted for the unseen exit of the higher cave, his panicked whimpering whispering to them as he fled.

"He seems to be in a hurry," Thorian observed, "Wonder if he left the kettle on."

The Bat Clan Elf wasn't the only one, it was just that Kaelin was a lot quieter about it. Ulrich was bloody well insane. You don't try to control a dragon that size, to them small people were just insects, small, buzzing, irritating and invoking about much the same amount of feeling when they burnt up in a flame. Oh sorry, that's too bad, still what's the fuss?

"Gah," Tikrumpdel rumbled up at the cliff edge, "Pests! Tics! Vermin! Lice! Parasites!"

He burped a breath of hot air that made the steams of the cavern roll and billow, the edge of the cliff wavering in the blast of heat. Still grumbling in his throat he shuffled back around to look at that King's Special, grinding his belly against the rumble pile, rock groaning and squeaking as it was crushed together with pellets of compressed armor.

"That's what you get for having a reputation as the richest, most powerful dragon to ever fly," he sighed, "Everyone believes it, even when they should know its no longer true. I would just like to be left alone. I just want to hibernate, you know, sleep at least some of this off." He smacked himself on the chest, making ripples the size of ocean waves travel across his flesh. He flopped his chins on to the ground, the impact of it bouncing the King's Special and their allies off the ground, making them stagger and fight to keep their footing. Tikrumpdel didn't notice, sighing up from the depth of his being, a great shuddering ripple that made his whole body droop, piggy little eyes watering dolefully as he sniffed, his puny wings hanging limp over his sides like the sails of a ship with a broken mast.

Ulrich stepped carefully to one side and sat down on a chunk of rock, hooking one leg over the other, his foot dangling in midair.

"It seems to me that you really rather need a listening ear old boy," he smiled indulgently up at the huge dragon, "And seeing as I have two ears available, I'm free to listen."

Tikrumpdel shifted his head to glare at Ulrich.

"Do you take me for a fool?" he rumbled, little eyes narrowing dangerously.

"Only an idiot would do so," Ulrich reassured but his silver tongue seemed to have tarnished. With a rattle of shifting stones, Tikrumpdel's head lifted, the heat rolling of his hide increasing as the glow of the well banked fire in his nostrils flared up.

"You really think you can string me along?" he rumbled, the thunder of an avalanche rolling through his voice, "Like a little creature like you has the time to listen to my tail. I have lived since before the time of your grandfather's grandfather! I have seen kingdom's start in the mud and crumble into dust! I have seen generations of elves and dwarfs come and go and you think that you, the smallest of the smallest people has enough heart beats to hear one tenth of my tail?"

"I was merely trying to be companionable," Ulrich began, uncrossing his leg, "I meant no disrespect for your vast..."

That was probably the wrong word to use, Ulrich conceded that point later.

Tikrumpdel's fist crashed into ground with the force of a falling anvil, bouncing the rock and therefore Ulrich, into the air. Ulrich smashed down on his butt and had to manage a very undignified roll to avoid the crushing weight of the rock slamming back down. Quenril scrabbled forward and heaved him to his feet, pulling him away, eyes wide as he watched for the dragon's next move.

Tikrumpdel snorted and then sniggered as Ulrich spat dust and tried to wipe grim from his face as Quenril continued to pull him backwards. He sniggered and then chuckled, his jowls shaking his glee.

"Oh I'd forgotten how careless you small things were, even when you think you are being careful," he sniggered again, "I haven't talked with small creatures for..." He trailed off looking off to the right, staring at the swirling mists for a moment, frowning. He hummed and hawed in his throat for a moment and finally snorted a small puff of flame in annoyance.

"What year is it?" he demanded, slapping his meaty tail on the ground. A wall of the much abused block house cracked. It groaned and shifted for a moment and then gave up the fight, surrendering to time, gravity and much draconnic abuse. With a stony grumble it collapsed and rained down in fist sized lumps that bounced off of Tikrumpdel's hunch with less effect than a rain of hail stones on a rubble sheet. Tikrumpdel peered over the rolls of one shoulder.

"I've been meaning to fix that," he grunted.

"It is the year twenty one fifty seven of the Fourth Era," Ulrich answered the question, straightening up and frowning at Quenril until his Ash Elf body guard finally let his arm go.

"Three hundred years," Tikrumpdel settled back, "Now that's what I call a nap." He yawned and stretched again, making the rumble pile wheeze and pop with his shifting weight. "Still, would have slept better if those ruddy adventures would stop trying to steal my stuff. Do you have any idea how fattening adventures are?"

"I would guess that they are extremely fattening," Ulrich stared up at the scaly mound that was Tikrumpdel's girth, "And that kind of makes sense, seeing as it not only the adventures themselves but also all their supplies."

"Not to mention their beasts," Tikrumpdel grumble, "I am so fed up of the taste of spider. It was a novelty to beginning with but now it is just boring and those lizard things are just as bad. What I wouldn't give for a nice roast horse. Or a mountain thunderer. Not that I could catch one but oh my word, it has been so long since I tasted mountain thunderer."

"You like them too," Thorian broke into a huge grin.

"Who doesn't?" Tikrumpdel grinned back, "Mountain Thunderer roasted until its juices bubble and the crust just starts to form." He made an appreciative noise in the back of his throat.

"Or snow pigs," Thorian beamed, "Snow pigs are good to."

"Snow pigs?" Tikrumpdel asked, swinging his head sideways to peer out of one eye at Thorian, "Don't think I know them."

"Above this size," Thorian held his hands apart, "Short little legs, round bodies like great big meat potatoes but they can be right quick. Long shaggy hair that makes pretty good rope when its braided and they squeak a lot like this 'week, week, week'."

"Do they taste good?" Tikrumpdel sniffed with interest.

"Like rabbit but not as strong," Thorian nodded, "Pretty good when stuffed with apples."

Tikrumpdel made a noise of interest. It appeared that despite his protests of wanting to sleep off some of the years of gluttony, he was still very much ruled by his stomach. 

"It's tempting," he rumbled, "Very tempting. Only problem is deciding whether or not I would have even more bother with the adventurers up in the surface world than I have down here in the dark. That and that bunch of young upstarts. Would they leave a body alone if I decide to see the sun again?" He ground his belly on the rock fall again, making it squeak and grind with the sound of mill stones. "I miss the sun..."

"So who are these young upstarts?" Jeremiah asked as innocently as could be, his wings flicking. There were possibilities here, he could smell them. As fat and lazy Tikrumpdel had proven to be, if he could be goaded into finally shaking off the centuries of inaction then it could be come a war with this consortium of other dragons. A war of dragons? Such a thing had not truly been seen since the days of the God war and that had been... what? Roughly eleven thousand years ago? A resurgence of such an ancient conflict would certainly humble some of the current rulers of the world and open up new opportunities in the chaos that would follow such an event. After all, when the world goes to complete and utter smash around people, they cry out for answers and who better to sooth their fears than the One True God?

Jeremiah tried to hide his frown as he looked at Tikrumpdel. It was hard to imagine him being able to combat one young, health and above all fit opposing dragon, let a alone a whole group of them. But there again, his weight could play to the defense. There was so much of him that if they could trap the opponents on the ground, disable their wings somehow, then Tikrumpdel's weigh could become the deciding factor as he would be more used to ground based movement and his sheer mass would help protect his vital organs from blows and piercing teeth. Jeremiah doubted that there were many dragons who would be able to get their gape open wide enough to seize Tikrumpdel's throat in a choke hold and if they tried then all Tikrumpdel would have to do was roll and that would be the end of the story for the other dragon. But how to convince him to put out the effort? Cajoling probably wouldn't work after Tikrumpdel had measured up Ulrich's attempt and ordering would just get Jeremiah reduced to a mouthful. If dragons had gods then it was unknown and they probably didn't. Only little people needed someone to pray to so trying to convert him to the worship of the One True God was probably a nonstarter.

"Well," Ulrich rubbed his chin like his was thinking out loud, "Our King is pretty open to immigration as long as they work to prove that they are going to be valuable members of society. After all, we did  have an Ash Elf in the position of a provincial governor long before anyone else would consider every trusting anyone of their race, so if you were to say, help out with, I don't know... Maybe that monster that is in the great lake, I think the King might be willing to help out with any dragon that comes nosing around trying to cause you trouble. Maybe."

"Your King?" Tikrumpdel sniffed, swinging his head to look at Ulrich out of the out eye, "Who's your king?"

"King Tatsuya, the twelfth of his line," Ulrich reported, "He son, Prince Relian, has been well trained to take the throne after his father and continue the legacy of common sense and frugal use of resources."

He did his best to project pride in his country and Kings. He wasn't sure what was going on behind the dragon's eyes but if there was some thought as to judging Ulrich's home country then by gollies Ulrich was going to do his best to make it sound like he had the best country in the world and he did admit that a unbroken line of King's stretching back twelve generation was no mean feat.

"You look capable enough," Tikrumpdel rumbled, "How long have you been down here?"

"Phew, now you're asking," Ulrich puffed out his cheeks and then let them down again, "Um." He rubbed his chin again, seriously thinking this time.

"What do you think chaps?" he turned to the others, "How long do you think we have been down here?"

"Well there were the two weeks in the realm of the dwergs," Jeremiah noted, "And we have had two, no three sleeps since then. There was also the time we spent at the Snake Clan hold and then there was..."

"Three tens," Thorian stated, "Must be three tens at least."

"I'd agreed with that," Estella nodded her agreement, speaking up for the first time.

"Other than that the answer really could be the same as the one for how long is a ball of string?" Ulrich admitted, "I have to admit I haven't been keeping track that well. Been a little too busy convincing the local wildlife that we are not a dinner option."

 Tikrumpdel actually seemed impressed with that answer but seeing as his sleep seemed to have been disturbed by the local wildlife an awful lot so he probably understood how persistent the creatures of the Underworld could be.

"Do you know some where on the surface that could be safe for my hoard?" Tikrumpdel rumbled, the vibrations of it trembling through the bedrock beneath their feet as he slid further down the rubble slope to the point at least part of his chest was resting on the solid stone, "Somewhere that I can turn my back on it for more than five minutes and not have some annoying pesky little flea tampering with it."

"As matter of fact we do, old boy!" Ulrich exclaimed, an inspiration particular smacking him between the eyes full force, "We happen to know a gentleman who has an extremely well protected fastness on the surface world. He was forming the front line of defense when we left to come down here and discover what all the fuss was about. It is built out of stone and magic and set in a swamp that other people don't tend to come to that often. He defeated a powerful wizard to claim it so he's no slouch himself and his... people are loyal and powerful in their own right."

Tikrumpdel frowned, considering the pause in Ulrich's words.

Kaelin decided that was her cue to exit. She'd taken shelter in the shadows near the bridge, waiting for the moment when Tikrumpdel would be fully focus on the others before she tried to cross that open span and now she dashed out, ready for the sprint.

She stumbled to a halt, eyes wide and mouth dry as the legs and furry, low slung bodies bustled out of the shadows on either side of the bridge, eyes, so many eyes, blinking as they sized her up, paps fidgeting.

Jeremiah turned his head, narrowing his eyes at the dark. There was definitely something in the shadows but he wasn't sure what. He lifted a hand and started muttering the words to a prayer, threads of power curling around his fingers, wings shifting uneasily.

"Oh," Thorian muttered, stepping towards the wall below the mouth of the high cave, hand going back over his shoulder to grasp the hilt of his sword, "Oh that's not good." 

Ulrich looked up, following the direction of Thorian's gaze. His elven swords whispered from their scabbards.

"People," he snapped, "We have company and it is not the sort you want round for dinner."

The Ash Elves lining the edge of the group, grinned back, their teeth pearly white in the dark, their faces unsettlingly similar to those of skulls, their savagely reshaped noses ghoulish with their gaping nostrils.

Out on her own, Kaelin looked from side to side. Two on the right, two on the left and they were bigger than the small ones they had fought up on the surface. Those had been the size of Alsatians, these were the size of miniature horses, which only sounded pathetic until you were the one stood there trying to stare down their multiple eyes and clicking fangs.

"Spiders," she muttered, "Why does it always have to be spiders?"

With a grunt she let the wolf out of its cage. Her bones bubbled and stretched, pain lancing through her muscles as they reconfigure to take the extra long jaws, her claws forcing their way out of the tips of her fingers, pushing her fingernails out of the way. Her shoulders surged, taking on more mass, as the fur colonized her skin. She growled at her foes as her eyes finished turning tawny.

Ulrich whistled and Peter responded, flowing to his master's side and Ulrich swung on to him without breaking stride.

"Weatherall to me!" He commanded. Weatherall thought about, thought about running but then Sabal scrambled on to his shell, lacking some of the grace usual for an elf but seeing as the bandages loaded with for healing potion still restricted his motion that was to be forgiven. Weatherall wiggled his eye stalks at the blade held in Sabal's hand and thought better of it, scuttling into position to his master's left. Marmaduke bonged like a dropped soup kettle as he stepped up to Ulrich's right, Thorian stepping with him to anchor the right flank.

Jeremiah frowned, distracted for a second by his companions odd behavior. Anyone would think that they were about to launch into battle and with something other than that over bloated corpse of a dragon. There was something much more interesting over in the shadows and...

"Let's... have... some..." Thorian riled himself up, "WAAAAAARRRRRRR! WAAAAAAARRRRRR!"

The Bat Clans grinning smiles faltered as Thorian's battle cry echoed and re-echoed through the cavern, sounding like an entire tribe of orc crossbreeds were about to boil out of the stone work at them, screaming and waving their over sized chopping swords at them.

The last of the block house gave up the fight with a snap and crumbled into dust, adding the thunder of its collapse to Thorian's battle cry.

"Oh for night's sake," a clear voice rang out as an Ash Elf noblewoman, her cut nose revealing that she two was Bat Clan, pushing her way between the ranks of the massed elves, "We're not here to gather humans people."

Tikrumpdel growled, recognizing trouble when he saw it, making the cavern tremble as he shuffled his massive girth round to face the cliff, chin angled up so he could see the clan members, tickles of flame beginning to form around his teeth.

The Bat Clan Noble lifted her hand and barked a string of words that made the skin crawl. Thick white webbing whipped out of the air and wound themselves tight around Tikrumpdel's muzzle, cracking his teeth together. He let loose a muffled yelled and sent rubble cascading off of the lower cliff edge as he backed away, swinging his head from side to side, pawing at the sticky stuff smoothing his face.

"Eyeeeeee," Tasnar let out a long scream of fear, "Disgraced! Disgraced and defiled! Eyeeee!"

The Ash Elf false widow spider centaur thing turned her head to glare at him, lips parting to reveal mobile pap like fangs, face mark with the scarification tattoo of the Spider Clan, revealing her original clan affiliation despite despite her reshaped nose.

Her sister abomination, a Ash Elf lace web spider centaur, anchoring the flank closer to Tikrumpdel was more concentrated on her work, a rope of silk lashing out and entangling one of Tikrumpdel's forefoot, preventing him from clawing at the webbing on his face. He vented a muffled roar. She bared sharpened teeth, displaying her Rat Clan origins.

The Ash Elves tossed reels of rope of the cliff edge and were coming down the lines before they had finished unspooling, some firing as they came, spiders the size of small ponies swarming down the cliff as well towards Tikrumpdel as well. A bolt thudded into Thorian's armor but bounced of the dragon hide layers. Thorian took a step back from the impact but then stepped forwards, the red beginning to build in his gaze.

Ulrich didn't duck by effort of will as a bolt parted his hair with the wind of its passage.

"For Portasia!" he roared, leveling a sword at the descending foes.

Estella spread her feet wide, half crouching in the horse straddle stance, her extended fore and middle fingers describing two circles, one clockwise and one counter clock, the talismans echoing her gestures in a horizontal figure of eight behind her head, the sparks of power flowing in their wake. The circles where draw and drawn again thickening their outline and then Estella chopped both hands down, flat palmed and the power rippled as it was unleashed. Bat Clan members still on the line juddered to a halt, eyes wide, twisting and turning as they shouted about something in the air, something they feared. The ones already on the ground turned, hand bows tracking something in the air above the head's of the King's Special and their allies, voices not quite on the verge of panic.

The Noble turned her head, face twisting with anger as she glared down at Estella, rage coloring her skin, furious that this pretty little girl could have thrown her people in to confusion with nothing more than a light show.

Estella smiled back up at her, then lifted the first and middle finger of her left hand to her lips to kiss the knuckles and then tip them in salute to the Ash Elf Noble.

The Noble's lip twisted and she opened her mouth to scream a curse.

Still smiling, Estella leaned over and opened her mouth, stream of thick, black oil jetting from her in one huge flood that looked like it should turn her inside out. It didn't, the ropes of it spiraling together, wrapping into columns that smoothed out to form the muscular black limbs of a dragon speckled with the explosions of solar systems.

Valodrael grinned up at the Noble and the growl that rumbled in his throat made more than one Ash Elf cringe, terror over riding the fear of their leader. Said leader herself took a step back, the curse dying on her lips before it could be spoken.

The distraction was to cost some more than others. Sabal had experienced what could only be called a bad day. He'd been dragged on a wild goose chase, he'd nearly fallen in lava, been crushed by a size changing dragon and had nearly cracked his head open falling into a hidden sink hole. He had been having a bad day and among the Ash Elves the acceptable response to having a bad day was finding someone else to have an even worse day.

Weatherall waggled his eye stalks as Sabal goaded him into a charge. Sabal was shrieking like a banshee as he lashed out.

A Bat Clan Elf span away, his face split. Another fell shrieking, clutching the stump of his arm. A third had an expression of surprise cross his face as his arms fell limp, Sabal's sword having crashed through his eye socket. The broken unit of Bat Clan Ash Elves fell back in two separate squads, their cohesion broken.

Kaelin, alone, unable to turn and see what was going on behind her, bunched herself and leaped at the spiders to her left as they were the ones closest to her. Her raking claws missed the hit, these spiders apparently more than ready to dodge and duck to avoid her attack. Kaelin landed and slide, turning slightly to try and keep them in her sights, fur bristling as she growled.

"Parp!" Haggis agreed, his grey furred wind bag shaking.

Quenril leveled his hand bow, sighted down the arrow and breathed out before his finger tightened on the trigger. The bolt whistled passed Ulrich's ear, threading the space between him and Sabal to shatter on the wall beside a Bat Clam member, making him flinch. Quenril breathed a prayer of thanks, his stomach still noted with the fear he'd shoot Ulrich in the back.

Jeremiah frowned at the two swarms of Ash Elves as they began shake free of Estella's influence. They kept being interrupted by these inconsiderate wretches who obviously had no idea that they should bow before their betters. That being the case, he supposed that he, Jeremiah, would have to deal with the issue. If he left it up to the rest of the King's Special they would still be here in a month's time.

He closed his eyes and pressed his hands together in prayer, lips moving as he offered up his worship of praise to the great god Klu'ga-nath.

Nanny Tatters' bones creaked and groaned as she swelled and expanded. Jeremiah frowned, wondering how he had displeased his god as she was not the impressive size that she should have been. He had envisioned her being the lithe, agile version of Tikrumpdel's size to shame the old beast into compliance. Instead she was the size of a Clydesdale horse, the most common size that Valodrael used. Jeremiah thinned his mouth, not impressed. Still trying to come up with suitable words of thanks for what he'd gotten, he stepped back, waving his remaining Ash Elf puppet forward, the vigor beside it to form a meat shield between him and the Bat Clan.

Valodrael glanced at Nanny Tatters' expanded form, looked at Jeremiah's unimpressed face and suppressed a smirk. It was obvious that the priest hadn't received what he wanted. Maybe that would teach him to worship a guileful god. A bolt thudded into Valodrael's neck. He swung his head to look, a long flat stare, at the southern troop of Ash Elves. The shooter swallowed.

Valodrael reached up and plucked the bolt from his oily substance. It came out with a greasy sucking sound. He looked at it, pinched between two claws and then looked at the shooter. The shooters face fell as they felt the full weight of having done something really rather stupid.

Valodrael's inhale rattled like hail over ice in a storm thrashing a great northern lake to cold rage.

The shooter drew breath to scream but never made it that far as the Chill of the Void scoured across the ground, rocks shattering under its freezing touch, the shooter and those both to the sides and behind him locking into place as icicles of red and black ruptured from their flesh, skin blackening as capillaries ruptured below the surface, their last screams frozen in time forever, or at least until they defrosted later.

 The survivors fell away to either side of the frozen statues, crying out in horror as one wavered and then toppled, snapping off at the ankles and smashing to pieces on the floor, the shards of froze tissue ringing like water ice across the stones. Valodrael grinned and then flicked the bolt that had hit him with two talons. The frozen statue that had been the shooter cracked as the bolt sheered through its solid neck and its head plunged to the floor to burst into slivers and chunks.

Someone screamed but the pain wasn't done yet, their distraction having given Tasnar time to line up the perfect shot. The bolt whistle. The rappel lines parted with whip cracks. The Bat Clan members toppled in slow motion in mid-air, mouths opening in startled O's of horror and then gravity speeded up and they dropped. One managed a high scream of horror as they plummeted and then they met the ground with stomach turning cracks as their skulls shattered and their brains mushed against the stones.

The Bat Clan southern unit had been cut in two and one of its squads reduced to individuals who backed towards to the cliff, looking for a rappel line that was still complete enough to get them out of their. They had come to subdue an old, fat, lazy dragon and raid his horde. Now they had suddenly had three dragons facing them and two of them were not old, not fat and certainly not lazy. This was decidedly above their pay grade.

"For the King! For Portasia! For Freedom! Charge!" Ulrich brandished his fae gifted, elf made sword and set his heels to Peter's flanks. Whistling like one of the dwerg's locomotives, Peter rippled forward, mouth parts sheering open and closed. They crashed into the second squad of the now broken northern unit. Ulrich was laughing as his swords whipped and sliced through the air. The hiss of cut air and the ring of steel on steel. Every year of training and schooling working in one seamless whole as he clashed with the skill of the Bat Clan Elves, the hours he had spent learning from Quenril and his kin coming together, fencing the Bat Clan Member directly in front of him in a cage of hissing steel.

The Bat Clan Elf went from snarling to grimacing with the effort of keeping up with Ulrich's blows to sweating. He took a step back. Peter punished that mistake with insect wrath, his mandibles sheering through the elf's leg at the thigh. He sheered again, severing the arm at the elbow. He sheered again, cutting off the Elf's scream of pain even as the red splashed, snipping the head off the falling body like a butcher preparing a chicken.

Jeremiah sniffed. It had to be a sign of his companions lack of quality that they had to spend so much unnecessary effort to try and impress their audience when there were much more efficient methods of dealing with the problem at hand.

"Deal with that lot there," he commanded Nanny Tatters, gesturing to the unmolested squad that had come to be when the northern unit broke down. It was best to have a clean canvas when one was doing a demonstration for the benefit of others.

Nanny Tatters opened her wings and flapped them. Jeremiah raised an eyebrow as she revealed that she actually now had the beginnings of webbing between the bony span of her wing fingers. She lunged forward, jumped and managed to chicken flutter over the messy knot of combatants in the way. She stumbled with the landing and then steadied, her half length tail flicking behind her.

Tikrumpdel thrashed and tugged against his bounds, his territory suddenly invaded by not one but two dragons. Nanny Tatters didn't even glance at him with her one eye. She blinked her side ways eyelids instead at the squad of Bat Clan Elves that her Master had indicated. She opened her mouth and... coughed.

The Bat Clan Elves flinched and then grinned, hefting their swords back to the ready.

Nanny Tatters inhaled, the noise of a ghost ship creaking in the night, a desiccating wind filling her sails and the Bat Clan Elves screamed, screams that went hoarse and croaky and reedy. The outliers of the unit dived out of the stream, one of them clutching his face after landing, the flesh sagging and liver spotted. The others struggled trying to escape as well but their knees gave way as their muscles went thin, their knees swelling with the joint ail. Hair dropped out in handfuls as skin creased and wrinkled, teeth cracking or falling out entirely.

The skeletons fell, hands held out in supplication to the ravages of time itself, shattering on the stones, the dust of their flesh billowing in the wind.

Nanny Tatters licked her chops and the hiccuped slightly. She blinked, her now full length tail twitching behind her, dragging its length over the rock. The claws of one hand tapped against the floor, the inner workings of tendon and bone no longer on show, her once transparent hide having darkened to a pale, muddy brown. She still did not have scales but she no longer looked like an walking anatomy lesson.

Jeremiah smiled at how well the lesson had been demonstrated, not questioning Nanny Tatters'... recovery.

Kaelin swiveled an ear in that direction, recognizing the sound of Nanny Tatters' terrifying breath weapon but she didn't have tie to look. She could only hope that Jeremiah hadn't decided that this was the moment he was going to betray the King's Special and turn them all into food for his horror show of a dragon. The damn thing was healing itself. She was damn  sure of it but she didn't have time!

She dodged the first scuttling lunge, dodged the second, kicked out at that one and...

She screamed as the fangs of one of the ones from the other side of the bridge, the ones she hadn't managed to keep an eye on for five bloody seconds, puncture the small of her back. She screamed again, knees threatening to buckle, boiling hot and freezing cold flushes racing through her nervous system, sweat plastering her fur to her skin. She fought the need to heave as she twisted hard enough to rip the fangs out of her flesh, the breath burning in her lungs. She turned as the group of four spiders closed in around her and in a flash of inspiration stopped fighting her roiling stomach. The spiders backed up as the projectile vomit splashed across the stones, some of them shaking fastidiously as droplets of stinking gunk splattered their bristles.

Kaelin gasped, her mouth rank and her vision blurring, shaking as she stayed standing.

Marmaduke clanged as he lunged forward, his round feet punching the stone as he stood beside his master. His bronze sword whizzed through the air and... The Bat Clan Elf ducked, grinning as he came up, long steel sword ready to sheer Marmaduke's blade into. His last standing squad mate blinked as he smacked into the cliff face hard enough to shatter bone and leave him dropping to the floor as limp as a rag doll. Marmaduke buzzed quietly with satisfaction. He might not have been the best swordsman that had ever been forged in bronze but he could shield bash with his buckler like a god's thunder bolt.

Tikrumpdel wriggled, flexing against the bound that held him. The two spider centaur things paced down the wall of the cliff towards him, a cluster of spiders tapping in their wake, their flat, clustered eyes fixed on the writhing old king of the skies. His nostrils flared, once, twice, as he sucked in air. He bunched and surged, proving that unlike a crocodile his jaw opening muscles were just as strong. Silk ripped with a fluid tearing noise and Tikrumpdel reared back, the fire flaring at the back of his throat.

The roar was volcanic in its power, heat rippling across the stones making as many of them pop in miniature explosions as Valodrael's breath of the Void had done. The cliff face glowed as rappel line fizzed as they sparked and smoked into ash.

The False Widow Ash Elf spider centaur tried to scream but all that came out was a weird clicking as she stumbled and span, arms held out before her, hair scorched off, skin cracked, the bloated bulk of her spider body split and leaking. She was whimpering as she gasped.

Kaelin wished she could turn and see. She wished she could cry out for help. She wished that she could swallow, her tongue thick and dry in her mouth. She sank to her knees, trying to focus on the spiders in front of her. They seemed to be wavered as if she was seeing them through a sheet of water. One of them reared, paps ready to strike. One of the others bullied into it, pushing it off balance while the other two were swaying back and forth, front legs held up and out, sizing up against each other. In short they were squabbling over who got to eat her first. Of all the ways she thought she would die, being squabbled over by a pack of eight legged shrieks had not ever been on her list. Her stomach heaved again and she wretched, a thin stream of yellow acid coming up but there was nothing else in there to shift. Her feathery wings drooped to the floor, feathers drenched with sweat.

Tikrumpdel roared, thrashing, rubble launched into the cavern to crash against walls and tumble down into the river below, flung by his smashing tail. The four spiders that scuttled around the feet of the spider centaurs strained against the webbing lines they had flung, trying to hold down his limbs. One was flung into the air, whipping on the end of the line, squalling as it snapped back and forth on the end of its own rope.

The burned black spider centaur thing turned her head to the noise and proved that, heavily injured as she was, she was still capable of fighting, a rope of silk lashing out to wrapping around his left foreleg and pin it to the ground. The cavern shuddered.

Fire licked round Tikrumpdel's fangs but the lace web spider centaur lashed out with a whip of silk and muzzled him. His roar, muffled as it was shook the air and caused rock slides in the distance. He reared and body slammed the floor, shaking the cavern. He reared and slammed again, heaving his bulk in the manner of a seal, rock cracking and tumbling beneath his bulk. Spiders and spider centaurs strained to restrain him.

Ulrich nodded with satisfaction over Marmaduke's shield bashing success. Leaving him to mop up the last survivor of that group, Ulrich turned to the squad that was blocking his plan to charge to Tikrumpdel's aid. Peter reared and shrilled, legs raking the air, rippling in an almost fluid pattern. They crashed into the squad of Bat Clan Elves, Peter's mandibles scissoring, Ulrich's blades flashing. These ones however proved to be much faster, holding them at bay, skull like faces snarling, savagely reshaped noses gaping in the shadows, appearing like holes in their faces, making the skin crawl with the sight of them.

Jeremiah hooded his eyes with a bored expression. Really this whole thing was a waste of time and if his companions weren't so lazy it would be over and done by now. He sighed. Once again he would have to do something spectacular and that was always such a trail, having to use the glory of Klu'ga-nath for such a paltry matter. He was blessed that his god didn't take it as an insult to his glory but seeing as it did offer up a spectacular sacrifice unto him, Jeremiah supposed that why his god was prepared to stretch the point.

He readied his wings and leapt into the air. The Bat Clan noble stepped back again, confusion marring her face. Oh really, did she think that these wings were solely for decoration? Jeremiah shook his head sadly at her ignorance. He considered revealing unto her the full blessing of his god but that would have only been one life held up in sacrifice whereas there were more numerous offerings available. Jeremiah swooped, pleased with how soon he had mastered his wings. He opened his mouth but it was not a prayer that erupted into the air.

Ulrich flinched and nearly closed his eyes, only holding them open by the necessity of not receiving a sword to the rib cage. It was there again, dear gods, it was there again, the dragon of shadow and diseased light that coiled in the pattern of Jeremiah's breath weapon. He clenched his teeth to hold his lunch were it should stay.

The false widow spider centaur didn't make a sound as the light engulfed her, leaving behind a perfect copy of her burnt form carved in salt, every split and crack in her charred form depicted, even the shriveled stubs of her eyes in their scorched sockets.

The spiders didn't fair much better, a couple flinching back, one rearing up before the light engulfed them, leaving them carved from salt in every perfect detail, every hair in place but without color, carved in beautiful white. There was nothing in this world that said perfection quite like pure white salt and the glory of details that it preserved.

The lace web spider centaur managed to scream as she half turned to stare at the fate engulfing her companions a heartbeat before it swallowed her. Her last scream was so perfect in its horror, the crystals of salt fixing the details in place, giving one time to study it minutia of despair before subtle shifts in the air currents began to erode the beauty of her frozen face. A couple of salt crystals moved and then a heartbeat later, a leg cracked and ground, crystals shifting to the floor, the salt unable to hold up the weight of the bulk above it.

Tikrumpdel shuffled backwards, tugging the last surviving spider with him, his tail flopping over the edge of the cliff above the river, rubble splashing down into the flowing water his back claws scratching at the edge.

 "Let's. Have. Some. WAAAAAARRRRRRR!" Thorian roared and charged the squad of the southern unit that was left. His bull rush scattered them, the elves leaping or twisting out of the way, swords forgotten in the face of just trying to not be the one trampled beneath those thundering feet. The Bat Clan elves were definitely rethinking their life choices at this moment in time and were caught between their newly blossoming fear of the King's Special and the punishment that they would suffer at the hands of their Matriarch for failing their mission.

One of them suddenly screamed, yanked into the air. Valodrael shook him, snapped him back and forth like a terrier with a rat, trying to flick him high enough that Valodrael would be able to have him half way down his throat before the Bat Clan Elf could scream. The elf screamed again and taking a risk inspired only by sheer desperation, used the edge of his sword to cut through his cloak, risking cutting his own throat as he tumbled to the floor.

Kaelin dragged a deep breath that choked her lungs like liquid and threw herself at the nearest spider. Her fangs clacked together without connecting but her hands grabbed.

It shrilled, hissing at her, paps waving in her face as she lifted it into the air. She smashed it down on the floor, hefting it and smashing again then yanking left and right, smashing and bashing until it came apart and splattered its companions with yellow fluid. She was shaking and gasping but she was back on her feet.

Jeremiah turned and hovered, pleased with himself. The wall of sound nearly knocked him out of the air. He clutched his ears, his head ringing like a struck bell. He managed to regain control in the air and looked around.

The half a dozen vigor snarled and glared up at him, their huge bat ears flapping in the breeze, their upturned noses an echo of the Bat Clan's savagely reshaped noses. There was no mistaking that the little purple goblins were the creations of these degenerate people. 

Quenril lunged into the gap that Peter's charge had opened and defected the blow aimed at Ulrich's back. Sword to sword, face to face, he and the Bat Clan member snarled at each other, generations of hate and conditioning boiling to the surface.

Marmaduke swung at the other Ash Elf that was left of the second squad of the northern unit and his bronze sword missed, hissing through the air. His buckler did not.

The Bat Clan Elf went up, punted into the air by the colossal blow and what went up had to come down. The crunch echoed round the cavern and then Bat Clan Elf laid still.

Estella took a deep breath, arms tracing the circles in the air but for the first time the fizzing trails of power refuse to linger in the air. The Talismans chirruped and twittered, their flights scattered irregular. Estella frown, trying to find the flow of power but it just wasn't coming. One of the last Bat Clan elves of the squad that had been the first of the southern unit to be mauled grinned as his spotted a target for his vengeance. If he could do nothing else, he could make this little girl wish that she had stayed in her hovel and not interfered with the affairs of her betters.

Estella lifted one of the small axes that Myslynn had given her from her belt and threw it, flipping end over end at at him. He twisted to one side, grinning. This was going to be fun.

The squad that Thorian had charged, closed ranks around him, battering at him. If he had been catch like that in the early days of their travels then he would have gone under within moments but now? Now he wore armor made of dragon hide and tooled by dwergs, re-enforced by the runes of Kronzyn and the Bat Clan Elves found their blows turned aside by it, the force of their own blows jarring up their arms as their blades came to dead stops.

The tatters of the other units tried to pick off their foes, bolts whistling passed Jeremiah as he hovered, Quenril ducking as another pierced the air by his ear. Nanny Tatters blinked her side ways eyes as a bolt skittered off the stones between her feet. Even the unit that Ulrich fought couldn't seem to get the range on him, maybe afraid of missing as Peter bucked and  curved and rippled, Ulrich somehow riding the motion and cutting out with slashing blows that kept them at bay.

The Bat Clan Noble scowled. Everything, everything she had worked for was coming apart at the seams and she hated it! These pathetic, worthless, valueless surface animals were destroying her life's work with their selfish savagery. If they were proper people they would have bowed down and licked the stones, begging her forgiveness for defiling the world with their useless existences. If they were proper people they would have known the only decent thing they could ever do was gut the squealing pigs who were referred to as mothers for squeezing their filth into the world and then fall upon the same knives and even then they would not have made recompense for merely existing.

She lifted a hand and screamed the words of the spell, the webs of spider silk lashing through the air, trying to entangle Jeremiah and break his wings, smash him to the ground and shatter him.

Jeremiah ducked and twisted in the air, flicking through the mass of silk ropes that tried to snare him.

"Now my dear," he said, "Did you really think that you could do that to someone like me? Your are nothing but a petulant child next to a servant of the One True God." He ducked as another slashing web whipped towards him. "You are nothing, you a non-entity. You have no worth at all, save sacrificing your life, your soul and your very existence to the great glory that is Klu'ga-nath!"

She screamed and she wasn't the only one, the blackness closing in on all of them, even dimming the light of Tikrumpdel's flames. It shuddered with a power that crawled over the skin, stilled the breath in the lungs and only released them slowly. 

"I wish he would stop saying that name!" Quenril exclaimed.

Weatherall snipped and grabbed at the squad of Bat Clan elves trying to surround Ulrich and Peter. He didn't manage to seize any of them but he did manage to break up their ranks as they ducked and scrambled to get out of his way.

Nanny Tatters turned her head to stare at Ulrich's progress and the fact that it wasn't exactly impressive. She blinked her single sideways eye and then padded forward. Peter lurched sideways as Nanny Tatters' head suddenly appeared beside him. Ulrich decided that he was glad that Nanny Tatters' head was there when she opened her mouth and the chilling, dry rattle of a breeze through a dry and brittle forest rang out because if her head hadn't been there it would have meant that her head would have been behind him and he would have been trapped in the same fate as the two that writhed and screamed and shuddered as they crumbled. They literately crumbled, their flesh drying and crumpling and crumbling, falling to dust and dirt upon the floor. They screamed the entire time. That was what made Ulrich shudder. The pair of Bat Clan Elves that were caught in the effects of Nanny Tatters' breath weapon screamed and screamed as their flesh crumbled off their bones. He was fairly certain that he could still hear them screaming even after their bones cracked and disintegrated into dust.

Nanny Tatters stopped inhaling and burped slightly. Her hide was a darker shade of brown and there was a faint gleam to it, the slightest shine of health. She shuffled her wings, the membranes between the fingers thicker and broader, looking less a mat of stretched tissue threads and more like a smooth stretch of wing skin.

Sabal struck out with his sword, trying to capitalize on the panic that Nanny Tatters' breath weapon had caused as the squad disintegrated into the surviving members that were left. The Bat Clan member managed to duck but he didn't strike back, confusion and fear ruling his reactions, eyes darting hither and tither, trying to find an escape route, a direction to run in, feeling the chill filling up his limbs every time he met Sabal's eyes. He had been taught from birth that the Elves of the other clans were weak, small minded, jealous, easy to trick and beguile, that they had driven out the Bat Clan because they were afraid of their more powerful superiors but this one, this one had a power he couldn't name and couldn't face. Every time he tried, he felt his limbs growing weak and his breath turning cold in his lungs.

Tasnar charged but his opponent also ducked and dodged, slashing back, a feral sounding growl rising as they clashed, neither backing down, neither giving quarter, desperation giving strength. All the Bat Clan Elves knew what would happen to them if they went back as failures, Tasnar knew what would happen to him if he went back to Lady Zilvra as a failure. They broke and slashed, balanced despite their desperation, graceful despite their anger. Failure was not an option, not when the skinny knife hovered over that path. There was only one way this fight was going to play out and that was with one of them laying bleeding on the rocks while the other walked away.

Tasnar's opponent shrieked as a red line opened up on his arm, Ulrich's sword scoring a bloody trail that lifted the skin off the muscle below. He span away from both of them, breath hissing in short gasps taken through the teeth, eyes darting back and forth. There was no way out, going through lead to the edge of the cliff, going right led passed the heaving, slamming bulk of the ancient red dragon and the flying priest thing that pulled on a power that crawled through the mind, left led passed everyone else and behind him was the cliff, sheer, towering, seeming taller with every second. There wasn't any way out and his breath went thinner as panic rose.

Estella changed her stance, shifting her feet, stepping sideways, moving with the flow, pulling on the energy of the battle. Anger gave strength to blows, fury was the power of survival. She pulled on it, felt it, remember her most precious treasure that she had left behind and now her hands were fists as she punched the power through the air. Her treasure maybe safe but that didn't mean that she didn't feel the separation. She was a dragon, parted from her horde and now she was feeling more than a little tetchy. The music of the talismans turned dark and fierce. She kicked. Not high kicks as if she was aiming for a body but a low kick, like kicking up a wave and a wave she did kick. The ground rippled, not with rock but with light. The Bat Clan Elf that had been closing with her, dodging her blows of magic sudden reeled back, snarling at something no other could see, sword slashing out.

"Where are you!?!" he screamed, "Come out you worthless coward! Come out and die like the worm you are! Come out and die! Come out, Mother of beasts! Coward! Scum! Wench! Bitch! Daughter of pigs! Mother of swine! You filthy, rutting... ugh!"

His eyes went wide as Estella's small axe smashed his collar bone and cracked his breast bone, severing the big arteries at the base of his neck and splitting his wind pipe. He blinked down at her snarling face, small, elfin, refined with its tip tilted nose and almond shaped eyes. She yanked at the handle of her axe. He tried to lift his blade. Her left fist smashed into his shoulder as the other hand didn't break its grip on her ax. His sword clattered away as his arm went limp to its finger tips. The talismans pecked as his eyes and yanked at his hair until his legs gave out and Estella succeeded in yanking the axe head free. She was shaking, teeth chattering but she did not look away as the light faded from his eyes, as he died.

Valodrael glanced at the depleted Ash Elves and decided that he had something more important to deal with. Shrinking from battle size to his more restful Clydesdale horse size, he padded over and nudged Estella with his nose. She dropped the axe as she wilted and then turned to burying her face against his nebula speckled hide. He sat and mantled her with his wings. He had no problem with the kill but he had seen enough of Estella's kind to known that they often found the first time that they killed to be distressing and he could keep her safe while she worked through the shock of it. She was his horde and a dragon always keeps his horde safe.

Sabal grinned as Weatherall managed to snatch a Bat Clan Elf up in his claws. Unlike his shell bound cast brother, Weatherall did not waste time slowly squeezing his prey to see if it was palatable, he finished the job in one swift pinch that had the Bat Clan Elf  laying in two different places at once, with barely a chance to scream.

The vigor snarled and chattered up at Jeremiah, their long ears twitching as they zeroed in on the sound of his beating wings, their pale eyes narrowed as they tracked the shadow of his outline in their strange sight. They drew their arms back then hurled their short javelins.

Jeremiah smiled. Honestly, some people had such an over inflated opinion of their own abilities, they actually believed that they could possibly come close to... 

 He yowled, faltering in the air, his wing hampered by the sharp, hot pain of the javelin piercing through the membrane. Dropping more than he liked, he managed to grab the offending weapon and between a quick yank and the back beat of his wing, pull it free. He spiraled higher, glaring at the repulsive little gremlins as a second and then a third javelin fell short of his form, a reedy whistling sound ringing out as the air blew through the hole in his wing.

"Nice tune Jerries," Thorian called up to the hovering priest, grinning as he swung his sword again and again at what was left of the Bat Clan Elves. Jeremiah glared and then managed to bat the next javelin that came close away with a wing edge. The buffet of wind sent the last javelin tumbling in the air and as javelins are pointed at both ends, that had some what dire results for the last vigor standing, piercing through his chest. She swayed, her own javelin tumbling from nerveless fingers as her eyes gazed over and she tumbled to the floor. The vigor screamed, not the concentrated power of their sonic shock but still enough to make the cavern ring and trigger rock falls in the distance, tugging and pulling at their ears as they wept for their fallen comrade. Jeremiah smiled even more. It was always so; the witless, brute beasts forgot what their purpose was and therefore went to pieces when they were reminded of their proper position in the world.

Kaelin beat her wings, unable to force herself into the air while the wound in her back burned, feeling like someone was digging a hole either side of her spine with flaming torches but the clouting weight of her pinions kept the spiders at bay, their fangs have no effect on her feathers. They lunged, one after another, legs scraping and rubbing over the stones, bristling urticating hairs lodging in the vanes of her wings as they flicked their last weapon of attack at her. Sweat ran down Kaelin's face. She wasn't going to be able to kept this up much longer.

The last spider left alive scuttled in a circle, paps waving to and fro, abdomen shaking with confusion. 

 "What are you waiting for?" the Bat Clan Noble snarled, "Bind him!" She jabbed a finger at Tikrumpdel, words and gesture loaded with power. The giant spider jerked and turned, legs gathering bundles of silk from its spinnerets and flicking them over the massive dragon, anchoring him over and over again to the rocks.

"It's Thorian time!" said orc crossbreed billowed, sword crashing down through the air, snapping the elf blade raised in resistance in two. The elf splashed apart, chopping to the waist by Thorian's prodigious strength.

"One to me!" Thorian bellow.

"Well done Sir!" Tasnar snapped, face tight as he battled his own foe, not gaining ground and injury only heartbeats away. His blade twisted in nimble fingers but his arms were beginning to burn. He ducked under a blow, lashed out at knee height, forced his foe back, lunged, turned and came up between the Bat Clan Elf and the cliff face. He struck out, a series of blows that had speed but lacked an elf's usual grace. His foe backed away, grinning, believing Tasnar to have stupidly put himself on the worse ground, flagging and running out of energy. The Bat Clan Elf only had to avoid him for a little longer and then he'd be able to stick Tasnar like a bug on a pin.

He felt the movement behind him but did not turn. Then Tasnar jumped back, wincing as he thudded into the cliff but grinning as he gave something else the space it needed. The Bat Clan Elf had only half turned when Nanny Tatters' front feet crashed down, elbows locked, her whole weight behind them.

The Ash Elf burst like an over ripe plum smacked with a mallet.

Nanny Tatters lifted a foot and shook it slightly, shaking at the gunk that dripped from her paw. She sniffed it and then started wiping her feet across the floor, leaving smears of blood and worse across the stones.

"Scrape it off Jim!" Ulrich laughed as he closed with the last Bat Clan elf of the Northern squad.

"You what?" Thorian asked, confusion wrinkling his nose but Ulrich was whooping too hard to notice. Peter bit at the Ash Elf but desperation was making the bat nosed elf fast on his feet, staying just ahead of Peter's scissoring mandibles.

It wasn't helped by Peter being throw off by Tikrumpdel's latest heave. Silk strands creaked and groaned, filaments popping free as the massive dragon strained his bulk against the bounds entangling him. A rope pinning him to the floor snapped, cracking back with the force of a whip, another fraying, threads popping free along much of its length. Tikrumpdel strained his jaws, silk tearing as his teeth began to part.

"You there," Jeremiah barked, commanding his Ash Elf puppet, "Deal with these vermin." He flicked dismissive fingers at the vigor.

The puppet shuffled away from Jeremiah's vigor pack barer, shambling towards the wailing group of vigor. They turned to this new threat, teeth bared in snarls, hands reaching for more javelins.

One of them fell back, hand clammed to the side of its head as its ear bled. It opened its mouth to scream at the Ash Elf Puppet. The puppet shot it through the mouth with its hand bow, the bolt tearing through its spinal cord and smashing into the eyes socket of the vigor behind it.

Jeremiah grinned. It was gratifying to finally have some proper servants, even if his wing was still whistling through that stupid hole.

Seeing that Ulrich and the others had the northern unit of Bat Clan all neatly wrapped up, Sabal turned to the shuddering bulk of the dragon that they had been trying to make an ally of. He looked at his sword. The blades of the Ash Elves where only edged on one side, so if he made sure to keep the dull side against Tikrumpdel's hide there should be no risk of cutting him. He guided and goaded Weatherall up to Tikrumpdel's side and tried to thread his blade between the white net of spider web and Tikrumpdel's scales. He managed to do so but when he went to saw through the filaments his sword stuck, the webs clinging to the blade. He yanked at it, struggling to pull it free. The last Bat Clan Elf of the northern squad saw his chance and charged.

Quenril was there first, his blade cutting across the Bat Clan Elf's path, keeping him from his cousin's back. They crossed, block and cut, blow and guard, the Bat Clan snarling with fear and fury in equal measure, Quenril frowning with concentration, he only needed to keep the Bat Clan Elf busy for a few more minutes and then he would be so out numbered it wouldn't be funny any more. It crossed Quenril's mind that if his foe broke and ran he, Quenril, didn't feel the need to chance him down and kill him to prove he was better any more. For some reason that knowledge actually felt good, it appeared that hatred was a weight that you didn't realize that you were carrying until you dropped it on the floor. The bat Clan Elf won't run though, he couldn't think of the alternative, there was only victory or death, years of being told that life wasn't worth living if you ran, that surrender was the path of the weak and worthless ruled his mind completely. He was frantic, feral, unable to break a life time of conditioning.

Ulrich's blade whistled, light flashing off the length of the blade.

The Bat Clan elf turned, ready to strike, then his arm parted company from the rest of him. His head wobbled for a  moment and then it fell off backwards, tipping off his neck to bounce on the floor and roll away in two halves.

"Thank you Nabob," Quenril inclined his head to Ulrich.

"Think nothing of it, old boy," Ulrich grinned, "You've done the same for me more times than I care to think about."

Quenril inclined his head, a silent acknowledgement that Ulrich had changed so many things among the Snake Clan Ash Elves. It was strange to realize that they had learnt so much from a non-elf, a possibility that they had never considered before, one that would have seemed blasphemous not that many candle times before.

Kaelin could hear the battle behind her winding down and could only hope that they realized that she was in trouble soon. Her back felt strange, like the pain was beginning to drain out of it but she knew from experience that was not a good sign. If she didn't get help soon she'd either be taking the bony ones hand or she'd be at the mercy of Jeremiah's attention. She had seen how Ulrich flinched at odd moment and the smell of his fear bloomed at odd moments, as if he was seeing something the rest of them were missing and that had only started since Jeremiah had healed him while they were in the dwerg's city.

A spider once again rushed her, trying to bite at her, to get another mouthful out of her. She didn't hide. Oh, she let it rake its fangs down her feathers again but as it reached the bottom of its blow, when it was at its most unbalanced, she snapped her wings open and lunged.

The spider squealed as her fangs clamped down, seizing it between its first and second leg. Ignoring her screaming back she ripped her head back and forth, lifting it from the floor, shaking and shaking again as she squeezed her teeth down harder and harder. With a crackly squish, spider came apart in a flying splatter. It was not a quiet process.

"Marmaduke!" Ulrich barked, "Help her!"

He had finally seen Kaelin's peril and he silently cursed that she had some how wound up so far away. Just what had she been thinking? Trying to hold the right flank that far out! There was being a perilous beast and then there was being just damn reckless!

The last Ash Elf took advantage of the distraction that Ulrich's shout had caused but not in the way that had been hammered into him since birth. He turned on his heel and sprinted back to the cliff face, leaping to grab a hanging line, swarming up it hand over hand, sobbing with the effort, crying out as he thought he felt someone's sword whisper passed his foot. He should not have worried about blades. Unfortunately, for him, death sometimes wore a scaly face and was controlled by someone who had a prevented sense of humor.

"Nanny Tatters?" Jeremiah called, "Do clean that up, would you? There's a good girl."

The Bat Clan Ash Elf scrambled, sobbing as he tried to get high effort.

He screamed, once, a sound that cut of abruptly as Nanny Tatters' nipped his head off, like a cat nipping off a flower from its stem.

"Oh seriously!" Ulrich called up to Jeremiah, "Did you have to do that? He was retreating!"

"Best time to make sure that they are dead then," Jeremiah called back, hovering just out of the reach of the vigors' javelins, "This way we do not have to worry about him coming back with more of his friends." He ignored Nanny Tatters delicately picking at the still twitching corpse with the precise, almost delicate motions of a Corvus pitching over one of the fallen in a battle. Ulrich frowned. An undead creature shouldn't be interested in eating, they had no need of it, they were dead, by their very nature they had no need for sustenance. Jeremiah should be worried about this development, especially as Nanny Tatters now seemed to be almost whole again, almost.

"Now, one last job to attend to," Jeremiah smiled and looked for the Bat Clan Noble but the edge of the cliff was empty.

The sound of running footsteps echoed from the upper cave. The Bat Clan Noble was bunking for it, her panicked flight resounding behind her.

"Oh dear," Jeremiah smiled, "Tell me, good Quenril what will be done to a Noble who has failed such a mission as this?"

Quenril looked thoroughly uncomfortable about either the question or the answer.

"She will most likely be turned into one of the Disgraced," he shuddered.

"Ah and here was I only going to kill her," Jeremiah smiled, "Shame she didn't think about the offer."

"Indeed," Quenril muttered and then turned, heading towards where Kaelin faced down the last two of her spiders at a trot.

Valodrael opened his wings as Quenril jogged passed.

"Are you recovered, my dear one?" he rumbled. Estella nodded after a moment, rubbing her eyes, still slightly shaken by the violence that she had found herself capable of.

"Would you mind then if I help with finishing the clean up?" he asked.

"Of course not," she smiled.

"Then with my lady's permission," he inclined his head to her and then turned to spread his wings.

Tikrumpdel drew back, growling through his muzzle of spider silk, making the fibers rasp and squeal but Valodrael did not have eyes for him, what he was interested in had eight legs and confusion filling its eyes as its mistress had abandoned it.

Valodrael opened his maw and struck.

Tikrumpdel's eyes opened wide as Valodrael's head whipped back and forth, the spider's legs thrashing in the air, its abdomen wriggling frantically between Valodrael's teeth. Valodrael tipped his head back and began gulping. The spider slowly slipped out of view, legs wriggling and kicking to the very last. Valodrael lifted a finger and pocked the last one in as a shape that may have been a mass of thrashing legs bulged under his hide. He smacked his lips.

"Hmmmm," he rumbled appreciatively, "Now there's a new flavor. Something chard and smoky, hints of chicken and nuts. I think I like it."

Tikrumpdel growled. 

"My apologies for invading your territory," Valodrael turned, inclining his head and opening his wings into a tilt that was most decidedly a bow in Tikrumpdel's direction, "But I have to go where my hoard goes and I did rather believe that you wouldn't begrudge me a little snack along the way."

Tikrumpdel's snout wriggled in a frown under his layers of swaddling.

The vigor squeaked and jumped about, dodging Valodrael's slowly waving tail, ears fluttering and squashed, puggish faces snarling but not one of them dared to strike at it.

"Oh please," Jeremiah called, "This is the point you... people are supposed to run away. Going on, shoe."

"They're not shoes," Thorian called, "They have bare feet."

Jeremiah closed his eyes and began counting slowly to ten then snapped his eyes open again a javelin hissed passed him.

"Seems they have joined the 'I hate Jair-e-my-ha' club," Thorian grinned as he cleaned off his sword and stuffed it back into its scabbard, "What do you reckon the mem-ber-ship price is?"

Jeremiah glared.

Tikrumpdel gathered himself and heaved again. Silk tore with a liquid sound, ropes of it parting. One wing tore free, a leg shredded its way out of the swaddling bindings, sheets of the stuff flapped loose. He yanked his head side ways and a rip opened up along his neck, his chins beginning to fall free.

Weatherall lifted his claws and tired to snip apart some of the stuff coating Tikrumpdel but then discovered a problem. Despite what they look like, crab claws are not actually like scissors, they have no sharp cutting edge to slice through any substance. Instead they crush their prey until flesh gives up and parts under pressure. It turned out that strategy didn't work on spider silk as the fibers didn't crush under the pressure they just bent. Weatherall waggled his eye stalks. He opened his pinching claws. He waggled his eye stalks again. He waved his claw but the white mat of stuff stayed stuck on his claw. He plucked it off his claw with the other claw. He waggled his eye stalks again. He waved his other set of claws but the white mat of stuff stuck to that set now. He plucked it off with the original set of claws and then waggled his eye stalks again. It was stuck there now!

Jeremiah rolled his eyes. Such little things pleased little minds. A javelin scorched passed his back side and he turned in the air to glare passed his feet at the pack of vigor who were jabbering and howling up at him. There was still five of the little pests and he was bored of dealing with their antics. His wing whistled, a permanent reminder of these irritating little vermin and their disregard for the glory for his god. He narrowed his eyes and beat higher into the air, lips moving in his beard as he whispered the prayer to his god, the syllables of power mixed with spite and vanity. The glow built between his fingers.

The blast of cinders and embers giggled through the air, casing shadows that dancing with limbs that were native somewhere in the uncanny valley.

Valodrael narrowed his eyes. He was sure one of those shadows was too long in the arm and leg whilst also being too narrow in the waist, its head crown with a pair of stick like antlers, a dark night carnival mask brought to life as it crawled over the rocks towards the frantically cringing vigor.

The vigor screamed as the giggling, crackling embers peeled them out of their skins, one scrap at a time. Fat bubbled, flesh sloughed off the bone, skeletons lost cohesion.

"Accept the offering made unto you, Mighty Klu'ga-nath," Jeremiah muttered, "May the sacrifice made by my hands be acceptable unto you for the praise and glory of your name, for good and the good of all your church."

The cinders and shadows writhed as, one by one, the vigor fell, the impossible substance of Jeremiah's spell curling into the shape of an impossible dragon, its form warping the air around it, reality curdling up at the edges and weeping with the strain. Valodrael backed away from it, mouth opening in a warning hiss. Tikrumpdel heaved his bulk and shuffled backwards away from the glowing, darkening form. It didn't bother to look at him, the old dragon a non entity as far as this thing was concerned. Instead it turned its gaze of Valodrael, an aura of threat rolling off the insanity of its form.

Reality creaked at the seams as, without changing size, Valodrael expanded to face this insubstantial foe, teeth bared, eyes shining with power, snow flakes forming and falling round his mouth as the steams and fogs of the cavern drifted into the Chill of the Void, even while the index claw on his left 'hand' lengthen and throbbed with the red hot heat of a sun.

"Make it stop!" Ulrich yelled, "Make it stop!"

It looked like he was about to throw up.

"Why Ulrich, you look positively ill," Jeremiah drifted down to land near him, "Do you need me to ask the One True God for your healing again?" 

"Not on your nelly," Ulrich exclaimed, dashing sweat from his brow, "You have provided the cure by stopping what ever it was you were flaming well doing! Just about everyone on this team would feel a lot better if you would stop opening the door for that... personage that you call your god."

"But Ulrich," Jeremiah bowed, "Surely you would ask a man to abandon the care of his god? To come out from under the umbrella of protection? Have you forgotten about all the great and marvelous things the One True God has done for us? You must realize that without his aid we would not have made it this far."

"Oh Aye," Ulrich agreed, "He may have given us a fine lot help but I'm still wondering when he is going to demand the payment for all his help."

"My dear Ulrich," Jeremiah smiled, basking in the warmth radiating from the books at his back, "Gods do not ask for payment, if you love them, fear them, do as they say, then they give you everything that you need."

"Really?" Ulrich asked, "So you needed to be kicked out of your abbey did you?"

He turned away to go and help Weatherall, leaving Jeremiah to grind his teeth behind him.

The spiders were pushing Kaelin back now. She was tired, her head hurt and she could feel... well it felt like the breeze was inside her back, which could not be a good sign. She retreated, stepping back slowly, keeping her wings in play, buffeting the spiders aside every time they lunged. They were persistent buggers, she had to given them that. The battle behind her had gone quiet so she hoped that it meant that some of the rest of the King's Special would be coming to help her out. She hoped, but there again it could be that the reason it had gone quiet was that she had died without noticing it and this was her hell. She'd heard a preacher some where say that hell was being trapped forever doing what you were doing the moment that you died, tormented by you last moments over and over again. Was this her hell, constantly fight with a pair of giant spiders, cursed for there to be always two of them, no matter however many she cut down? To battle forever with this pain in her head, her eyes trying to shut, exhaustion dragging at her limbs until she wanted to just lay down on the stones and sleep?

 Tasnar tried to tear at the spider webbing encasing the big dragon but the stuff stuck and clung, clung like bad news, clung like the black ooze that bubbled out of the ground in some places of Hestia.

Ulrich sized up the mass of white webbing and the shifting, straining bulk trapped within. He hefted his sword as Peter trundled them nearer and then struck out. A rope of silk parted, a cable snapped, smaller strands tearing as the tension rippled through the web, pieces ripping loose as the support structure began to come undone.

 Sabal stumbled back, his sword no longer trapped against Tikrumpdel's side but still unable to help as the spider silk clung on the blade, flapping in the breeze as Sabal tugged and pulled. Sabal backed up and backed up again, ripping more and more of it loose as he pulled and tugged and yanked, his blade still tangled in the stuff.

"Will you let the feck go!?!" he demanded, trying, unsuccessfully to shake the stuff loose.

"You do know that talking to possessions  is the first sign of madness?" Ulrich asked as he came over to help Sabal.

"If that is the case I've been mad for quite a while, haven't I?" Sabal grunted, "I'm talking to you."

Ulrich blinked.

"Favorites are possessions of their lady," Sabal explained. Ulrich blinked again and blushed, trying to squeeze his brain through the idea of being a kept man. That was a bit of a shock.

Kaelin growled. Her stomach was feeling sick again and nobody seemed to notice the fact that she was still in trouble. With a snarl she jerked her wings up, unbalancing her foes and struck out. One spider scuttled back, squealing as the yellow goo dripped from its ruptured eye, the other gathered its split leg and held it close as it backed away.

Kaelin snarled as she crouched, spreading her claws.

"Go away!" she spat, "Go on! Go! Just push off and leave me be!"

It was only half way serious threat, a great part of it was bluff. She was sick and tired and she hurt. All she wanted was to crawl into bed some where and slept it off for about six weeks. Now she could thoroughly understand why Tikrumpdel had been trying to sleep it off for two or three centuries. If she had a life span that long she would have been thoroughly tempted to do the same.

Jeremiah turned his head and looked back towards the bridge. Ah that explained why Kaelin hadn't been with them, she been holding a party all of her very own with an exclusive guest list. Jeremiah tugged his beard. It was really rather rude of her to not invite them to her party but it did rather look like she was having trouble with some of her guests. The question was, therefore, did he bother to play the part of a bouncer?

A nasty sounding crunch rang out.

Jeremiah glanced side ways and saw that Nanny Tatters was busy cleaning up the battle field by nipping the heads off the fallen. He smiled indulgently and then turned back to the problem of Kaelin. Nanny Tatters was busy but he still had two other assets and one of them he hadn't fully tested out its capabilities. He smiled and drifted over to his Ash Elf Puppet on a couple of wing beats. He whispered something in its ear.

Kaelin looked with resignation as the giant spiders facing her as they rallied. This really didn't seem to be ending, one of those nightmares where no matter how hard you run you never manage to out pace the monster that was following you. She knew that it was a common nightmare though, for her, the monster always following her was her grandfather. Funny what the brain thought about when it was about to die.

The spider furthest away from her popped, goo and pieces flying in all directions, splashing the stones with yellow paste. Jeremiah smiled as his Ash Elf Puppet lower its hand bow to hang at its side as it slumped, held up only by its master's will.

Kaelin blinked. The last spider tensed, torn between leaping on her distraction and trying to work out what had just happened to its last companion.

Marmaduke arrived with the weight of an entire consignment of brass kettles, feet first.

Kaelin reached a hand up and wiped the goo from her eyes and Marmaduke continued to jump up and down on the luckless spider, making absolutely sure that it was well and truly ground into the ground. Kaelin was, one had to say, well and truly covered in spider gloop, it was practically dripping off of her. Somehow that was completely and utterly funny and Kaelin bit her lip to stop herself from bursting out laughing. Maybe it was realizing that her friends hadn't forgotten her as much as she thought they had. Then a truly wicked idea crossed her mind and some days, days such as this when she was tried and in pain, Kaelin's impulse control wasn't the best that it could be.

Ignoring the stabs of red hot pain in her back she beat into the air and dived towards Ulrich.

"Thanks for sending the help! Big hugs!" she yelled as she came towards him.

Ulrich told one look at the gloop covered thing that swooped towards him and threw himself off of Peter's back to avoid it. Kaelin tripped and stumbled as she landed but thankfully Ulrich had still been fairly close to Tikrumpdel so instead of face planting into solid stone, Kaelin face planted into the vast dragon's side, which was, it must be said, fairly bouncy. She stumbled back but kept her footing.

"As much as I appreciate the sentiment Kaelin," Ulrich said as he stood back up on his own two feet, "I would prefer it after you have had a chance to bathe and be slightly less loaded with, shall we say, grunge."

"Oh, you have a problem with this goo your help managed to coat me in?" Kaelin smiled, keeping down the urge to scream. Her back really did have a problem, "As you wish."

Ulrich only just managed to get his arms up in time to prevent it from splattering his face as Kaelin shook herself vigorously. He lowered his arms and looked at his sleeves. He sighed.

Sabal blinked and lifted a finger to wipe a droplet of gunge off his cheek.

The last of the silk wrappings burst as Tikrumpdel started laughing. He laughed until he wobbled with it. He laughed until the cavern rang. He laughed until he cried. He rolled over sideways, thankfully away from the King's Special, clutching his paunch until he finally managed to get himself under control. The rock slope groaned under his weight.

"That was completely vulgar," a voice said from around Kaelin's neck. Kaelin looked down to see that her locket had been knocked open during the fight and the painted lady, Charlotte Darling, peering out of the little canvas that was usually hidden within.

"You have an inkling of my childhood,"Kaelin said deadpan, "Are you surprised?"

Charlotte thought about and then sighed.

"No I suppose not." 

Draconnic Shenanigans - Episode 36

 Chapter Thirty Six: One Big Aft Dragon

  (Art not my own, all rights to Luca Nemolato for a huge dose of inspiration)

 As the rock around them groaned and popped Jeremiah realized that Nanny Tatters would not be able to squeeze her current bulk into the much narrower and lower tunnel that the rest of the King's Special was currently squeezing themselves into, the trumpet shaped opening of the tunnel funneling them down very quickly and causing quite an amount of pushing and shoving further on in the dark.

Jeremiah smiled. It was always so gratifying to see that no matter how much people may protest it, the truth was that people always reverted to being selfish monsters when there was a crisis. There never was an exception. The moment people realized that it was their lives on the line, they would trample over each other to escape, to ensure that it was not them that died that day.

He turned back to the pressing problem of Nanny Tatters once he was safely within the tunnel mouth himself, squeezing in on one side so that people didn't complain. He eyed her up, ignoring the struggles of the rest of the King's Special. He half closed his eyes and started muttering the prayer to his god. He must have used the wording that he had used before, or perhaps his efforts to drop Ulrich's party into the roiling pool of lava hadn't been enough, though the books in his pocket were glowing with warm power, or perhaps his god just wished to test him. Whatever the reason the prayer did not have the effect that he wanted it to have.

Jeremiah bounced off Nanny Tatters' swelling form, rather like a rubber ball that is suddenly struck by a heavy bat. He crashed into Thorian and sent him tumbling forwards, knocking first Kaelin and then Estella off their feet, rather like a row of pillars, that having been made unstable, feed into each others collapse.

"I say people, steady on," Ulrich called from the back of Weatherall's shell as the crab paused in its sideways scuttled down the tunnel as Peter whistled a warning from the ceiling of the tunnel. He peered into the dark, his eyes struggling to adjust to the fact that the light from the shuddering pools of lava had suddenly cut off.

"I say, Jeremiah, old chum," he called, "Could you light up that moth of yours? I can't see a darn thing right now." He frowned, recognizing Tasnar's voice crying out in agony.

"Do you mean Gerard?" Jeremiah's voice called back, sounding suspiciously near the floor.

"That's the one," Ulrich called, spotting the giant moth struggling to right itself and lift Jeremiah's miter.

"I may be able to," Jeremiah said, sounding as if he had all the time in the world even as the stone around them moved and shifted.

"Well if you could hurry up about it, it would be appreciated," Ulrich called.

"Ah, are you finally admitting that you recognize the superiority of my god?" Jeremiah's voice called from some where higher up than his previous words.

"No!" Kaelin snapped, "He recognizes that if we don't have light soon all of us are going to be entombed alive in here and that includes you, fat man!"

"Now Kaelin," Jeremiah's smile was evident, even though it could not be seen, "There is no need to be personal."

"I also have no need for eyes," Kaelin growled, "I can still smell you, fat man and if we are trapped in here, I'll make sure we eat you first!"

"Now really Kaelin," Jeremiah muttered but a second later a light shone out, only it wasn't Gerard's blue glow, it was the sick yellow shine of the sigil turning in the cage of Jeremiah's antlers.

"Oh that's not good," Thorian said as he picked himself up.

Nanny Tatters' chin and snout was trust into the entrance of the tunnel, the rest of her head unable to squeeze into the opening though she was trying her hardest. Tasnar cried out again, his left leg pinned between Nanny Tatters' jaw and the wall of the tunnel. He pushed and shoved against the crone dragon's cold flesh, one hand bare where he'd ripped his glove off with his teeth but Nanny Tatters' was already dead and as such Tasnar's draining touch had no effect on her.

"Get off my cousin!" he yelled, even as the pain from his leg made the tears spring from his eyes, Quenril ramming his shoulder against the dragon's snout beside him.

That was when Ulrich saw Sabal's predicament. Sabal was pinned to the floor with only his head visible and his face was turning a darker shade of grey than it was already, the thinnest of hisses escaping his lips as the air was pressed out of his lungs.

Nanny Tatters wiggled against the restriction of the tunnel as the ground shifted and Tasnar screamed. Sabal didn't have enough breath left to scream.

"Now, now, Nanny Tatters," Jeremiah brushed down his robe, "That is no way to treat our value and necessary allies. After all if they hadn't peeled you out of your skin, I wouldn't have these lovely robes I have now."

Sabal managed a squeak.

"Get on with it!" Kaelin snapped.

"Now, now, Kaelin dear," Jeremiah smiled in the blue light, "These things can't be rushed, after all you can see what has happened because I tried to rush it the first time."

"Oh for god's sake!" Kaelin snapped and wiggled her way back down the tunnel to jam her fingers under Nanny Tatters' jaw, "Help me with this!"

"Okay dokey," Thorian grinned and crouched on the other side of Sabal's head as the Ash Elf's eyes rolled back in his face. "Heave!"

Jeremiah smiled as he mumbled and muttered, stringing together nonsense words, not meaning to shrink Nanny Tatters at all. He only needed to wait a few more moments and...

"Marmaduke!" Ulrich snapped, "Hold the crab!" Weatherall twitched his eye stalks as Marmaduke seized one of his legs. Ulrich reached up and grabbed the edge of one of the giant centipede's segments, "Peter! Take me there!" Ulrich drew his sword and pointed with it in one fluid motion. Peter whistled his joy at being useful again and barreled towards Nanny Tatters' muzzle.

"Tally ho!" Ulrich yelled as he dangled from Peter's chitin, whipping by over head until his sword point was buried half way into the flesh between Nanny Tatters' nostrils. The crone dragon yipped like a dog and flinched back, recoiling from the sharp thing that was cutting into her nose. Kaelin and Thorian toppled forward, chunks of rock starting to fall around them, but they both reached out and grabbed at Sabal's shoulders as they saw a glimpse of the Ash Elf being dragged back by Nanny Tatters' chin. Kaelin dug her nails in, feeling flesh part but she had her hooks in and slowed his pace just enough for Thorian to get his hand around Sabal's upper arm. The Ash Elf came out from under Nanny Tatters looking more than half flattened but his blood still flowed around Kaelin's claw like nails and as Kaelin hauled him backwards, knocking his back against the floor he dragging in a rattling, gasping breath.

"Up you come," Thorian said and then flinched as a chunk of rock bounced off his shoulder, "Ow!" He frowned as he looked up at the ceiling, the ceiling that had fault lines spreading across it like cobwebs crawling across the pews of an abandoned church.

Quenril was also looking up at it from where he had Tasnar's arm draped across his shoulders, his brother's left leg black from hip to toe.

"We need to leave!" he snapped.

"Agreed," Ulrich dropped lightly to his feet, "Moving on people, moving on. Marmaduke, allow Weatherall a hundred paces down the tunnel please, in fact make that move like eight hundred." He waved them down the tunnel but Estella came back and helped take Tasnar's weight as the Ash Elf struggled to put any weight on his crushed leg. Thorian slung Sabal over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes, the Ash Elf's back laying across Thorian's neck as he struggled to reflate his bruised and battered lungs, Kaelin going before him, lifting a light stick high. Peter squeaked as the flaring chemical fire waved uncomfortably close to his face and turned with a flick of his rear end, hundreds of legs trundling over the ceiling, even as he had to navigate the widening cracks and splits in the rock.

Jeremiah looked up and realized how close the ceiling actually was to falling in. This time he meant every word as he gabbled the words of his prayer, begging his god to listen and aid him this time. It definitely seemed that his god was testing him as it rather went from one extreme to the other, the thunder clap of in rushing air triggering more of the ceiling to fall in as Nanny Tatters went from holding up the roof with her bulk to being the size of a large dog in one second. It had the added effect of making her end up nine feet above the floor as she shrank towards the center of her mass. Her single eye goggled.

Jeremiah's wings thumped, launching him forward. Nanny Tatters smacked into his arms and all four sets of claws grabbed hold as he turned, threading his way though the falling stone to streak back into the tunnel, back winging to break just as he ran out of room to do so. She coiled her neck around his shoulders as his feet touched down.

"Do you mind?" he groused, dumping her down, "If you want to be grateful for that then be more useful in the future." Nanny Tatters bowed her head to him and then followed him down the tunnel, his vigor pack barer trotting at their heels.

"Well I do think that is everyone safe and sound," Ulrich looked around with a smile as he sheathed his sword and sauntered  "Yes sirrah, that does area to be everyone safe and..." A chunk of rock slapped the back of his head on its way passed, not unlike the way his mother used to when he had been foolish. It had been many years since he'd thought of his mother; she had left the manor long before he had done, called back to her own people. He hadn't gone with her, old enough to make his own decision and determined at that point to make his father respect him. Well that hadn't worked out, he noted as he straightened his hat and broke into a run to avoid the falling roof, he'd wound up leaving when his grandfather had fallen with his last illness. The old man had recognized the truth about his son long before his grandson had been willing to admit defeat.

Ulrich sprinted after the bobbing light lights that were Kaelin's light stick and Jeremiah's sickly shining, rock and stones falling and rumbling around him, bruising his shoulders and knocking his hat askew as he ran, dodging and dancing to keep his footing. The stone of the passage groaned and banged but gradually it quietened and settled, the choking cloud of dust settling and drifting to the floor. Ulrich slowed to a halt as he reached the junction where the others had paused to catch their breaths, leaning against the walls.

Sabal sat on the floor, Thorian holding his shoulders up as Kaelin and Estella wound bandages they were soaking in for healing potion around his ribs. His face had returned to normal but every other inch of skin seemed to be black with bruises and crush damage.

"Do you think we have enough to wrap his legs?" Estella asked as she grabbed the roll of bandages from Kaelin in her right hand, passed it to her left and handed it back to Kaelin's right hand, soaking it with a trickle from the bottle of 'for healing' potion as she did so.

"His legs yes," Kaelin nodded as she passed the roll of bandages to her left hand, juggling the bottle of 'for healing' potion as she did so, "His arms? No, not if we are going to have enough of this saved for any other emergency."

Quenril was crouched to one side, bracing and wrapping his brother's leg.

"You are lucky that you still have movement in the knee," he muttered.

"Tell that to my ankle," Tasnar mumbled and grimaced as Quenril wrapped said ankle in a figure of eight to brace it.

Ulrich plucked his hat off and brushed the dust off it. Yeah, he'd been determined that he would make his father respect him but his grandfather had known that it was a hopeless goal all along. Ulrich had the feeling that if the old man could have done so, he would have left the estate to Ulrich instead of Ulrich's father but the law of the land wouldn't have permitted it.

Ulrich puffed at his hat, blowing the last of the dust off it. It was only due to his grandfather's last warning that he got out with the clothes on his back.

"Peter," Ulrich called, settling his hat back on his head, "Come here a moment." The giant centipede trundled down the wall and whistled at him. Ulrich crouched and scratched round the base of Peter's antennae. "I want you to let Tasnar ride you for a while, give his leg a rest until it heals, okay?" Peter rippled his legs but then whistled what sounded like consent.

"Are you sure that you will allow me this honor, Chosen of the Matriarch?" Tasnar asked in blank surprise as Quenril helped him stand.

"Absolutely old boy," Ulrich nodded, "With your leg banged up like that you are not going to be able to keep up with the pace and on your feet you are going to be a liability if we go into a battle. Now I'm guessing that not that long ago, you would probably been left behind at the best and had your throat cut at the worse but that was before. Now you need the numbers more than the perfection so you are going to need a little extra help. Peter here is willing so on you get."

"Thank you, my lord," Tasnar looked stunned as Quenril helped him settle on to Peter's back, wincing slightly as his knee settled.

"There you go," Ulrich nodded and then turned to look at where Estella was helping Sabal button his shirt back up, "Now what to do about you?" He pursed his mouth a moment and then looked at Marmaduke. "Marmaduke, old chum, walk Weatherall over here if you please." Weatherall rolled his eye stalks as the automaton clanged over to before Ulrich. Ulrich frowned as he realized that Marmaduke had picked up some dents in the rockfall, still there were more pressing matters at hand.

"Estella, if you would be Weatherall's director then I think we should be able to lay Sabal along the back edge of his shell to give him recovery time," Ulrich stated.

"Me?" Estella blinked in surprise.

"No offensive to you and certainly not to your dragon friend," Ulrich inclined his head, "But you are more of a, shall we say, supporting member of the King's Special, more suited to the back rank than up close to where the meat meets the metal. Therefore, you are a perfect driver for Weatherall while he has the part of the recovery cart. No offense, as I said."

"None taken," Estella's left eye turned black for a moment and then she was climbing up on to Weatherall's shell.

"Load him up," she called as she took hold of the front of Weatherall's shell. The crab hesitated.

"Listen to me and listen to me good," Estella leaned forward so her face was close to his eye stalks as the black filled her left eye and a deeper, older voice over laid her own, "I don't like using force if I can do it another way, so we are going to try it another way but any funny business and it will be back to having your eye stalks pulled around. Savy?"

Weatherall twitched his eye stalks but held still as Thorian and Kaelin hoisted Sabal up on to the back of his shell. The Ash Elf groaned and whimpered but didn't thrash around.

"Right," Kaelin slapped her palms together, "Moving on."

"Hell yeah!" Thorian nodded as a rumbled echoed up the tunnel they had left behind. Looking around he nodded to the right tunnel. "That way."

"I suppose that Quenril and I could check out..." Ulrich peered at the left tunnel. A hand grabbed the back of his collar and yanked him off his feet.

"No more stupid, stupid," Thorian grumbled as he dragged Ulrich backwards into the tunnel, "Every dang time you split up the team..."

"Oh come on, Thorian, old boy," Ulrich protested as his heels rattled over the floor, "I haven't broken up the group that often and I did..."

"Cause more trouble than most of us put together," Thorian cut him off, continuing to drag him down the tunnel, the others trailing along behind them.

"Should we punish the green one for laying a hand on the Chosen?" Tasnar muttered to Quenril as he guided Peter after Thorian and the protesting Ulrich. Quenril thought about it.

"As he has saved us from having to follow the Chosen into what I would judge to be error," he said at least, "I think that we will allow him to be unpunished this time."

After a moment Tasnar nodded his agreement, suppressing a guilty smile as he did so. It was sacrilegious to question the decisions of a Chosen of a Matriarch but somehow it felt more than a little thrilling to do so.

"Maybe we shouldn't tell the Matriarch about this moment," he almost giggled on the rush of adrenaline.

"That would be logical," Quenril agreed after a moment. Tasnar had to look away to make sure he didn't giggle.

They pressed on into the dark, Ulrich complaining the whole way and Thorian arguing with him the whole way. Kaelin rolled her eyes and concentrated on what she could smell to block out the insentient noise of their bickering. After a while she started to frown. There was something that she could smell on the slight drift of the air currents, something that stirred very bad memories.

"What is it?" Estella asked, craning her head sideways, trying to see why Kaelin was growling.

"I know that smell," the hair on Kaelin's arms was standing up straight even as it thicken and she drew he sword. Estella frowned as well and her talismans circled closer as the shimmering glow started building around her. Quenril drew his sword as well and started working his way up the column, trying to get close to where Thorian was still dragging Ulrich.

"Really," Ulrich protested, "This is becoming most uncomfortable and you're are wearing my boot heels out."

"It will be much more than your boot heels before I'm..." Thorian stumbled to a halt as the tunnel suddenly widened out.

"Well," Jeremiah observed after a moment, "That wasn't exactly the welcome that I was hoping for."

A few campfires flickered their last flames over their crumbling black stone, the domed shaped huts made of imported sedem logs standing out and hollow, their one time owners laying sprawled in graceless heaps over the floor.

"Everybody's dead, Grod," Thorian nodded to himself and then started towards the nearest hut. Kaelin was fighting not to scream. She knew that every last one of the Ash Elves that had manned this outpost was dead and worse she knew who by. Yes there were some who had perished due to the Ash Elf bolts that had skewered vital organs or the clean edged sword work that had cut to the bone but the greater number had been literally torn apart, ripped and shredded by beasts that had gloried in the bloody work of pain and death.

Fighting the urge to scream, she stepped slowly towards one of the bodies and crouched, drawing a deep breath in through her nose. Maybe it was because she was fighting the wolf back but her sense of smell didn't seem to co-operate. Either way what she smelt most was Thorian. It was not an unpleasant smell and then it dawned on her that Thorian was wearing some sort of odor de cologne.

Thorian tossed Ulrich into one of the huts and slammed the door closed after him, dusting off his hands as he turned. He saw Kaelin staring at him and couldn't work out her expression.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing," she sort of smiled as she stood, "Nothing at all."

"Marmaduke!" Ulrich yelped from inside the hut, "Save me!"

Thorian had to dive out of the way as the bronze automation barrelled towards the hut, crashing through the door to reach his master. Peter whistled but really quietly. Tasnar stared down at the giant centipede as the creature made the noise again, slowly swinging his head back and forth over a short distance. Tasnar blinked as he realized that the beast was sighing, obviously unimpressed with Ulrich's chose of new pets.

"Rather let the team down hasn't he?" Tasnar observed. Peter sighed again and waved his head up and down. Tasnar couldn't help but smile through the pain in his leg.

"Yes well," Ulrich's voice came from inside the hut, "As much as I appreciate the effort you made to get to me post haste, I would prefer it if you try a little harder to not trample me flat next time." The was a rumbling groan of metal, which seemed to be Marmaduke's voice.

Kaelin rolled her eyes and started digging through pockets. She was a little disappointed to discover only fourteen gold coins. Either all the troops posted to this outpost were a bunch of cheapskates or someone else had already gone through peoples pockets after the noise had stopped. She frowned sourly and kicked a fallen chunk of sedem as she stood. She bet it was the latter especially as, and she double checked before coming to the conclusion, the only weapons she could see where broken ones. She could figure who had taken the stuff. It was probably why these renegade Ash Elves where allied to her grandfather's pack in the first place, the werewolves being used for their muscle and taking the young that they fancied corrupting, while the Ash Elves provided fire power and then scrounging all the material goods that the werewolves weren't interested in.

"Um, shouldn't these guys have more stuff?" Thorian asked, holding up the handful of gold coins he'd found.

"My guess would be that we're scratching on leftovers," Kaelin muttered as she hid her stash of gold coins.

"So..." Thorian frowned as he thought about it squeezing understanding through his brain, "So someone was here already and took the stuff. Grod, I hate it when that happens, if someone is going to be stupid and up and die then they should at least leave some decent stuff lying around."

"I don't think people have much choice about who takes what after they are dead," Kaelin sniffed looking around the wreckage of the outpost. The smell was the worst, the smell was always the worse. It reminded her of too many hunts she'd been on with her grand sire and sire. The dark of the night and the moonlight and the screams and the soft flesh that couldn't fight back and the hideous gladness that it wasn't her, that it wasn't her who was dead. Her eyes turned tawny as she looked at the dead and the cold. They were family, her sire and grand sire, but they weren't the family that she would honor. People said to respect your father and mother all the days of your life but what should you do when you father was a monster and your mother the prey he allowed to live only as long as it was entertaining to keep it alive? What then?

"Estella?" she called, walking over to where Estella was guiding Weatherall over to the hut where Ulrich was now having a poke around. The young lady in question looked up at her as she tapped on the back of the crab's shell, causing Weatherall to come to a stop.

"Problems?" she asked, "I mean beside obvious." She nodded to the crumpled forms of the dead.

"If we ever make it back up to the surface," Kaelin stated, "Would Valodrael consider doing me a favor?"

Estella tilted her head, asking her passenger a mental question.

"Depends on what the favor is," Estella reported.

"I'm going to need a hand to get close to the old wolf," Kaelin stated, "Would Valodrael consider giving me a lift? In return he can have the rest of the inner circle... for lunch."

A grin that was all malice, all dragon and all hunger twisted Estella's lips.

"I find your... proposition," Valodrael's voice echoed from Estella's throat, "Delicious."

"We have an accord then?" Kaelin asked cautiously.

"Consider it done," Valodrael still grinned with Estella's mouth, "I'll look forward to the fun with... anticipation."

"It is considered crass to indulge in such things in public, good people," Ulrich called from the hut, "Marmaduke, could you take a step outside? You are rather blocking the light." The automaton clumped through the door and stood to one side.

"What?" Estella asked, frowning as Valodrael withdrew.

"I do believe that our noble friend was trying to insinuate that I was indulging in flirtation with the good Lady Kaelin," Valodrael observed in her mind, "He obviously has no concept of a Void Dragon's hoard. There is only one lady I'd flirt with... if she'd like me to." Estella's frown cleared after a moment to be replaced with a blush as the heat filled her belly. She put a hand up to the chain of silver and emeralds around her neck. Her talismans twittered, the red cardinal landing on her shoulder, wondering what was wrong with their mother.

"Don't worry," Estella murmured a little unsteadily, "It's not anything wrong... exactly." The red cardinal twittered again, not understanding.

"Could be something a little too right," part of her mind observed and she heard Valodrael's quiet chuckle in the background of her own thoughts. She blushed again.

Ulrich frowned as he turned over fallen supplies.

"Well, whoever ransacked this place did a good job of it," he observed, "If they haven't taken it, they have broken it." He picked up a half shredded blanket and something tinkled as it rolled out of the folds. "Well, what do you have here then?" Ulrich picked it up. The little crystal bottle sparkled in what little light there was and its contents waved back and forth on the inside of the container. Ulrich peered at it for a long moment and then took the stopper out. The smell was heavenly, the delicate scent of roses with the perfume of light rain on sun warmed grass with just a hint of robust rosemary underneath. It smelled of summer days and beauty. Ulrich stoppered the bottle again and stepped outside.

"I say, Quenril, any idea what this is?" he called to the Ash Elf. Quenril straightened from where he had been trying to at least shroud some of the dead and looked at what Ulrich was holding up.

"That is Essence de Sol," he noted, a shade of grey washing over his skin, "Only strong women have such magical items in their possession."

"It which case we will have to see if the great Lady Zilvra would appreciate such a gift," Ulrich smiled as he tucked the little bottle into a pocket.

"She will," Quenril note, the grey becoming more pronounced, "But it also means that there was a high ranking visitor to the out post before... before this happened." He waved an arm at the carnage around them.

"Ah," Ulrich fell in with a resounding clang, "Oh." He thought about it some more. "Visitor, or refugee from whatever happened at the Spider Clan Citadel."

"Ref-few-gee?" Quenril frowned, a slight yellow mixing into the grey, "What is this thing - ref-few-gee?"

"Someone who has been forced to flee their home due to the threat of their life being ended by violence," Ulrich explained, "They are usually looking for shelter and safety from whatever attacked them and... Oh no."

"Chosen what is it?" Quenril asked.

"Do you see a women's body in all of this?" Ulrich asked, "I have a bottle of very expensive perfume that says a woman was here but unless we can find a body..."

Quenril went bile yellow.

They were not the only ones inspecting the bodies, Jeremiah was picking his way through the ruins of the slaughter, turning over some to assess their condition, Nanny Tatters and his vigor pack barrier trotting along behind him. The vigor had its usual lack of expression, its head bowed under the weight of the pack but Nanny Tatters seemed to be watching her master with something that appeared to be interest in his actions.

Jeremiah turned another corpse over, noting the elaborate scarification tattoo that covered one side of its face, the branching lines of a spider's web cut across the features. This one was no good, half of its insides were falling out through the rents in its skin.

Jeremiah rose and stumped across the ground. There had to be one at least half way reasonable in this pile of offal. As he picked his way back and forth, he noticed something. Some of the dead were extremely messy, skin burst and ripped by claws and teeth, bone crushed by jaws that had clamped down that hard they had ruptured the calcium structure underneath. Others were neater, one long gash as straight as silver or a small hole where a bolt had pierced a major organ and caused a cascade of failure.

Jeremiah smiled as he looked over to where Kaelin was helping study the bodies. It seemed her family was still allied with the outlaws from the Ash Elf society. He supposed that was what happened when you drove out and ostracize a large enough group of people, or several groups of people - eventually they managed to band together to hit back at the ones responsible of their pain. It was a shame in a way, that he hadn't known about the exiled Ash Elves a couple of years ago. He would have gained a lot of respect from the Abbey for being willing to go on missionary to such a peoples and it would have been a futile recruiting ground for his god. Unfortunately now he probably wouldn't have time to bowl them over with a show of his power and recruit them to his cause before they shot him on sight, no thanks to the King and that interfering metal stick insect. Oh well, if they couldn't serve as willing converts to the cause then they could serve as unwilling sacrifices. Klu'ga-nuth wouldn't mind either way, the renegade Ash Elves could either be puppets of his will in life or souls to be devoured in death.

Jeremiah rolled over another corpse and inspected it. This one showed promise, a single hole decorated its forehead where the bolt had gone in and rendered its brain useless as the trickle of blood drying below its ears attested.

"Bring this one," he ordered Nanny Tatters and as he marched away he heard her dragging the carcass behind him. He passed by the obviously mauled ones, he'd had enough of smelly servants thank you very much, picking over the battle field until he found another one that had taken a bolt through the heart. That one was of slightly lower quality as the bolt had been left stuck in it for what ever reason but there again, seeing his servant still obeying, even with the cause of their death so visible, would convince so many to fear him and his god. And the more who feared, who bowed, who whimpered for mercy from the one true god. Jeremiah put his hand in his pocket and brushed his fingers over the cover of his books. They were growing ever brighter and more shiny, his original one now appearing to be almost new, the edges crisp and neat, the pages crackling with the crispness of unblemished parchment.

"Put that one there," Jeremiah smiled as Nanny Tatters opened her mouth and let the arm of the corpse she'd been dragging for him flop down beside its companion. Jeremiah looked round, meaning to call to the Ash Elves that followed around, yipping at Ulrich's heels but the eldest was busy with Ulrich. They were apparently looking for one specific body among all the corpses and didn't look up when he called. Tasnar, the slacker, was holding on to Weatherall's leg, the giant centipede drawn in tight beside the crab, so that Estella could climb down and go for her own search through the abandoned huts. It seemed their little prissy miss was as much a vulture as the rest of them, people were always such hypocrites.

There was a nasty crack and Jeremiah looked back to see Tasnar turn his face away with a groan. Peter, as no one was making him rush, had decided that all this food left around must be for him and had set to as such.

"Well, doesn't that put you off your dinner for a while," Estella muttered and then Weatherall reached forward with one massive set of pincers and slowly dragged a ruptured body within his reach so he could start picking it apart. Sabal mumbled something where he lay across the back of Weatherall's shell but didn't sit up.

"As much as I really don't want to watch this," Tasnar had his eyes closed even as he held on to Weatherall's leg, "It does mean that we don't have to worry about trying to fed them from our own supplies."

"It also means that the disruptions continue here as well," Sabal muttered, turning his head and opening one eye to look at his cousin, "If the world was as it should be then the kerveads should be swarming here already."

"True," Tasnar nodded after a moment, doing his best to ignore the crunching clicks as Peter scissored his dinner into bite sized pieces and the fleshy tearing noises as Weatherall delicately picked apart his meal, "How are you feeling cousin?"

"Sore," Sabal admitted, closing his eyes again, "But it is a little easier to breath."

Estella turned away and began exploring in the abandoned huts. Ulrich was right, what hadn't been taken had been smashed. Whoever had raided this place wasn't interested in conquest, they were interested in destruction.

"Humans," Valodrael snorted in her mind.

"Your meaning?" Estella asked as she peered into shadowed corners.

"Well one can hardly call them animals," Valodrael noted, "Animals don't go to war to simply kill for the fun of it, they hunt for food and they fight for territory, or safety if you like, and maybe a mate. They don't slaughter for the fun of it."

"And you don't enjoy the kill?" Estella raised an eyebrow as something caught her gaze.

"Oh I enjoy it," Valodrael admitted it openly, "We Void Dragons have never been what you humans would call 'nice' but I enjoy their fear more. Their fear as they realize that the pretty little thing they thought was so helpless turns out to have a friend they know they can't match and can't beat. Their despair when they realize that their 'easy meal' was nothing more than bait to make them reveal what they truly are and bring them within my reach. Ripping the wings off a butterfly maybe have its appeal but it is too easy. I like hunting other predators, their fear, their despair when they realize that they are no longer the alpha beast in the woods, when they realize that all the pain they have given to others is about to come back to eat them alive. Oh yes, now that is my pleasure."

Estella could feel his smile, a smile of sharp angles and teeth, a serial killer's grin as he discovered his next target and she smiled in response. After all, she could hardly complain, seeing as that was what had formed the foundation of their deal and there were more than a few times she'd enjoyed seeing the predators' faces when they realized that this little red was not a meal, that this little girl was not a tease and that she was not a walking invitation for what was underneath. It was worth the moment of discomfort as he erupted from her to see the world a little cleaner.

She crouched and picked up the thing she had found fallen in a corner that nobody had bothered to check.

"Oh ho," Valodrael rumbled in her mind, "Now where did they find that I wonder."

Estella rubbed her thumb over it, rubbing away a thin layer of grim, the curves and sinuous ridges of its twisting form making a circle of dark crystal.

"It's Seraphar isn't it?" Estella questioned.

"Maybe," Valodrael wasn't fully convinced, "But either way that it a very powerful amulet. It is certainly pulling on the Fae realm."

"You can tell that?" Estella raised her eyebrows in time with her mental questioning of her passenger.

"Oh yes, that is oozing so much power I'm surprised the priest hasn't come snuffling for it," Valodrael replied.

"Well in that case," Estella slipped the loop of it over her head, "If we can find out if it is pulling on the whole of the Fae realm instead of just one particular dragon then we might have found at least part of your power source. If nothing else the Fae Realm could help sustain the talisman wood... like Thorian's new regeneration ability. I'm not sure it will be able to support you on its own but if it helps to maintain the foundation it will be worth incorporating."

"A step forward is better than a step back," Valodrael noted, "But I would still keep it hidden from the priest."

"Sensible idea," Estella tucked the amulet itself under her clothes before she turned and stepped out of the hut.

Said priest had decided that seen the living Ash Elves were not paying him the proper attention that was his due then he would not give them a warning about what he was about to do next. The slowly turning sigil in the cage of antlers that adorned his head sped up, shining its putrid light brighter as Jeremiah began to chant the very worse of his prayers. The shadows writhed and twisted across the floor, threaded with light to pour down the throats of the two corpses he had chosen. Nanny Tatters blinked and watched, something like interest stirring in her gaze. Jeremiah didn't notice, busy with shaping his god's power into the vessels before him. The last of the light threaded darkness poured down their throats and vanished. Jeremiah waited a heart beat.

The corpses at his feet twitched and jerked.

"Rise, my minions, rise and serve the great god Klu'ga-nuth," Jeremiah smiled as the Ash Elf puppets stumbled jerkily to their feet, their eyes shining with the same pale white glow as his own. He turned round and found himself facing Quenril. The Ash Elf's mouth was a thin line and his hands were clenched.

"Oh I'm sorry," Jeremiah did not sound sorry at all, "Were they friends of yours?"

"Not really," Quenril said, barely parting his teeth. Tasnar wasn't looking all that happy either and Sabal was struggling to sit up to see what the problem was.

"Well then, surely you can't object to my acquisition of them, seeing as you would have been undoubtedly been at war with them before now," Jeremiah said.

"You know nothing of our politics," Quenril's eyes were flat, "Your kind are like children compared to us, children playing a game that we adults mastered centuries ago. I doubt that you could have ever understood the webs of alliance and adversity we wove at our peak."

"And did that aid you when the werewolves came calling?" Jeremiah asked, with his not so nice smile.

Quenril pressed his lips to a thin line and then turned to walk over to Sabal, checking his brother's bandages.

Kaelin kicked a broken bucket over and turned back to the rest of the group, snapping the tension.

"There's nothing of value left here," she said, hands on hips, "So people, step it up." She beckoned them and only continued once she was sure that she had all of their attention. "Right there's only two ways in and out of this outpost so we have only two choices - forward or back."

Thorian grunted and scratched his horny nails over his scalp.

"Going back," he said slowly, "Takes us back to where the earth was shaking itself apart so... I say let's keep going forward."

"I agree with Thorian," Jeremiah said at once.

Ulrich paused in the act of climbing up on to Weatherall's back.

"Did my ears deceive me or did you just agree with Thorian about something?" he asked, not caring about how ridiculous he looked with one foot up on Weatherall's leg."

"My dear Ulrich," Jeremiah's smile was still his not nice smile, "Do you not know how important it is to encourage and reassure the feeble minded? Of course I agree with Thorian on this point, as he is stating the blindingly obvious."

"I knew it couldn't be genuine," Ulrich shook his head and pulled himself up on to Weatherall's shell. Thorian just looked at Jeremiah, grunted and turned away.

"Why Thorian," Jeremiah called after him, "Don't you have any more pearls of wisdom for us today?"

"No good in saying things to people what don't listen," Thorian muttered but a Thorian mutter was loud enough for Jeremiah to hear any way. Jeremiah still smiled any way, knowing that he had upset the big brute. The rest of the party looked at him with varying levels of disgust and turned their backs on him to head out into the tunnels once again.

"Grrr," Kaelin muttered, her wings trying to stretch and closing again as they brushed against the walls of the tunnel, "I'll be glad once we get back to the surface and I can do some proper scouting ahead. I've been stuck under ground for long enough."

"I'm sure that our Ash Elf friends fine your opinion fascinating," Jeremiah called to her. Said Ash Elfs barely looked back at him but Quenril, who was walking in front of Ulrich and Sabal riding on the crab, stepped a little faster so he could whisper to her without Jeremiah over hearing.

"We do not like this being away from our Matriarch for so long either," he admitted, "As the surface is where she was heading to then there we long to be also."

"You'll fine it very different from life down here," Kaelin warned as they walked through the tunnels, trying to take the turns that had floors that slopped upwards.

"We know," Quenril admitted, "But it seems we have no other choice, we can't stand this alone, we need others, we... we are weak."

Kaelin paced on into the dark, holding high a light stick so they weren't reliant on the diseased glow of Jeremiah's sigil, wanting to leave it at that, not wanting to be a part of the Ash Elves' struggle, she had enough of her own, she didn't need theirs as well. Heck, they were the ones breathing down her neck about the forfeit but...

"And there's your strength," she said at last.

"Good lady?" Quenril queried, frowning.

"I said there's your strength," Kaelin repeated, "Admitting that you are weak is the first step to strength, admitting that you are afraid is the first step to bravery. Only the truly strong can cry. The strength that is based on never admitting that you are weak, that you are afraid? That strength can only last while someone is afraid of you. That's the strength that my grand shire has and look what it has brought him. The whole world is turning against him because the whole world knows that his strength is based on him destroying everyone and everything about him. He is ugly, hard and cruel and it bleeds from him on to everyone else and now everyone else is beginning to rise against him, even other predators. Admitting that you are weak is the first step to strength."

"I...see, I think," Quenril looked away as they paced on, eyes troubled. They walked on, the soft sigh of stone around them, the murmur of air moving against the mouths of tunnels and passageways whispering to them. Kaelin found herself trying not to listen to it, her mind imagining voices in that whispering. She had enough problems without her mind beginning to drift sides ways as well but it was hard to hold on to that thought when the tunnels seemed to be just one long continuous tube of stone. The eyes lingered on any differences, any variation in shade or texture to try give itself something to notice. The weight of her pack, the chaff of a strap, the rub of a shoe, these were things the mind grabbed and heightened to drastic amounts to try and stave off the mind numbing monotony of it all.

It was almost with relief that she spotted a greenish glow rising in the tunnel. More like greenish white she decided, almost like someone had mixed the skin of a green apple into a pail of milk. That was ridiculous and impossible but it was what it made her think of.

The tunnel opened up into a smallish cavern, its floor low except for a slightly raised hummock in the middle, its ceiling and walls cover with a fungus that produced the glow lighting up the air.

"Whee!" Thorian cried joyfully and jumped forward. The splash soaked his trousers but he didn't seem to mind as he jumped and bounced in the shallow water, like a child puddle jumping in the rain, kicking up sheets of spray just for the sake of it.

Jeremiah smiled his not nice smile and turned away. If the orc child wanted to prove that he only had half a brain cell then let him, who was he to stop his stupidity?

Jeremiah stepped daintily to one side to avoid Thorian's play, his collection of puppets and pets padding behind him. He studied the wall but there didn't seem to be anything particularly powerful about the fungus growing there. He glanced about and then noticed that what he had taken for random heaps of stone where actually broken pottery spilling its contents into the pool and the ground of the little hummock. The stems of battered, broken plant life was mixed with the shattered shards of ceramics and Jeremiah smiled again. It seemed that some of those ridiculous pottery golems had met their end in this place and he heartily approved.

Kaelin tipped a cracked piece of pottery over with her boot. It fell with a clatter and was answered by a low moan. On the small hammock one of the pottery turtles turned its head with the clicking sound of pottery snapping over and over again, its large shape, the height of a medium pony but infinitely broader, stumping along on its pillar like legs. It lowered its head to the shattered remains of one of its brethren, its neck painted with lines of light that came and went as the pottery of its form split and reformed to allow the movement. It seemed to sniff the fallen and then it lifted its head and uttered a low, drawn out moan of distress.

Kaelin sighed, pain seemed to be the lot of many things in this world and then she frowned as she spotted what was in the dirty near its trail of round footprints. She made her way slowly and carefully through the pool towards it but the pottery beast didn't react to her, moaning again in its private pain. Kaelin crouched and stared at impression pressed into the mud. It was longer and more narrow that a human foot had right to be. It had also been made by someone who hadn't been wearing shoes as she could see the lines where the claws had raked over the surface of the mud. She bit down on the impulse to scream a whole list of swear words and then start making up her own.

Ulrich watched Kaelin's face and guessed who had been responsible for the golems being battered apart. He looked at where the last remaining one stood, the poor thing grieving for its fallen and broken comrades, then his eyes were distracted by the drift of greenish mist in the air. Ulrich frowned as he gazed at it, watching it twist and turn, reminding him of the dust motes dancing in the beams of sunlight in the school chapel while the chaplain droned on and on during the Holy Day Mass. It had always been so boring, this how ever could be something not so tiresome. He waved to get Quenril's attention and the eldest of his Ash Elf companions paddled over from where he'd been studying the wreckage of the pottery golems.

"Tell me old chap," Ulrich asked, "Do you have any idea what these things are? It is just that we have come across them before, before we met you in fact and they didn't seem to be dangerous. In fact they were quite friendly, the giant spiders that were living with them not so much, it was one of those blighters that bite my arm come to think of it. Either way, the pot animals didn't seem to pose a risk so do you have any idea why anyone would want to smash them up?"

Quenril shook his head, his expression one of shock.

"None of the clans would ever consider this," he stated, "We will use many tools and our ways are strange to your people but we would not destroy the production of food in this way. The pottery golems take that which we cannot directly eat and convert it to that which we can." He turned to look round the cave, gazing at the shattered shards strewn in the shallow water. "This... this is madness. Even when it has come to outright war between the clans we have never destroyed the food. There are but few ways to grow food in the Underworld, destroy them on the path of war and you gain nothing. A citadel is worth nothing if you cannot feed its people. We have always understood that. This... this is a war like nothing we understand."

"So its scorched earth tactics," Ulrich muttered and Quenril looked at him sharply.

"Its a method used by the more ruthless and frankly less intelligent warlords of the surface world," Ulrich explained, "It means that they burn everything before them." Quenril frowned.

"I don't understand," he admitted, his brain refusing to look at the scope of destruction Ulrich's simple sentence revealed. Ulrich sighed.

"They burn the crops, they slaughter the livestock, in some cases they even poison the wells," Ulrich explained, looking away as Quenril's face became more and more horrified, "It means that even if they lose nobody else wins. They burn the sky and scorch the ground so that no one else can claim it. There have even been stories of wizards who have unleashed the repulsive fire." He glanced at Jeremiah, part of him wondering, part of him praying that he was wrong.

"The repulsive fire?" Quenril asked.

"The fire that burns without heat or light and yet consumes all living things," Ulrich patted Weatherall's shell but it was himself he was comforting, "It burns within living flesh unnoticed until it destroys those that it has touched. There are places in the surface world, ringed by barriers of metal thorns that do not rust and marked by symbols of death and decay. Messages in languages long dead adorn the walls of tombs warning explorers that no mighty deeds are remembered there, that they are not places of honor, that they are not the tombs of treasures but burial grounds for that which would spread and poison everything in its path. The oldest is said to be marked with star charts that predict the movements of the heavens for a hundred thousand years because that is how long it will take for what was buried there to be rendered fully dead. It is a terrible way of making war."

 Quenril gazed at him, Tasnar twisting round on Peter's back to look at him while Sabal had turned his head to Ulrich's voice.

Ulrich took a deep breath and shook himself, pulling back from the edge of the abyss he had just looked into.

"Any way chaps," he managed a smile, "What is all this funny dust in here?"

"Funny dust?" Quenril frowned, looking out at the chamber again. His eyes went wide.

"Cover your faces!" he yelled, digging frantically into his pack.

"You what?" Thorian asked, turning to frown at the three Ash Elves who were hastily tying strips of cloth over their noses and mouths.

"Cover your faces!" Quenril cried again, even as his fingers pulled the knot behind his head tight, "The repulsive fire is not the only thing that can destroy you from the inside out. The pottery golems used their defense before they died, if the seeds get inside you, they will take root and grow."

Kaelin stared at him and then yanked the front of her shirt up over her mouth and nose, holding it there with one hand. Estella fumbled with the top two buttons of her new shirt for a moment and then did the same. Ulrich dug in his pack a moment and then tied a bandana over his face.

Thorian frowned a moment and then clamped his lips together and scrunched up his face as he started to hold his breath.

The lonely golem took no notice as Jeremiah held a handkerchief over his nose and mouth and twitched a blanket one handed over Nanny Tatters and his vigor pack barer. Jeremiah looked at the two Ash Elves he had puppetted, considering. He really wanted to know what all the fuss was about but at the same time giving up himself for scientific study wasn't something he was willing to consent to. His minions however... Besides, judging by the last ones, these would start smelling all too soon any way. He decided to leave them exposed and see what happened.

Thorian was starting to go a very strange color when he pointed to the tunnel to the south and started tottering towards it.

"My dear Thorian," Jeremiah asked, his voice muffled by the handkerchief, "Are you alright?"

Thorian made a strained sound in his throat, his eyes rolling as he kept putting one foot in front of the other, towards the tunnel.

"I do say, I am quite concerned for you," Jeremiah continued, "Are you sure that you don't need assistance?"

Thorian  mumbled something in his throat again, pressing on.

"My dear Thorian," Jeremiah kept the handkerchief pressed to his face, "I know that you were not brought up by civilized people but it is considered rude to not reply when someone inquiries after your health."

Thorian screwed his face up even more, the guttural noises deep in his throat continuing as he stumbled towards the tunnel mouth.

The last pottery golem continued to low as they moved away across the cave. Thorian looked back, obvious torn. The poor thing sounded so lonely and sad. Jeremiah always seemed to get the pets. Why did Jeremiah always get the pets? Jeremiah... poked him in the side. Thorian glared and stumbled, light headed with lack of breath and he saw the seeds swirl in the air, clustering around Jeremiah's new Ash Elf buddies. The seeds seemed to be flowing up their nostrils and for a second Thorian thought he could see something like veins moving beneath the skin of one of them. Only... they weren't veins. Thorian turned and round and flung himself towards the tunnels entrance. He didn't know what he'd just seen but he was sure that he didn't want to be around when it happened for real.

He didn't stood holding his breath as he pushed on into the dark. He could hear the others before him but he just wanted to be as few away from that crawling creeping horror that was nestled within Jeremiah's glow eyed friend.

"Do you think that he can hold his breath much longer?" Estella asked Kaelin with concern.

"No idea," Kaelin noted, "I suppose it will be fun to..."

The floor gave way below all of them. Marmaduke managed to shift his weight so he just landed with an almighty crash, one fist smashing a hole in the rubble strewn floor of the pit even as the other flashed out and caught Weatherall's in the palm of it hand. The crab froze and then as the noise quietened, bruxed his mouth parts together, eye stalks waving to and fro.

"Well caught that man," Ulrich congratulated, from where he'd hung on to Weatherall's shell. A groan behind him made him turn. Sabal had been thrown off by the drop but instincts had taken over and he had landed in a crouch.

"You Okay old bean?" Ulrich asked.

"Better than I was," Sabal gritted his teeth and tried to stand again, "But I've been better as well." He grunted again. "Anyone have a hand free?"

"Here," Kaelin tutted and helped him straighten up, his right knee flexing with an all mighty crack that resounded in the dark.

"Wow," he said after a moment, "That actually feels better."

"Yes well, nobody needs a statement every time your body does something," Jeremiah observed from where he was brushing down his clothes, Nanny Tatters flapping above as she flipped herself over to find her feet. The vigor just stood up with the slow deliberation with which it did everything. The two undead Ash Elves just lay in the rubble, not moving.

Thorian stood up and then fell down again, thumping into the floor that solidly that the breath exploded from his lungs. He gasped on reflex.

"Oh my head," he sat up and clutched his skull.

"Well that's what you get for trying to make yourself pass out by holding your breath for too long," Kaelin snapped, looking around for the other three.

Estella sat up, her talismans clouding around her and put a hand gingerly to her face. Her fingertips came away bloody.

"Ow," she muttered, fishing in her pack so she could sprinkle a few drops of 'for healing' potion on a wad of cloth and dab carefully at the thumb size grazes above and below her right eye.

"What I get for sliding on my face," she muttered, wincing as she dabbed the torn end of her nose, "Not that I ever was a good kisser." She paused as her passenger grumbled his irritation at that statement but she didn't argue with him, she didn't feel up to it.

"This really hasn't been my candle time," Tasnar was unwrapping his leg and rearranging the lengths that hadn't been ground through by friction. He had picked up a collection of nasty gashes on his thigh but thankfully none of them had torn through the skin layer. With a grunt he pulled himself up on to his feet, gingerly testing his leg but it seemed to be able to take his weight.

Quenril rolled over and levered himself upright before clutching his shoulder.

"It hasn't been any of our candle times," he muttered and then looked up at the rim of the pit their had fallen into.

"Ten foot," Thorian sniffed, "Not too bad." He eyed it up, took two steps back, broke into a run and launched himself up. One hand got a grip, the rock edge crumbled under the other. Grunting and cursing he dangled for a moment and then found a firm piece of rock. Sweating, he pulled himself up and over the edge of the rock.

Ulrich looked around and saw Peter dangling, half in and half out of the pit. He whistled and Peter came scuttling down the wall of the pit, pulling up just in front of Marmaduke.

"Good boy," Ulrich nodded and stepped from Weatherall to Marmaduke to Peter. He settled himself in place and then nodded at the wall.

"Take us up and out, Peter," Ulrich commanded and then had to lean forward and grab hold of the side of one of Peter's segments as Peter flowed his multitude up and over the edge of the pit.

"Good boy," Ulrich sat up and patted him as they came to a stop beside Thorian, "Alright Marmaduke, set Weatherall down on the floor gently and help the others up and other of the hole, please."

The automaton tilted his head sideways and then set the giant crab down on his legs. He marched to the edge of the pit and turned, half crouching, lacing his hands together to form a cup. The others frown at him.

"Step in his hands," Ulrich called down, "He'll give you a boast up." They still frowned and then Quenril approached. He set his foot in Marmaduke's linked hands and then reached up.

"Whoa!" he cried out as Marmaduke hoisted but then he was grabbing for the edge of the pit.

"H-up you come," Thorian grinned and seized his wrists, helping him over the last step.

"Seems easy enough," Tasnar muttered but didn't sound utterly convinced. He gritted his teeth as he balanced on his battered left leg to fit his right foot into Marmaduke's cupped hands.

"Wah!" he yelled as Marmaduke lifted a little too soon. He tottered, he wavered, he very nearly fell. He wound up clinging on around Marmaduke's neck, dangling in a very undignified position. It took him several minutes to scramble upright enough for Thorian to be able to reach down and grab his hands. There was a whoop of a down beat of wings as Jeremiah sailed overhead on his wings.

"Tell me people are we going to get on sometime today or are we going to just flim-flam around here until we all decide to expire?" Jeremiah asked as his feet settled to the floor.

"Working on it," Thorian grunted as he readied himself for the next one.

"You go first," Sabal bowed to Estella.

"Are you feeling steady?" Estella asked, a look of worry crossing her face.

"Not really," Sabal admitted, rubbing his tempers with the heels of his hands, "I'm feeling a little dizzy. If you can just give me a few minutes to recover by going first?"

"Sure," Estella nodded and turned to Marmaduke. The automaton would have blinked if he had the ability as Estella swarmed up him with the agility of a squirrel, perching on his shoulders for a moment before launching herself at the lip of the pit.

"There you go," Thorian smiled as he held out a hand to help her swing the last distance to set her feet away from the edge of the pit.

"Thank you kind Sir," Estella smiled.

"Well here goes," Kaelin muttered, spreading her wings in the cramped space. A leap, a rush, a down beat and she soared over the rest of them, nearly brushing the roof of the tunnel with the top of her head. She landed neatly and shook out her feathers before folding them with a rustle.

Behind her there was a grunt and then the battering noise like the frantic clapping of someone trying to slap ants off their skin and Nanny Tatters lurched up from the pit, wobbling and swerving in the air before thumping down at the feet of her master. Jeremiah frowned as he frowned down at her, trying to decide whether or not her irregular flight was a disobedience or a sign that he had imprinted his will on her mind hard enough that she was now unwilling to have any great distance between them even when he hadn't specifically stated that she was to keep up with him.

Sabal looked up and then looked around to see who was left with him in the pit. Realizing that it was only Jeremiah's collection of undead abominations and the giant crab he uttered a little squeak and dashed over to Marmaduke, his dizzy spell forgotten and he launched himself at the edge of the pit with the automaton's help, Thorian catching his wrists and helping him make the last step.

"Thank you," Sabal muttered, "Those things just..." He shuddered, looking back down at the glowing eyes looking back up at him. He shuddered again and turned away, limping over to where his kin had clustered around Ulrich.

"Well?" Jeremiah called down with a frown, "Just what are you waiting for? Get up here where you can be useful!"

The vigor, still carrying the pack on its head, stumped over to the wall of the pit. It stepped laboriously up the pile of rubble it had chosen but when it came up against the flat wall of the pit it halted, up turned nose pressed to the stone. Jeremiah watched it for a moment and then closed his eyes as he counted to ten. That was the number of times he debated the choice between keeping it so it could carry his property or de-animating it and having to carry the pack himself again.

"You!" he snapped, pointing at one of the undead Ash Elves, "Toss that up here." He indicated the vigor.

The puppet stepped forward and seized the vigor in both hands. The vigor landed with a plop on the original floor of the tunnel. It sat for a moment, blinking its dull eyes and then it stood up and stumped over to stand beside Jeremiah. Jeremiah ignored it in favor of his favorite hobby of scolding someone.

"Well?"  he asked, looking down on his last two minions, "Are you going to get up here so that you can be proper servants to your master or doing you intend to remain down there for the rest of the year, slowly rotting into a useless pile of mush?"

They looked up at him, slack jawed and vacant eyed. Jeremiah's eyes narrowed and his fist clenched as he considered whether to just dispose of them. They didn't seem to have the quality of Nanny Tatters and part of him wondered why he had bothered to collect them.

The one at his feet bowed its head and reached out its hands, gripping on to the rock face in front of it and slowly dragging itself up the vertical stone, its movements jerky but effective as it crawled up the short cliff. Jeremiah stepped aside as it slithered its way over the edge to lay at his feet. It was at least an appropriate place for it. He glared down at the other one that was only just beginning to totter its way towards the wall. It was also scratching at its arms. Jeremiah's eyes narrowed again and then he lifted a hand.

The Ash Elf puppet still down in the pit fall forward on to its face, spasmed a coupe of times and then lay still. The stream of blue power leaked from it mouth and coiled back up through the air to pool in Jeremiah's eyes and sink in. He flinched slightly and blinked almost as if the power have stung slightly this time, which was a new sensation for him. Usually it brought within a tingle of pleasure but this time it had a painful undertone. He frowned down at his discarded puppet, wondering if the 'defense' of the pottery golems had managed to infect it but then he turned his back and started walking away.

The living Ash Elves watched him, furtively arching their fingers at him to ward off evil, before glancing at the pit themselves.

"You don't think that it could be..." Tasnar asked in their language of gestures and micro-expressions.

"It could," Quenril replied, "But if it is we will just have to deal with it as and when it tracks us down."

"Us or him?" Sabal observed, "And if it is him, why should we interfere?"

 Quenril thought about it for a moment.

"That might actually be the way to deal with him," he admitted.

"Except that if he wins then he will punish us for refusing to help him," Tasnar warned.

"Unless it is a battle," Sabal almost smiled, "If it is a battle then we will be too busy guarding the Matriarch's Chosen to be guarding him from his own folly."

Quenril thought about it again.

"We can but pray," he concluded. The other two smiled for real then.

"Alright Weatherall, old bean," Ulrich called down, "Time to get yourself up and out of there."

The giant crab bruxed his mouth parts again,picking something out of the rubble and feeding it into that grinding organic mechanism, mulling over how he was supposed to 'get himself up and out of there'. 

"That's something," Estella noted, "Crabs walk sideways, so how do they see where they are going?"

"What?" Kaelin asked, frowning at her. More puzzling to her than the question was the fact that Estella had been able to think of it at all. Kaelin didn't question what was, it was therefore you dealt with it, you didn't ask way it was. Asking why it was distracted you from the important stuff like staying alive, biting the enemy first ad finding the next prey item you could hunt and eat without getting gorged yourself. You didn't ask why the enemy was the enemy, you just made sure that you got the first bite in and made it count. Kaelin wondered how come Estella could have gone through all the crud she had gone through and still think of something beyond the fact that they needed to survive until tomorrow.

 Down in the hole Weatherall tested the sides of the pit with his claws. He then marched to the end closest to Ulrich, pushing Marmaduke out of the way and tried to walk up the wall but stopped part way up and bruxed his mouth again. He returned to the level and then, after a moment's thought turned as much as it was possible for him to do in the pit.

A spear like foot reached up and jabbed at the wall of the pit. A leg on the other side of his shell probed the rock wall there as well. Slowly, carefully, Weatherall lifted himself clear of the pit, walking up the walls, pointed feet/legs finding cracks and crevasses and almost non existent shelves to work his way ever higher, his belly hanging over nothing until he reached the tunnel level. Then it was a slow shuffle of using the motion that he habitually used at speed to switch direction to gradually work his way forward until he was clear of the pit and safely back over, apparently, solid ground.

Thorian cheered and Estella clapped. Weatherall twitched his eye stalks but didn't appear to have any reaction beyond that.

"Good boy," Ulrich congratulated, patting and rubbing Westherall's shell, "Now do you think you could give me a hand to get Marmaduke up and out of there?"

Weatherall waggled his eye stalks but apparently saw that his Master was not joking. Peter whistled with amusement. Weatherall slowly uncurled a claw and held the mighty pincer out over the pit.

"Down a little, down a little," Ulrich instructed, tapping that arm, guiding it lower. Unfortunately, crabs are not known for being overly flexible so there was only so low Weatherall ould go. Peter hissed with almost spiteful amusement.

"If that is how you feel," Ulrich stepped off him, "You can get down there and push Marmaduke from below." Peter squeaked, looking round at Ulrich, waggling his antennae at him. "I'm not kidding," Ulrich folded his arms, "If that is how you feel then you can get down there and push him from below." Peter hummed but Ulrich was implacable. Sighing, the giant centipede trundled over the edge of the pit and got into position behind Marmaduke. The automaton's head rotated round as smoothly as a greased wheel to look at Peter behind him. The giant centipede wheezed as if to say that this was not his idea either and to not look at him for answers.

"Right Marmaduke," Ulrich called down, "You're going to have to jump and grab Weatherall's claw. Peter you're going to have to give him a shove from below. Ready?" Marmaduke's head swiveled back round to face his master. "Right, on the count of three. One. Two. Three!"

Marmaduke jumped, grabbed Weatherall's claw... Weatherall ground a growl from his belly as he began tilting sideways. Ulrich grabbed Weatherall at the same moment that Peter rammed his head up underneath Marmaduke's foot. Peter whistled and squealed in protest as his neck bunched and then he was digging all his feet in and pushing with all his might while top side Ulrich pushed down on Weatherall's higher end until all of Weatherall's feet were back on the floor, then dashed forward to seize Marmaduke's wrist and help pull him up and over the edge. Peter came rippling after, not quite suppressing his opinions about these two hard shelled lead weights, not quite.

"Well," Ulrich dusted off his hands and turned to the others, "I think that is all of us out of that little hick up. Shall we be pressing on?"

"I think someone already is," Kaelin said wryly, gesturing to where the sickly yellow light of Jeremiah's sigil was disappearing down the tunnel, Gerard, his moth, crawling up and down the cage of Jeremiah's antlers, trying to get comfortable now that he no longer had the miter to ride around on.

"It is usually me who separates the team," Ulrich observed.

"Shall we allow the... large one to continue his decision to leave our squad?" Quenril's words were deceptively mild, his expression bland. Kaelin frowned and started checking through her pack.

"That is an option, that is certainly an option," Ulrich agreed.

"Aye wouldn't be sorry," Thorian muttered, "He can take his creepy pets away any day of the week."

 "We're running out of light sticks," Kaelin noted, "We lost a lot of them getting doused in that lake and it doesn't look like the goturi thought to provide us with more."

"Ah, that's a problem," Ulrich noted. Thorian scratched his ear.

"Why is that a problem?" he asked.

"Well unless you can produce fireballs from your butt," Kaelin noted, "At this rate Jeremiah is going to be the only one with a light source. I don't like that flaming squiggle any more than you but if we don't follow him then  I don't like our chances of getting out of here any time this century."

"Move it out team," Ulrich swung on to Peter's back, giving a nod to Sabal and Tasnar to ride on Weatherall to let them have a little more recovery time. They hurried down the tunnel, following the drifting noxious light that showed where Jeremiah led the way.

When the light very nearly disappeared on them, they broke into a run. Left, right, right again.

"Do yah think he has any idea of where he's going?" Thorian panted as he thumped along.

"Probably not," Quenril grunted. After that they didn't have the breath to talk any more. As it was they very nearly ran passed him in the twists and turns of the way. Estella saved them. She had been falling and falling behind as she struggled to match her pace up to the one set by the longer legs of the others.

"Need to do some more running training," she gasped to herself as she pushed harder.

"Might not be a bad idea," her passenger acknowledged, "But for now would you like me to..."

"Wait!" Estella snapped, catching the light of something out of the corner of her eye. She stumbled to a halt and then back pedaled.

"Guys!" she roared down the tunnel, "Stop that right now!"

The rest of the King's Special pulled up almost too fast, stumbling and bumping as the shades of various mother figures jumped up out of the past and snapped in that oh so special voice that only mothers have. The light stick in Ulrich's hand actually trembled slightly and the hair was growing along Kaelin's arms even as she stifled a sob. That voice, that tone, that whip crack of command. Kaelin bit her lip. She's had a mother. That lash of instant, instinctive obedience that shook through her, some where, some how, she'd had a mother and that was a confirmation that she had needed for longer than she wanted to admit to.

"He's down here," Estella informed them with a wry roll of her eyes before turning into the tunnel on her right.

Jeremiah sat on a block of stone where the tunnel widened out, munching contentedly on a cheese sandwich, while Nanny Tatters coiled at his feet, his vigor pack barer and his Ash Elf puppet slouching off to one side.

"Thank you for waiting for us to catch up," Estella said, calm wryness lacing through her words, an almost sarcastic edge hovering in the bad ground of her tone.

"Oh were you lagging behind?" Jeremiah asked, looking up from his food, "Now wasn't that a silly thing to do. Really all you had to do was ask me to slow down a little."

"Seeing as you were already trying to disappear over the horizon sending you that request would have been a little... difficult," Estella raised an eyebrow as the rest of the King's Special finally caught up.

"Well, if you will insist on stopping to give the less able of the party unreasonable accommodations who am I to prevent your folly?" Jeremiah smiled, "As I have said before, you are young and that youth interferes with the choices you make. You still live by the idea that everyone deserves an equal shot at life, which is the biggest disservice we give to children."

"Oh indeed?" Estella's plain expression didn't change.

"Of course," Jeremiah still smiled, "We teach them that empathy and compassion are virtues before we teach them how to discern who is worthy of such things and who is not. It is no wonder that youth wastes its time trying to look after those who don't earn and will never be able to earn their place in society rather than disposing of them the way nature intends them to be disposed of."

"So compassion is a flaw?" Estella raised an eyebrow.

"Only when it is given to the wrong ones," Jeremiah took another bite out of his sandwich.

"You keep forgetting that I have already been betrayed by creatures of flesh," Estella's gaze didn't waver, "Marmaduke is metal, metal does not betray so easily."

"Well since we have a spot here shall we stop for lunch?" Ulrich asked, trying to break the tension mounting in the air.

"I'd say that is an excellent idea," Estella turned away from Jeremiah.

Kaelin kept sniffing as she nibbled on her bread, her ears flicking to and fro as well. Thorian was also frowning.

"What is troubling you, oh great and mighty Thorian Vandervast?" Jeremiah said, "What is causing your to try and withstand the pain of trying to think of something?"

"Can you hear that whispering as well?" Thorian asked Kaelin rather than waste his time talking to Jeremiah.

"Yes," Kaelin hazarded, "But its not voices talking." She frowned some more. "There is definitely something echoing down the tunnels but it is not people babble." She tilted her head that way.

"Should we avoid it?" Ulrich asked.

"No," Kaelin hazarded, "If it is what I think it is then we need to check it out."

"Oh, is it something that you can steal dear Kaelin?" Jeremiah asked.

"No but maybe we'll be able to baptize you," Kaelin replied, her voice a weird echo of Estella's earlier wry tone. Estella looked at her and then held up her hand flat. After a moment Kaelin clapped her palm against Estella's. She didn't quite smile but it was enough.

After a while, they packed up their stuff and headed off deeper into the tunnel Jeremiah had found. It certainly appeared to be wider and taller than the ways that they had been following for so long.

Even so, the expansion caught them all off guard, the ceiling suddenly soaring height and the walls disappearing off into the distance. They stopped in awe. It was vast. Whether it was true or not, it appeared bigger than even the cavern of Endingborough, the scent of deep time breathing through the chill. The sound of whispering had become a muted babbling.

"Are those rain clouds up there?" Estella whispered, staring at the ceiling.

"My dear Estella, surely you know the difference between a roof of stone and the sky above?" Jeremiah asked, "Clouds belong in the sky,  not underground.

"Well I'd like to know what you'd either call that, or what you did with your eyes," Ulrich noted, "Because if that isn't at least some form of water based weather then I am the heir apparent of my father's estates!"

High, high, almost impossibly high above their heads, vapor plumes drifted across the ceiling, rippling and coiling to the invisible dance of air currents in the cool damp of the caves breath.

"You realize that nobody has seen this for possibly hundreds of years," Tasnar breathed, "The Begetters are amazing."

"Now there is an idea," Ulrich nodded, the caverns size and gloom making him feel small and insignificant.

"That depends," Jeremiah called, running his hand along the rail of the wall that edged the left hand side of the path ahead.

"Good grief," Ulrich exclaimed, "We are getting back to civilization after all."

"Maybe," Quenril frowned, peering at the carvings on the low wall beside the path. A long, lithe animal with short legs twisted and danced across the stone work, its little whisk of a tail curving behind it, "I don't recognize this insignia at all."

Sabal slid with a wince off of Weatherall's shell and limped over to have a look.

"Vaesel," he stated, "The clan vanished three thousand years ago as the last matriarch had no direct female descendant to inherit the Matriarchy. We must be in a very old territory, the archives were vague about where their clan borders were located. We had estimations due to where the current clan boarders are located but nothing concrete.

"Still we must be closer to the surface than when we left the realm of the dwergs," Ulrich observed, suppressing that his mind was still trying to understand that the Ash Elves had a recorded history that stretched back at least three thousand years.

"That is true," Quenril straightened and peered further into the depths of the cavern, "We must also be fairly close to one of the clans main structures. It is unlikely that there will be anything edible left, although some of the mushroom gardens may have survived but it will still give us a more secure sleeping place tonight."

"That and there might be a few light sticks hidden away," Kaelin observed, hitching her backpack slightly higher, "Well we are not getting any closer standing around here gassing. Come on feet." She set out along the path. Ulrich followed along behind the rest of them, having an earnest discussion with Peter, who was hissing and grousing as he trundled along, antennae waving over the floor as Ulrich rode on his back.

"Yes I know that you don't really like them," Ulrich was saying. Peter hissed.

"Be that as it may," Ulrich continued, "It would have been a lot harder for you to carry two passengers at once than it is for Weatherall." Peter whistled and hissed a longer note of disagreement.

"I know I could have asked but I also know that having to hack our way through every enemy we face does put more of us in danger, you do remember Estella nearly getting scissored in half by one of those crabs?" Ulrich asked. Peter hissed what was most obviously a 'so?'

"Well say I hadn't tamed Weatherall and you and Marmaduke hadn't managed to kill him before he got to Estella and snipped off her head," Ulrich explained, "Would you want to be Valodrael's next host?" Peter whistled a puzzled sort of whistle, then Estella turned so she was walking backwards, grinning at Peter as her eyes turned black and the oil like tears trailed down her face. Peter froze and then gave a short, one note whistle. Estella smiled more normally and spun round to walk beside Kaelin, appearing to be her little sister. She didn't say anything but Kaelin looked at her a moment. Estella looked back and Kaelin just shrugged, not saying she could but not pushing her away either.

Peter trundled on, not whistling anything else for the time being.

They pushed on into the dark, the light from the sputtering glow stick and Jeremiah's rotten sigil pushing the gloom back and making their shadows loom large against the drifting eddies of steam. The babbling had become an only slightly muted roaring, echoing and drumming in the air and punctuated by wet plops as large droplets fell from the ceiling to splat upon the floor, their shoulders and their heads.

"I never thought I'd need an umbrella underground," Jeremiah said sourly.

"Well you learn something new," Kaelin said levelly, then frowned as she spotted something up ahead. The low wall opened up for a space and the way branched, the right way curving further round in that direction, staying at the level that they had been walking on for a while with maybe a slight upward gradient while the left slopped steeply down towards the sound of thundering water.

"People," Ulrich called, "I know we were told to follow the water but that sounds like the sort of flood that could raise at any time and sweep us straight back to where we just came from. The journey has been interesting but I for one would like to get home to my fair lady sometime this year."

"My dear Ulrich," Jeremiah smiled slightly as they swung on to the right hand track, "I never put you down as the marrying type."

"Neither did I old bean," Ulrich replied cheerfully, "But I'm beginning to feel a hankering for the sun and some to see whether or not there is anything left that we can save up there. We might not have been the heroes when we got sent on this crazy ride but like it or not we kind have the fate of the world riding on us now. That Kaelin is running short on time to get this whole forfeit business sorted and it would solve a lot of our problems if we help her get it finished."

"Yeah," Thorian nodded as they plodded along, "I don't like her old man. Aye know you're not supposed to think on that afore you met someone... but aye don't like him."

"King might even decide to stand us down from active service after all of this," Kaelin grunted as they plodded along, "Then you two get to go and make that bath house thing, Estella gets to go back to searching for whatever it is she's after and Jeremiah..." She thought about it.

"Jeremiah gets to go back to being as creepy as..." Estella tried not to laugh.

"We get the point," said priest interrupted, "We do not need your opinion stated in such crude manners."

Estella sniggered into her sleeve and she wasn't the only one, not only was he passenger rumbling his amusement but the rest of the King's Special was doing their best to not let Jeremiah know how amusing they found that. It was good but it wasn't worth getting Estella in trouble later.

They continued trudging up hill the voice of the river rising and falling below them. The low wall rose in height slightly and the voice of the river suddenly became a lot louder. Thorian didn't notice busy thinking about what he'd be doing once they made it back to the surface and the King said that they were free to go. He did consider going back to traveling but there was always the risk of someone else taking his clumsiness the wrong way and then he'd be in trouble again. Working with Ulrich on that bath house thing bug think though. It did occur to him that Ulrich would need to have it built as well and that meant lots of bricks and stones and stuff being lugged about. Thorian was good at lugging things about, he'd learnt that working in the dwerg's workshop. He was good at it and he enjoyed it. It felt good to use his big muscles to do something that made something build up and not wind up all deaded. He liked the idea of doing it more.

Kaelin turned her ears and then turned her head.

"How old you reckon this bridge to be," she asked.

"Do not worry yourself," Tasnar said, "Our setting stone becomes stronger the longer it stands, especially in a place this mineral rich."

"Mineral rich?" Ulrich asked.

"Setting stone?" Kaelin raised her eyebrows.

"Can't you taste it?" Tasnar counter asked, "The water in the air here tastes of minerals, you can almost smell them." He closed his eyes a moment. "Bone dust, that comes from limestone. Grit, that comes from sandstone. Salt, that will be from a pink salt deposit so we must be near the mountains. And metal, that will be from some ore deposits. We are definitely closer to the surface than we have been for quite some time."

"At last," Kaelin almost gave a sigh of relief. She wanted to be she didn't, she knew enough to know that they could still lose out before they made it if they dropped their guard.

"As for the setting stone, it is a material we create for a recipe that the Begetters gave us before they were cast down," Tasnar informed them, "And as I said it gets stronger the longer it has been set, rather than weakening and falling apart."

Kaelin looked back at the bridge as the roar of the river turned down a knotch.

"If any of you know it, you'll made a fortune top side," she noted, "There are kings that would pay you for the knowledge of such a building material."

"Really?" Tasnar blinked, shifting his leg on the back of Weatherall's shell.

"She's right," Ulrich confirmed, "We don't have anything like that in the world on the surface so if you have the recipe for a building material that gets stronger rather than weaker then you could make quite a lot of money. Sounds like you can make a far go of adapting to the world above."

"It is certainly something that we will have to consider," Quenril nodded, "Our sister seems to have chosen wisely when she..."

"Hold on chaps," Ulrich jockeyed Peter out in front and held up a fist, bringing the party to a stop, "There's something up ahead."

They peered through the gloom and the swirls of mist.

The bulky out line of a building loomed at the side of the road, its sinuous curves and flying buttresses revealing that it was Ash Elf in origin, even if the heavy lifting had been done by slaves. However, it looked well and truly battered. Time had not been kind to this one, despite what Tasnar claimed about the building material of the Ash Elves. Still it did point to the fact that this had at one point been a major route in the Underworld, so there was hope that at the end of it there was a citadel and possibly at least more secure sleeping arrangements for the next rest stop, if not some other supplies they could scrounge. 

Ulrich swung off Peter's back.

"Stay here," he muttered and crouched, sidling up close to the low wall, creeping closer. The Ash Elves had a micro second of one of their silent conversations and then Quenril crouched and followed him. The rest of the King's Special looked at each other, looked at Ulrich and Quenril and then started to slowly follow, slowly.

As Ulrich crept closer, carefully set his feet one at a time he realized that he first assumption was wrong, it wasn't a gate house, it was much larger. This was an out right base of operations, a block house, designed to house a garrison ready to defend this route to the clans holdings. It was also not time that had ruined it. The front of it gaped in ruin because something had smashed in the front of the building and collapsed it into a pile of rubble and broken stone. The shell of the building still stood but that was it, the rest was a gutted ruin.

Ulrich looked back and saw Quenril not far behind him. He waved Quenril up to his shoulder.

"Do your people, the clans have siege weapons?" he asked in a whisper, "Something like a trebuchet?"

"A... I..." Quenril struggled.

"Obviously not," Ulrich nodded, "No worries, you answered my question and I'm not blaming you for not knowing about something your clans have not had the need to invent. Come on, I want to know what caused that before we go walking on it to its territory."

Quenril opened his mouth to protest but Ulrich was already slowly climbing up the pile of rubble. With a sigh and a shake of the head he followed. Behind them the King's Special paced after them but if anything their pace slowed down even more, not wanting to go further than the outer most edges of the rubble.

 Ulrich climbed on all fours, carefully placing his feet and hands, keeping low to the rubble as he made his way up the slope. The air here moved with a rhythmic pace and the streamers of mist moved like the waves upon a shore, drifting towards the gutted building and then blowing back again before drifting back towards the ruined black house again. He paused as he saw that the building hadn't just been gutted. Whatever had wrecked the building had continued, clawing back into the cliff the building had been constructed against to create a jagged tunnel mouth that gaped hungrily at him.

Back with the rest of the King's Special Kaelin unslung Haggis, fiddling with the blow stick, thoroughly tempted to use the bagpipes and give Ulrich the fright of his life.

"To use the bagpipes," she murmured, "To not use the bagpipes. To use the bagpipes. To not use the bagpipes."

Ulrich started moving again, wriggling a little higher until he could cautiously, very cautiously lift his head over the breech and peer into the inky darkness of that massive hole.

His mouth went dry as he realized why the mist eddies had such a rhythmic pace - something was snoring in the dark. Something huge, something that's breath rumbled through the air was snoring inside that massive hole. His hair stirred in the breeze and he smelt hot dust and hot metal on the breeze.

"Oh dear," he said slowly and quietly. He rolled over and started wiggling back down the heap of rubble. His foot knocked against something not stone. Ulrich's eyes widened as he saw the plug of metal. It was the distorted, warped remains of an Ash Elf's suit of armor, crushed and crumpled together into a fist like lump the size of Ulrich's torso and scoured clean by an acid bath that had dissolved the bones of whoever had been wearing that metal protection last. Ulrich shuffled sideways and slid further down the heap, waving Quenril back.

Thorian sighed as he waited for them to get back. It was dull around here, it was beastly, beastly deadly dull. Brownish rocks, brownish road, brownish ceiling. He could have sworn that even the air was brown.

"I spy with my little eye something beginning with bee," he stated.

Estella looked about.

"Boots," she stated.

"No," Thorian shook his head.

"Um," she rubbed her chin, "Um. Um. Bags."

"Nope," Thorian started to smile.

"Um," she frowned, "Um. Barracks?"

 "Uh-nah," Thorian smiled wider as he shook his head again.

"Um," Esetlla frowned deeper, "Um." She strained, staring round as Ulrich and Quenril scrambled down the pile of rubble, half in a hurry, half trying to be silent.

"Blocks?" Estella hazarded.

"Guess again!" Thorian was grinning now.

"Um," Estella scratched her head, "Um. Ummmmmmmm..."

"Company!" Kaelin yelled.

"Come-pan-knee?" Thorian said, "Come-pan-knee doesn't start with bee."

"No!" Kaelin snapped, pointing up the wall to their right, "Company!"

"So you finally noticed," Jeremiah leaned on the low wall, cleaning his nails, "I wondered if you ever would."

The right hand wall was not solid all the way to the ceiling. About thirty feet up it shelved back to form a recessed cave and apparently somewhere in its unseen back wall there was another tunnel entrance because someone was stood on the cliff edge, glaring down at them.

The person in question was most definitely an Ash Elf but not from a clan that the King's Special any contact with before. However, their Ash Elf allies obviously knew something about the one standing up there, Sabal and Tasnar drawing their swords with a steely whisper crush injuries forgotten, faces dark with hatred.

"Accursed and condemned! You dare crawl out of your hole!" Sabal spat and backed it up with something in the Ash Elf tongue that sounded utterly foul.

If it was meant to discombobulate the Ash Elf standing on the cliff it didn't work as his lips twisted in a grotesque smile below a nose that had been savagely re-sculpted to resemble the nostrils of a skull.

Kaelin looked at him and then looked at Jeremiah's vigor pack bearer as it stood bowed below its burden. It was strange how something's eyes could be glowing and dull at the same time. It was also strange how the brain could decide to notice these things at precisely the moment that it should be concentrating on something more important.

The Ash Elf grinned and hefted a globe of a pinkish purple gas that swirled and eddied. He leaned back and threw it, a massive over hand throw that he put his whole back into with a grunt.

Ulrich looked up and saw the spinning globe arching towards the pile of rubble. He didn't have a darn clue what it was but he could guess that it wasn't going to be sunshine and rainbows when it hit. He threw himself to his feet and lunged, throwing himself head first down the rubble heap, rolling in midair so he crash landed on his back, sliding in a cascade of smallish stones and armor pellets but the globe smacked home between his hands, cushioned on his chest.

Ulrich saw a star burst as the top of his skull smacked into a rock too large to be moved by the mini avalanche he'd set off but he grinned foolishly as Thorian cheered, rubbing the top of his head with one hand while Quenril helped him sit up, the other hand clutching the orb of glass.

"Eat that, Bat Nose!" Kaelin yelled up at the one who had thrown it. He glared but then grinned and shrugged. Cupping his hands around his mouth he yelled.

"Hey Tikrumpdel! You have visitors! The thieves have come for your hoard again!"

Something in the dark grunted. It snorted. It growled.

Quenril dispensed with trying to be quiet, hauling Ulrich to his feet and throwing them both down the scree slope, holding his sister's favorite on his feet as they turned tail and bolted down the slope, scrambling and stumbling and staggering. Behind them the sounds of huge feet and hands slapping rock echoed out of the gaping, ragged tunnel mouth that had been clawed through the block house. The sound of something huge and soft being dragged across the floor slithered to them.

"Get out!" a massive voice roared, "Get out! Nasty, filthy, pesky little thieves! Get out!"

The glowing, sunset hued eyes and long snout of a massive red dragon jutted out of the tunnels gaping maw as Ulrich and Quenril stumbled to the bottom of the rubble slope.

"You hear me!?!" the dragon roared again, lunging further out of his home, "I said..." He got stuck. He grunted. He wriggled. He heaved.

Part of the cave wall gave way and crushed down, bouncing off his many chins and jowls as he growled and hauled his bulk through the gap.

"Ruddy door!" he grumbled, "Swear the damn thing keeps getting smaller."

 Ulrich and Quenril backed up snappish as the dragons massive paunch slithered down the slop, hissing over the rumble like surf over a shore.

"Just why can't you leave me alone to sleep?" the dragon bellowed, glaring down at them, his dragon wings, looking ridiculously small on his back flapping impotently. There was no way this big boy was ever going to be getting off the ground.

Thorian backed up, nodding to himself. He'd seen a big, old beastie washed up on the shore of the northern mountain chain when he was wandering up in that area. The locals had called it a blahval and finding it had caused a week long feast. It had looked like every long house in his clans village all piled up together with maybe a few extra just for good measure. This huge dragon looked like to be the same size as that only his was scaly and red, well mostly red.

Peter darted forward to catch Ulrich as he stumbled and nearly feel backwards as another avalanche rattled down the scree slope as a bow was to the dragon's massive girth, Peter's head catching in the small of Ulrich's back, propping him up as the stones went rattling passed his feet.

"Forgive us, oh mighty and wonderful Lord of the Mountain halls," Ulrich bowed to dragon as it took one lumbering step forward, "It was not our intent to disturb your most valuable and necessary sleep. We had no intention of stealing from you hoard, though undoubtedly it is the grandest and most impressive in the land. We merely wished to look upon your great majesty and know that our lives had been blessed by the wonder of your presence."

The dragon narrowed his piggy little eyes, snorting.

Kaelin pocked Haggis' blow stick into her mouth and blew slowly, trying to make the droning take a quieter volume than Haggis usually managed, to moderate the blast of his expression so that the dragon wouldn't notice what she was doing so much. The tune she managed was more soothing and relaxing than she usually employed, speaking of quiet glens and rippling brooks under the sunlight shining down on a warm afternoon.

The dragon turned his head to glare out of them out of one eye.

"Alright," he grunted, scratching behind a horn with a wing claw, "Say I believe you, runtlet. If you aren't the ones who were after my hoard, then who was?"

"I'm not sure anyone was," Ulrich bowed again, "We had only just approached your doorstep when a member of the Ash Elf community, not these here, these are our friends and allies, this one was stood up there on the cliff edge and shouted those words, meaning to get us in trouble." He pointed at the cliff edge. The massive rolly polly dragon turned his head to scan the cliff edge.

"The blighter threw this at us to try and wake you," Ulrich held up the globe thing in both hands. The dragon stretched forth his neck to sniff at the thing. Ulrich fought down the urge to scream in terror as that massive mouth approached. It looked like he could fit not only his head but his entire torso up one of those nostrils and he was fairly sure that he could see flickering of the well banked fire in the beast's throat as the tongue, as broad as a slab of marble flicked out to taste its way across the globes surface.

"There is the scent of Ash Elf on there," the dragon smacked his lips, "But what says that it wasn't one of these friends of yours?"

Kaelin let the blow stick fall from her mouth. This thing was too big, its mind to vast for her skills to control, she was out matched, out skilled and out numbered.  Her feet started carrying her backwards. She tried to catch the eyes of the rest of the King's Special. Ulrich, the dumb lump, was still stood there chin wagging at the huge thing as if he could talk this down and while he stood there his Ash Elf buddies and his pets wouldn't run away. He never thought about the fact that he was leading other people into danger these days. Thorian didn't seem to realize that one breath from this thing could erase him of the map and she supposed that Estella was trusting Valodrael to keep her safe. Jeremiah was the furthest back and was grinning that not nice grin. It was easy to see that he was looking forward to the rest of the King's Special becoming just a greasy smear on this thing's chops. That was it Kaelin was out of here. She turned on her heels and left, dog trotting back down the path. She'd try following the water upstream and see if she could get out of this place by herself.

"Great one!" Quenril went down on one knee before the dragon, "Tikrumpdel the Mighty! King of the Skies! We of the Underworld have always respected your legend though we did not know for sure where your territory was. If we had any knowledge that you were here, we would have found another way to the surface. The one that woke you was of the Bat Clan and not of our kinship."

The dragon, Tikrumpdel, ground his massive belly against the ground, scratching an itch as he thought.

"The Bat Clan were banished from the Underworld some years ago for creating something they shouldn't have done," Ulrich explained, "They have been causing all sorts of problems ever since, trying to extract their revenge on the Clans that drove them out for their terrible lack of judgement. Waking you to try and use you as their unpaid assassin to destroy us has just been the newest attempt to destabilize the Underworld and the Overworld in one fell swoop."

Tikrumpdel scratched an itch on his chest, the rolls of his blubber rippling with the tug and pull of it, then sniffed.

"Why you?" he asked, "Why would they want to destroy you?"

"Because we have been challenging their destruction of the Ash Elf clans," Ulrich explained, "We have been teaching the survivors that they don't have to look down on all others to be Ash Elves. That there is a different way of being than hate. That they could be strong enough to beat the Bat Clan and their unnatural creations if they are willing to leave hate at the way side and look at others as if we might have value. The Bat Clan just want to destroy and if that means that they face extinction then they call it a worthy price to pay to see their enemies dead."

Ulrich wouldn't have minded admitting that he was sweating under his collar, facing down something this old, this large. Tikrumpdel looked like he had laid waste to entire countries and then eaten them. Or eaten them and then laid waste to the gristly bits. Or just laid on entire countries. He was also aware that he was trying to manipulate a dragon, the same way Jeremiah was often trying to manipulate the King's Special. That one was the most horrifying. The fact that he was acting like Jeremiah. He had an awful, bubbling feeling in his gut that Jeremiah's god might try to claim him.

He closed his eyes as Tikrumpdel leaned forward to have enough sniff. He had never much believed in the gods, their holy books so full of contradictions and counter arguments that it had appeared to him that trying to believe every word out of a holy book was a sure fire way to drive yourself insane but right now he really did want to know to whom to pray. He fought the urge to whimper as a thread of purple unlight crossed inside his eyelids.

He made a pledge to himself there and then that if he survived this then he was going to start asking the Ash Elves about their pantheon and whether or not they had any rebel gods or goddesses because among the Ash Elves a rebel god would be one who cared about both their people and other people, a god that encouraged compassion and empathy. Right now he really needed the protection of a god like that to fight for his soul.

Thorian sniffed and stepped up beside Ulrich. He wasn't sure whether this dragon was thinking of eating Ulrich or not but Ulrich was Thorian's friend so if this dragon was thinking of eating Ulrich Thorian would have some bad words to say to it.

Jeremiah tugged his beard as he watching Ulrich's efforts to talk the dragon down from just devouring them on the spot. Jeremiah was fairly sure that he recognized the name Tikrumpdel from his studies back that the monastery and if the beast before them was the same creature then Ulrich might actually have a chance of managing it. Granted this beast was turning black with age and was gross with year of gluttony and laziness but the fact that he had spoken and asked questions, rather than just flaming them all to death, meant that it could well be that this was the Tikrumpdel spoken of in the Draconnic Encyclopedia. He had at one time been known as the King of the Northern Skies and had many mutually beneficial contracts with the smaller races. Some even considered him the 'father' of the hybrid species that were of more friendly disposition to the smaller races. He had lost his crown to a consortium of younger, more aggressive dragons but if this was Tikrumpdel then the legends of him still drawing breath were true. Granted the hope that he was one day come storming back to power seemed to be... some what... ill founded.

Still this could be an interesting development. Jeremiah decided to stay and watch Ulrich's efforts.