The Continuing Adventures Of The Iron Orphan

Facing Reality

2011-02-07T10:22:00.002-06:00

I recently bowed out as DM from a D&D game I've been running on and off for about 3 years. I also have cut out just about everything in my life that isn't work or family.

This isn't because I don't want to write, or that I don't enjoy posting my stories, it's because I am now a partner in a small law firm, and we are swimming upstream in an effort to pay our bills.

I've tried to write, and it comes out worse than flat. I'm perpetually exhausted creatively, and I have to face reality.

Until my firm really takes off down the runway, I need to focus everything I can on it in order to provide for my wife, my two daughters, and my son.

So...I'll attempt to return on or before 4/1, but no promises.

Thank you for reading and for hanging in there.

We Interrupt This Broadcast...

2011-01-04T12:27:00.002-06:00

WOW. major geek alert. How many of you saw this story about the cave system in Viet Nam and didn't think there were drow elves there or something?

We now return to your regularly scheduled geekiness. Story updates later in the week.

Chapter 10 – Part 18

2010-12-30T10:00:00.000-06:00

On the 19th of Zarantyr, 994 YK, they returned to Blood Crescent. The way back was quicker than the way there, especially with so many riderless mounts. The treasure they bore was minimal, not much had been locked away in the old temple, but they’d burned the bodies of their comrades so as to prevent any gain to the Wastes’ carrion-eaters.

They’d even burned Nebly’s body, accounting that the flayer had forced the gnome to betray everyone, and it hadn’t been the little fellow’s own choice.

Watching the pyre, Orphan had deeply regretted his juvenile jealousy.

Of course by any standard he was a juvenile.

By the 21st of Zarantyr they were on a ship bound for Yrlag.

Chapter 10 – Part 17

2010-12-29T08:40:00.000-06:00

The flayer twitched and writhed wildly, trying to escape Orphan’s grip. It could not, the forged had it perfectly pinned. It tried to use its powers to teleport away. It could not, the pain from the pressure on its neck and spine from the monk’s wrestler’s grip was too much.

So the flayer mentally called K’gah to its side.

Which Orphan had been counting on.

Timing the turn perfectly, the warforged pivoted and threw the flayer towards the charging gnoll captain. The great blade spitted the flayer, and the alien thing squawked and spit forth purplish-blue blood from its tentacled maw. K’gah gasped at what he’d done, then fell to his knees, grasping his head in pain as the flayer shrieked anger directly into the gnoll’s brain.

And since the locked gauntlet kept K‘gah from dropping his blade, the immediate effect of K’gah dropping to his knees was to peel the flayer open like a pig at market.

Orphan sidestepped the shaking sword point and grabbed the mortally wounded flayer. He threw the thing from Xoriat at the wights. Weakened, the flayer fell to them quickly, falling to the ground as it wasted away from the wights’ energy drain.

The wights stood up over the flayer’s corpse, eyes glittering with malice.

Of course since their touch couldn’t hurt the warforged, it only took him about forty seconds to pound them into motionless paste. The torn corpse of the flayer didn’t even last more than three seconds after it rose.

Orphan waited, listening for anything else coming out of the tunnel. Nothing. The only sound was Delegado’s soft breathing, and the grunts of K’gah as he sat up, armor clinking.

“You’ve got your mind back?” Orphan asked, eyeing the gnoll captain carefully.

K’gah grimaced and nodded. “I must apologize,” he began. “It was – there was a fog in my head, and you were the enemy. I was…” He trailed off.

“No apology necessary,” Orphan said. He moved forward and helped K’gah stand up.

“My men,” K’gah said.

“All dead,” Orphan told him. K’gah’s face crumpled in real pain, and then the gnoll captain strode forward to kick the flayer’s corpse.

Orphan used the opportunity to go to his half-orc friend and take Delegado’s waterskin. Splashing water woke Delegado up, and his any tears that might have come when he learned of the deaths within his House.

Chapter 10 – Part 16

2010-12-28T21:48:00.000-06:00

Death and carnage awaited his eyes.

For a moment, Orphan’s mind was seized by terror as he thought Delegado was dead as well, but his friend was still breathing.

The half-orc bounty hunter was the only one in the chamber who was.

Well technically the flayer breathed, but Orphan would remedy that. The flayer hadn’t heard the warforged monk, concentrating intently on controlling the few remaining thralls in the tunnel – who apparently were being finished off by something that had been protected by bursts of fire and lightning.

All dead. Everyone who came with them. Save for Delegado.

And K’gah, the gnoll would be coming around the corner with his huge sword in moments.

Perfect.

Orphan dashed forward, leapt, and slammed both feet into the flayer’s back. The thing shrieked in pain, even its resistance to wounds couldn’t wholly block out a double blunt trauma to its spine.

Orphan fell atop the thing, and snaked his arms behind its inhuman neck. The flayer wriggled and tried to bring its tentacles to bear, but Orphan was behind it. “Not so tough when someone has the drop on you, eh?” Orphan crowed.

Shuffling footsteps made Orphan glance to the tunnel. One of the gnolls was shambling forward. Its flesh was white and desiccated, and it was accompanied by an undead thing that had eaten its life-force and changed it.

Wight, the headband noted mechanically. Damage resistant to non-magical attacks. Drains life force with a touch. Creates spawn. Warforged likely are immune.

But a sleeping Delegado wasn’t.

Chapter 10 - Part 15

2010-12-15T21:03:00.002-06:00

Orphan got to the top, and began taunting K'gah some more. He'd surmised that the flayer hadn't exactly turned the gnoll into a drooling puppet, there was something of the gnoll captain's real thoughts still active.

And no gnoll became a leader of its kind by letting challenges go unheeded.

"Afraid of heights!" the warforged barked in orc. "Afraid to climb!"

K'gah snarled and came up, slowly, stumbling in his heavy armor. "I will end you!" the gnoll captain growled.

Orphan waited until K'gah was halfway up, then tumbled past the startled gnoll with a handspring. K'gah spat an oath and turned to follow, but Orphan was already in the temple before the gnoll even managed to turn around.

Chapter 10 - Part 14

2010-12-13T23:40:00.000-06:00

Orphan ducked, dodged, and generally quit attacking. His sole focus was on parrying the lethal blows of the gnoll captain. Not for the first time he wished deeply for the defending kama that he'd lost to the rakshasa under the Wastes.

He kept darting backwards, trying to find a way to bolt around K'gah, but the gnoll captain was too canny.

Orphan then turned and fled, following the tunnel down, then left and up. K'gah couldn't move as fast as him, and from the air patterns he'd felt, the monk was sure that the tunnel would lead him back and around to the main cavern they'd first entered. The warforged figured he had to take the flayer out before K'gah would come to his senses.

Of course if the flayer was giving mental commands to K'gah, the gnoll might have doubled back as well to lay an -

Orphan ducked as he popped out of the tunnel, rolling forward in a ball, and K'gah's sword swished through the air where the warforged's head had been.

"Ambush," Orphan muttered, jumping to his feet and bolting to the left. K'gah was again between the monk and the temple chamber. Rather than go to the right, back outside, or behind him to the tunnels, to the left was a rock outcropping, a fairly steep incline up, maybe 8 or 9 feet.

He had to get K'gah to follow, to move away from the doorway to the temple.

Chapter 10 - Part 13

2010-12-13T22:02:00.000-06:00

Preshma hadn't always been an adept. He'd been a warrior first, and then later felt the calling to bring the struggle for life that Balinor exemplified to those who needed to hear - whether they knew they needed to hear or not.

House Tharashk had paid him handsomely for his services, and Preshma hadn't complained that those services took him so far from the Marches. The druids had a lock on the faithful there in any event, making it hard for a battle adept to make a living.

Now he'd come to some stone room underground, with a bunch of filthy gnolls and one of the little forest rats. Preshma didn't care for any who were not orcs (he felt that humans were a type of orc), although he had to admit that Delegado's golem friend was a decent sort.

When the mental pain blasted him to the floor, he'd realized what was happening. It took maybe a minute and a-half for him to process again, and he saw dead bodies, heard fighting, as the thing from Xoriat walked about unopposed, and glassy-eyed orcs and gnolls stood up to be its puppets.

Preshma turned his head just so slightly, and saw Delegado's eyes open, then close as the alien thing forced the half-orc unconscious again.

Preshma waited, thinking nothing that could get him noticed. He did see that the others in the party that had been adepts or held religious symbols of any kind were already dead. One was missing the back of his head, and the others had been sent down the tunnel that was making exploding sounds.

I'm alive because I fell forward onto my symbol, and because my armor makes me appear to be a simple warrior, Preshma realized.

Preshma hesitated. He didn't have too many spells, truth be told he wasn't a very powerful adept. But he knew one that might help Delagado.

Preshma rolled over and poured vigor and life into the half-orc. He saw Delegado's eyes twitch behind their eyelids.

The adept felt a surge of joy, and he rose to his feet with a whooping cry. Together he and Delegado would take on the thing from Xoriat, and be sung as victorious heroes, treated with wine, women and song!

The two gnoll thralls, utter puppets of the mind-flayer, cut the adept to pieces with three powerful blows, before he'd finished rising to his feet.

Chapter 10 - Part 12

2010-12-13T12:59:00.000-06:00

Orphan flung himself backwards before K'gah could saw the blade to the side, and he fell back towards the mouth of a tunnel he had previously explored before they'd opened the secret door to the worship area. The monk stumbled, and K'gah darted forward, pressing his advantage.

Orphan wanted to get around K'gah to get into the worship area and fight the flayer, but could not. The warforged fell backwards, somersaulting down the tunnel while he used his monk powers to close the worst of the wounds to his frame.

"Slow and foolish, K'gah is!" Orphan shouted in orc. "His prey always escapes!"

The taunt worked, K'gah snarled and pursued Orphan down the tunnel.

And assuming the warforged could find some place where it was possible to get around the gnoll captain, Orphan might even survive. Otherwise, they were all dead.

Chapter 10 - Part 11

2010-12-13T12:30:00.000-06:00

Orphan dodged, then snaked in. He couldn't disarm the gnoll, not when its sword was so well affixed, but he could grapple him, maybe even pin the gnoll down long enough for Orphan to jump up and get around him.

K'gah didn't resist when Orphan put a wrestling hold on the gnoll. A second later Orphan found out why.

The gnoll spoke a command word in its own harsh language, and spike suddenly grew out of its plate mail, piercing Orphan.

The warforged let go and fell back, unable to stop himself from barking out an exclamation of pain.

K'gah chuckled, the gnoll in him delighted at his opponent's agony. Then the gnoll captain drove his great blade forwad and pierced Orphan like a spitted hog.

Chapter 10 - Part 10

2010-12-13T11:21:00.000-06:00

Get up, Delegado told himself.

But his body didn't listen.

He watched the mind-flayer move about, his brain not processing what he was seeing. It was like he was drunk - very drunk - nothing made sense.

He could not make his body move. The floor was cold.

K'gah was in the doorway, trying to kill Orphan, or at least trying to keep him from coming into this temple.

"Orphan," whispered the half-orc. It was a tremendous effort just to make his lips move. The sound was almost a nothing.

MOVE! Delegado insisted to himself mentally.

His leg twitched, but that was it.

The mind-flayer bent down and wrapped its tentacles around Nebly's head. The gnome's eyes shuddered as he died, but he did not scream.

It's killing its spy, Delegado realized. Or maybe not a spy, Nebly seemed to be a dupe.

That thought rustled away as the mind-flayer turned around, eying the prone figures. Delegado knew that he had best not draw attention to himself.

The mind-flayer's tentacles were dripping with gnome brain juice, it was disgusting.

There was a flash of heat, then a buzz of electricity. Magical traps. Mines, Delegado remembered. A Cyran army officer had once referred to magical land mines. They made the same noise when discharged. The Karrns had made a bunch of cheap zombies set the mines off so that their infantry proper could move in.

The men whose lives had been entrusted to Delegado's command were dying. Acting as the mind-flayer's zombies, clearing mines so that the Xoriat-cursed thing could get to - what?

Delegado finally got an arm to move, and began to push himself up.

No, came an oily, alien thought. Sleep.

Delegado lost consciousness.

Chapter 10 - Part 9

2010-12-13T10:51:00.002-06:00

Orphan quickly realized a few things.

First, it was highly unlikely that he could defeat K'gah through conventional means. The gnoll captain was regarded by everyone in Blood Crescent as one of the best swordsman anyone had ever seen. Being a good warrior physically didn't mean one was a good warrior mentally, obviously. But Orphan would end up just as dead from K'gah's blade whether the gnoll knew what he was doing or not.

Second, the alien thing (flayer? - the headband wasn't that familiar) knew what it was doing, and knew its prey. Orphan now noticed rings on its hands and a rod in its belt, likely one or more had enabled the flayer to stay unseen while it stalked the party of orcs and gnolls. The flayer must have manipulated everyone into coming here.

Third, Orphan seemed to be the only one who was able to resist the flayer's mental abilities. While he dodged K'gah's blade, and attempted to get in a few kicks of his own, he could see the alien thing causing the orcs and gnolls to stand up and begin exploring the worship chamber.

K'gah didn't let Orphan into the chamber of course. And the chains on his wrist kept Orphan's sai from stealing the blade away.

Long seconds went by while K'gah successfully guarded the door, and the flayer began to send the mind-enslaved gnolls and orcs marching to the opposite side of the chamber, to the tunnel that lay to the right of the mural.

The traps were still enabled, and with bright flashes the helpless gnolls and orcs began to discharge them.

They didn't even scream, but their bodies did begin to make it safe for the flayer.

Which, Orphan realized, had been the point of the entire thing.

Chapter 10 – Part 8

2010-12-06T18:12:00.000-06:00

Like most battles, the first few seconds set the tone for everything.

Grullik reacted first. The half-orc’s eyes bulged with the realization that something had been following them, unknown and unseen. He whirled into the doorway, both knives thrusting outwards after the psychic blast ended.

Neither knife found its mark. The thing on the other side of the doorway, tall and thin, with squid-like tentacles around its mouth, raised a hand, the flesh an alien, insane pigment, and a conjured disk of force blunted both weapons away. The thing leaned forward, its eyes promising an end to any that opposed it.

And the tentacles lashed into Grullik’s skull. The mustachioed half-orc barely had time to let out a gurgling scream before he fell backward.

Grullik’s skull was collapsed like an empty waterskin. His brain sucked out and gone.

The gnolls and orcs were staggered, stumbling like drunken sailors on a heaving deck. The psychic cone of energy had not gotten near Orphan, but he saw its effects. Even Delegado succumbed, his eyes glazed.

Orphan charged at the alien tentacle-headed thing, and lashed a kick that pushed through the conjured force screen, but barely bruised the creature. The warforged expected to at least crack a rib, but the thing’s hard flesh somehow resisted the blow.

The thing’s return attack was sudden pressure on Orphan’s mind. A black sea of water filled him perception, overwhelming his mind.

For a moment.

The mental training of the Balanced Palm was a singular hot flame that burned the black sea away, and freed Orphan’s mind from its grip. The monk spun and launched a flurry of fists and feet at the thing. His blows hit, if not as hard as they should, and the abomination backed up quickly into the entry chamber, away from the hidden temple.

Orphan felt something pass through the air, from the creature and then back into the room of stunned creatures. He advanced on the creature, swinging a high kick at its head.

Which did not connect. There was a ripple and the creature vanished. An inrushing crack of air told Orphan that it really had vanished, not just turned invisible.

Orphan turned, trying to listen for the creature. There was nothing.

The warforged spun and ran back into the temple area to help the fallen. Everyone was still staggered, except for K’gah.

K’gah was advancing on Orphan, with his sword drawn.

And his eyes were wrong.

Chapter 10 – Part 7

2010-12-05T11:05:00.002-06:00

The gnolls and orcs came in behind Orphan as soon as the warforged gestured to them. Orphan was no dwarven trapfinder, but he was reasonably certain that worshippers didn’t trap their temple.

The came in, the orcs moving about in a loose knot, the gnolls forming a perfect arrow-shaped formation. Some carried hand-held weapons, spears and swords, some held bows or crossbows at the ready. All were primed for violence.

Nebly came next. And not willingly. The gnome let out a high-pitched shriek as Delegado suddenly grabbed him and hurled him through the doorway. The gnome hit the ground and lost a part of a tooth. The gnoll chief K’gah started with shock, then waved at his men. The gnolls quickly formed a circle around the gnome, who drew a small knife as he stood. Delegado strode through the doorway, followed by Grullik. The mustachioed half-orc twirled a long knife in each hand as he took a guard position next to the stone doorway.

Delegado stepped up to the circle of gnolls, who parted to make way for him. He stared at Nebly.

The gnome looked back over a forming bruise. “Do you have a reason for treating a loyal adviser so?” snapped the gnome.

“Stow it,” Delegado said. He spoke in the orc tongue. “This is too convenient for even a fool to swallow, and I am no fool. You knew of this place before we got here.”

“No!” protested the gnome.

Delegado looked at Orphan. “He’s lying,” the warforged said.

“Dancing Orphan hears untruths,” snapped one of the orcs. He was holding a heavy crossbow and he’d seen Orphan’s ability to read people.

“Delegado has the speaking now,” Grullik snarled. The orc with the heavy crossbow looked ashamed. Gnolls were showing better self-discipline than orcs were, and that was not a matter for Tharashk to feel pride about.

“The warforged is jealous of me,” Nebly said slyly. The gnome spit blood. “It makes up lies.”

“I am jealous of you,” Orphan said. “And it is foolish. But you did know of this place.”

“Put the knife away before we make you eat it,” K’gah growled. Delegado seemed unconcerned about what Nebly could do with the knife, but the gnoll captain’s contract had prices in it reflecting Delegado’s healthy return.

“I have done no wrong,” Nebly insisted. But he put the knife away. “I have gathered much knowledge in my life and my studies, and this is a place I have read well of.”

“He’s still lying,” Orphan said.

“Even the fiends have forgotten this place,” Delegado said. “What did you read and where was it written?”

Nebly swallowed and looked at the gnolls. “I – I don’t know. I just had the idea one day, and then as we traveled, I – it just occurred to me.”

The orcs tittered, as did those gnolls who spoke enough orc to follow what was being said. Delegado’s scowl deepened.

Orphan did not join the levity. “Delegado, he’s telling the truth now,” the warforged said. Delegado’s eyes snapped to Orphan. “He doesn’t know how he knew, the knowledge just came to his mind.”

No one moved for a moment.

Then the air rippled on the other side of the doorway as an invisibility field dropped. A cone of psychic force, so strong it made the air scream, bowled the gnolls and orcs over like straw before a windstorm.

Chapter 10 – Part 6

2010-11-23T16:44:00.000-06:00

Orphan came into the chamber first. It would have made more sense for one of the darkvision-equipped gnolls or orcs to take point position, but Delegado had asked him to enter, so he did.

The warforged felt nervous because the (relatively) loud bustle of the armed and armored group made too much background noise for him to be as aware of his surroundings as he would have preferred. He threw in a sunrod before he quickly somersaulted in.

The chamber was huge.

The warforged spun in place quickly, and took in the place. He was on a ledge that ran along three sides of what was a huge pentagon. Five stone pillars, built elsewhere and set in place it seemed, not natural rock, held up the vaulted ceiling. The place was maybe 40 feet across and twenty or so feet high. There were stone bumps on the floor, arranged around a central dais with an altar. He was near one of the points, and the wall opposite him had a mural made from small tiles. Most of the tiles were long gone, but it seemed that there had once been a depiction of a huge, bloated thing with large wings, horns, and a rod of some kind.

A worship place, Orphan realized. In a moment his headband filled in the details. A death cult. They worshiped undead here, but this is not the Blood of Vol. A fiend that styled itself Lord of Undead, apart from other fiends. His headband’s information ended there.

Whatever this place was, it was first used millennia ago.

But there was maintenance work. The warforged was a warforged, not a dwarf or one of the snake-headed stone masons of Droaam, but he could tell that this place had been maintained and used sometime more than a decade ago but less than a century.

Or maybe that was off, time acted oddly in the Wastes.

But someone had swept. Not a speck of dust lay on the floor. Someone had lovingly shined the altar.

Someone who may occupy the space to the right of the mural, where a tunnal entrance was poorly hidden.

Chapter 10 – Part 5

2010-11-15T19:49:00.001-06:00

Delegado eyed the pivot as Nebly got the secret door open with a flourish. The others there either gaped in amazement (mostly the idiot gnolls), tried to keep their admiration hidden and failed (Grullik), or seethed in jealousy (Orphan). I’m probably the only one here who noticed the last one, Delegado thought.

When two huntsmen went into the wild for an extended period, and came back to a village where one was known and the other not…well, the unknown one of the pair usually resented it.

If the half-orc hadn’t been very quietly laying a trap for a gnome whose skills were just too perfectly convenient, he would have done something about it.

Well, maybe not. Sometimes orcs took displays of emotion as weakness. There was a good chance they hadn’t noticed Orphan’s discomfiture, and Delegado wasn’t going to risk Orphan’s standing by drawing their attention to the insecurity of a night-bland.

Delegado’s set his teeth against a snarl. He’d been watching the pivot deliberately so he had seen what he was looking for. It hadn’t turned as something that hadn’t been opened in millennia. It was too smooth.

Like something that had been opened maybe a week or two ago, after Orphan had killed the hag.

Chapter 10 – Part 4

2010-10-26T12:52:00.000-05:00

Orphan heard Grullik’s soft whisper, as the mustachioed half-orc called Delegado. Slipping easily past the gnolls and others, who stood nervously in a defensive box within the cavern, looking around at the shadows. Looking at everything except the two halves of the dead gnoll who had triggered the scything blade that had popped right out of the wall.

Orphan had dodged another such blade while trying to advance to the mouth of a tunnel that he’d hoped would carry echoes of any other creatures.

The passages underground were half-natural and half-carved, although one did not have to be a dwarf to see that the stonework was centuries old, if not millennia. Nonetheless the dust that was there was disturbed. This place had travelers if infrequent ones. Orphan had been trying to find evidence of such travelers when the scything blade had swung down.

The warforged had been faster than the gnoll. But it had come very close.

“No insects come for the blood,” hissed one of the orcs, gesturing to the bisected gnoll. “Evil this place is. Unnatural.”

“Quiet,” K’gah snapped. He said it in orc, as his warriors were not the ones making noise. The orcs grimaced at a gnoll telling them what to do, but they listened.

Orphan listened too. To Grullik and Delegado. Only he could hear them. The two were close by a wall that was clearly made of brick, if a faded, covered with dirt brick. “Right there,” Grullik was saying.

“Humanoid footprint,” grunted Delegado. “Bipedal, maybe 6 feet in height, too hard to tell the type. Doesn’t seem to be wearing footwear.”

“They don’t wear boots,” Grullik hissed. “I have taken Gatekeeper oaths, you know that, right? This is from an Xoriat being. See the way the heals indent forward, rather than backward? And they aren’t the squished gremlin things.”

“Xoriat? Here?” Delegado asked. “They don’t exactly get along with the fiends.”

Nebly suddenly slipped through the box of warriors to stand next to the two half-orc trackers. “There’s a secret door here,” the gnome said, excited. “But see the probing talon marks? The thing that you say bears aberration traits took a while trying to get in!” Nedly’s voice was pitched low, but louder than either half-orc.

And apparently he could hear almost as well as Orphan.

And the little jerk once again was impressing Delegado with an obscure bit of knowledge.

Delegado’s face went hard. No one sane wanted to deal with the aberrations. No one dealt with them very long and stayed sane.

The half-orc swung his head towards Orphan. “I need you, he whispered.

The warforged almost grinned openly.

Chapter 10 – Part 3

2010-10-25T22:37:00.001-05:00

They lost three warriors over the next hundred or so miles. A sandhole emerged from nothing as an air pocket burst, seizing a screaming gnoll into an instant grave. They all stopped for an hour and dug, but could not find the body. Two orcs died when they were doing a flank sweep and woke up a sleeping demonic snake-thing. Its venom turned flesh black and dead instantly, and if Orphan hadn’t distracted it, they would not have been able to kill the thing. While its fangs scored his body twice, its poison meant nothing to him.

They were now trackers, warriors, two adepts, a monk, and a gnome.

Nebly proved himself useful by entertaining the troops and consulting on old stones with odd designs. With his odd bits of knowledge, Orphan’s headband, and Delegado’s tracking, they found a small ravine in the Wastes, barely big enough for three horses, but large enough to conceal a brass door so weathered it seemed like part of the landscape almost.

Delegado was pleased with Nebly, given how the gnome’s tips and bits of trivia helped find the place.

Orphan found himself feeling jealous.

They forced the door open by brute force, and with a sunrod for the monk, headed into the darkness.

Chapter 10 – Part Two

2010-10-25T20:29:00.000-05:00

When they’d first headed out, taking advantage of the power vacuum created by the hag’s demise, they’d encountered nothing. Only on the second day, as the group picked up the pace, had things gotten interesting. A series of encounters with unnatural flora had slowed them as they avoided acidic sand and scattered rock fragments sharp enough to carve anyone’s feet, horse, orc, gnoll, or warforged, to ribbons.

Delegado kept any of them from getting hurt, of course, his senses were too finely attuned to the outdoors to allow it. But the sight of it raised everyone’s nerves. Everyone except Orphan. He felt good watching it. The more the half-orc absorbed himself in work, the less he would think about his losses. His father. Ois.

Especially Ois.

They had encamped at the end of the second day, and Delegado and the gnoll captain, K’gah was his name, were poring over terrain maps with the mustachioed Grullik. The orcs and gnolls made tents quickly and unloaded prepared firewood and food just as quickly. In the Wastes, if you were not disciplined, you were dead.

There was little for the warforged to do, really. If he tried to set up the camp he’d just be in the way. And as night fell he became almost a liability. The orcs and gnolls could see in the dark, and they only had the light of the fire for warmth. This gave Orphan little to see by. And the noise they made overwhelmed any ability of his to listen for intruders.

Orphan found himself with Nebly as company, and it didn’t take more than a few seconds of small talk before the gnome began peppering the Orphan with questions. Orphan would later learn it was called in ‘interview.’ It felt like a swarm of hyperactive bees made out of words.

“So Iron Dancer, or do I call you Iron?” Nebly began. “I was wondering – ”

“The orcs call me Dancing Orphan, I call myself Iron Orphan,” the warforged interjected politely.

“Right, you call yourself, no one gave you that name,” the gnome said, half to himself, as he pulled out a quill and parchment. The little humanoid frowned and then shook the ink bottle which had sludgy contents due to the cold. “So how did you get your independence? How do you feel about having an orc name? Did the orcs name you?”

“I named myself.”

“And did your maker let you name yourself or did you run away?” the little man continued. The quill flickered, as it conjured up ink for itself. “Did you leave your armor plating behind? Can other warforged take their composite plating off?”

Something made Orphan wary. This was more than the usual gnome curiosity. Nebly was trying too hard.

“Maybe I got the name when I was forged in the Mror Holds,” Orphan said. It would have been a bad lie, but he wasn’t trying to lie. He deliberately made himself sound sarcastic.

Oddly, after being around Delegado for so long, sarcasm was easy to mimic.

“No, you’re from –” Nebly caught himself. “Ah, somewhere west of there I think.”

“Nebly, go away,” Orphan said.

“Oh but Orphan!” Nebly protested. “I’m just doing my job, chronicling –”

Quick as a snake, Orphan’s hand darted out and seized the pen, which he then snapped between heavy fingers.

Nebly stared at Orphan, but not with shock or anger.

With a smirk that belonged on a chess player who is convinced that while this gambit failed, the next one will not.

Chapter 10 - Part 1

2010-10-11T16:25:00.000-05:00

A COLD MEMORY

Around midnight, shortly before or shortly after, either the 15th or the 16th of Zarantyr, 994 YK, buried under a cave system in the southern part of the Demon Wastes, some fifty miles northwest of Blood Crescent.

Orphan stayed crouched behind the rock outcropping, eyeing the gnoll captain as he clanked around the cavern, trying to find a way up to the monk.

The warforged quietly flexed his limbs, testing their mobility. The attempt at wrestling with the gnoll had been a mistake. A harshly spoken word in an unfamiliar language had caused long, thorny bits of metal to seize upwards out of the armor. Had Orphan been a flesh creature, his blood probably would not have stopped pooling. Similarly an attempt to disarm the gnoll captain had nto worked, as the creatures halberd locked into its armor's wristguards.

"K'gah!" Orphan called out. "You have your own mind!" The gnoll snarled something in return. "Think for yourself, that thing got into your head!"

A ripple of something flitted past Iron Orphan’s mind, coming from the other cavern, the one where Delagado’s unmoving form lay. It had the slippery, wrong feeling that the thing from Xoriat had tried to use on Orphan’s mind earlier.

Orphan had not fallen to the stunning blast, but Captain K'gah had gone from being an ally to an enemy within seconds, and the surprised warforged had barely avoided being carved in two.

The gnoll was a dangerous warrior, the most dangerous fighter that could be hired for gold in all of Droaam.

And full plate armor or not, he was beginning to climb the incline.

I Shall Return

2010-09-03T14:39:00.001-05:00

Watch this space, new entries begin on 10/11/10.

Chapter 9 – Part 20

2010-02-02T16:36:00.000-06:00

The airship broke cloud cover. Instruments were checked, and barrel banks began to be unclipped. The gnome began adding barked commands to hand gestures, and the pre-sighted locations were mapped precisely along with wind speed and direction.

Down below on the ground, a Young Red peered up at the sky. What is that?

What’s separating from it?

Chapter 9 – Part 19

2010-02-02T13:35:00.000-06:00

“You didn’t use your mark to detect the poison?” the half-elven woman asked. She kept an eye out of the door crack while her conjured invisible servants carefully removed all forensic evidence that the prestidigitation spells had missed.

“I’d already used it up today,” Parnain told her. He could tell that she believed him. She was a very useful wizard, but her job was cleanup, not sifting lie from truth.

“You could show a little emotion,” she said, directing a pile of ash into a marked bag. The ash was all that was left of a red-haired half-elf, and it would be given a special burial rather than tossed in the general trash along with the other ash from the things that she had carefully incinerated. “He worshipped you, you know.”

“Yes, and that got in the way,” Parnain said coldly. He was expected to be cold, so it would serve his story.

Of course he really didn’t care anymore, so he wasn’t lying.

She shook her head, clearly disgusted. He sensed no fear in her, of course. It was a common belief in his House that he wouldn’t harm one of his own. “You need anything else from me?”

“River crossings,” he said. “East.”

“A changeling got away?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “You want Anita’s Ford.”

“I thought that was summer only?” he asked her.

“The locals call it Phantom’s Crossing,” she said. “Maybe three alive know the secret of the crossing. Four if you count Oalian.”

“I’m guessing that the tree isn’t available,” Parnain stated. The unseen servants finished their work. Nothing remained in the room but the faint smell of something burnt.

“And two of the three are nowhere near here,” she said. “An old orc-blood watching a Gatekeeper seal, and a reclusive shifter prophet.”

Parnain pursed his expressionless lips and considered what he knew of people’s darker natures. “So…what’s the arms smuggler’s name?”

“Don’t hurt him permanently,” she laughed. “He buys from disaffected junior Aundair officers that have been passed over for promotion, and –”

“Name and location,” he interjected, cutting her off.

Chapter 9 – Part 18

2009-12-24T18:33:00.000-06:00

The dwarf turned in his pallet, then turned again.

His tent was protected somewhat from the cold and wet by an infusion, and his blankets were warmed by the same, but his old bones were aching nonetheless. Aching from memory if not from the temperature.

He hated the almost-dreams. The thoughts that intruded and swirled about when he was nearly asleep. That kept him from falling into real sleep, but instead rolled him about in a perpetual restlessness.

He kept seeing his brother’s faces. Davv, the littlest one, with a crossbow bolt’s head poking out of one eye. The killer was from another clan, and Davv was to be married the next week. John, his uncle, had raised Van after Van’s father died of heartstop. Van had come back to the hold to find John dead, his skull split open by a jealous business competitor.

And Saul. Poor Saul. The shrieks of Van Deers d’Kundarak’s older brother still rang in Van’s ears nearly two centuries later as the conjured acid ate away his hands, and without them gripping the cliff wall, Saul fell hundreds of feet to his death.

Every death a murder. Every murderer another dwarf. Every one hideous and unnecessary.

Van Deers had said publicly that being conquered by the Karrns had saved more dwarven lives that anything else. And he’d argued against independence as a result.

The subsequent attempts on his life had been only half the reason that his House sent him to the West. He’d agreed because he’d hoped to forget.

Some days were harder than others. Van Deers had mostly given up on sleeping at night.

Suddenly he awoke. There was a chiming. The old dwarf sat up, blinking and looking about. The chiming was coming from a chest where he kept a miscellany of devices, most of which he’d never really had a practical reason to use.

Slippers on his feet, he rubbed the bridge of his nose, and walked to the chest. The chiming was getting more insistent. He moved about the various bits of interest – they could never be junk to him, and idly noted their function. A sculpted reptilian scale set in amber which supposedly detected dragon-mice hybrids. A cracked tile with an indecipherable glyph that someone had found in a sunken ship of unknown design, covered in the silt of decades. A string of spheres and wires that could be set to spin and predict phases of the moon.

And a crystal rod, maybe a foot long, with Elvish script on one side, in a font no elf on Khorvaire used, and a gnomish character inscribed on a blue dragonshard set in the middle. It was supposed to be used to detect elemental bindings.

Van Deers was confused, and overly tired. The dragonshard was pointing up. He shook his head and willed it to shut off, then went back to bed.

Van Deers had never really examined the rod, and therefore was not aware that it had an extreme range setting.

Nor did he know that the long-ago drow wizard who’d crafted the thing had been worried about airborne raids. Having never heard of drow, why would he be thinking about it?

Chapter 9 – Part 17

2009-09-07T10:15:00.000-05:00

They’d torn the provisional commander’s uniform from him before beating him and placing him in chains. The beating had been vengeful at first, and then purposeful. They’d knocked out half of his teeth, one at a time. It would be a while before he could imitate another. His natural ability to change color and texture didn’t include growing new teeth.

They’d left the back molars, too hard to get to. They hadn’t even looked at the left, lower back molar.

The front teeth were all gone, however. He’d not pass for anyone other than a toothless backwoods dweller until he bought himself some dentures. Which it was doubtful that he’d live long enough to do.

He kneeled, naked and bleeding from his mouth and nose, his hands with the broken fingers bound behind his back and then tied to his ankles. He’d tried slipping his bonds, but they were tight, and hardened by some druid spell.

And the two shifters guarding him had clouted him under his ribs mightily each time he’d tried.

The tent flap opened, and someone came in. The changeling blinked against the light, tears leaking from one swollen eye. The flap closed. Two figures stood before him.

To the left, a shifter woman in hide armor, her face covered with light hair and raccoon-like markings. She wore a wooden shield strapped to one arm, and an owl sat perched on her shoulder, eyeing the prisoner with a gaze that held far more intelligence than any animal should have.

To the right, a medium-sized humanoid figure in leather armor, a longsword on his left side and a wolf crouching at his right. The medium-sized figure had the insignia of the Wardens of the Wood on him, two officer’s stars pinned to his collar, and a red scarf on his neck.

And his skin was waxy and white, his eyes mostly white with barely a pupil, and his close cropped hair thin and gray.

The spy who’d been pretending to be the provisional commander spat blood. It was pinker, paler than human blood, but still red enough. In his bound position, he couldn’t reach the Warden of the Woods’ boots, but he’d tried.

“Race traitor,” he coughed. “Serving their plants.”

The Warden crouched, and stared directly into the prisoner’s eyes. Not a word was exchanged between the two changelings for a good two minutes. Finally the Warden smiled.

“I can break you,” the Warden said. “I know I can. You’re a coward. We figured out who you killed to get close enough to the provisional commander to garrote him. We figured out who you pretended to be before that. We traced you back to the stones that you rested against when you swam to shore after slipping off the boat.” He smiled slightly, but with no warmth. “It’s easy to find things if you know what to look for.” The smile left. “Now, who hired you to get us to stand down?”

“Go have relations with yourself,” snickered the bleeding spy. “I don’t even know who hired me, you know how it works.”

The Warden turned to look at the woman and she shook her head. He then gestured to the shifters on either side of the spy, and they simultaneously kicked him in the shins.

The changeling spy howled in pain and pitched forward, his bleeding mouth scraping the cold, hard ground. He felt the Warden grab hold of his ear, and his head was cruelly turned upwards.

The Warden changeling’s face was large in his vision, through the tears and pain. “The Dream Catcher says that you lie. She’s good at spotting lies. Even from people like you and me. You know something of who hired you, even if they said nothing. You’d want to be sure that you had cover. I’m guessing that they assured you that the Medani would be busy chasing low-level saboteurs and other changelings in Varna, so that you’d slip in unnoticed and push us all loose.”

The spy considered his options as he lay bound like a lamb for the slaughter. He swore to himself in his mind. When he’d heard that Parnain had been dispatched he’d nearly lost control of his bowels. His half-sister had a different reaction to Parnaian’s name. She’d attempted to back out then and there, and they’d killed her. A grimy claw had reached out from a bandaged hand and paralyzed her with a scratch, and then they’d fed her to something that stank of the grave.

He hadn’t needed to force himself to place the accents. Only Karrnath used undead. He’d been all set to mourn his half-sister, maybe entertain some revenge, but then they’d promised him her half.

Five thousand gold down, fifteen thousand more on success. In a Kundarak escrow. With that type of money, he’d be comfortable in a Cyran townhouse until the end of his days.

He’d rushed things. He’d done it too fast. The damned gnome butler had found the body. He should have figured out a way to bury it.

Something in the back of his mind tickled. It seemed familiar.

“He’s thinking of accents,” the shifter woman said suddenly. “It’s hard to get information from his mind, he has been trained well.”

The changeling spy froze. She was trying to get into his mind. Druid magic or the thing that his uncle had warned him about? The mind magic? His uncle had trained him to resist mental probes, but the mind tired as did the body.

He swallowed. And if they found the tooth? And if the Karrns raised him from the dead to torture his ghost? The Reachers could only kill him once, the necromancers of Karrnath could kill him many times.

The tickle again, and it was deeper in.

“Grab and hold his mouth!” shouted the shifter woman.

He didn’t give them the chance. He bit down on the lower, left, back molar, and the poison filled his mouth.

He was dead before they even pulled his head back.

Chapter 9 – Part 16

2009-09-06T21:05:00.000-05:00

The gnome gestured angrily at the captain, and the pilot watched nervously. The winds were bearing crossways, and they had precise coordinates that they had to account for. The captain didn’t like it, but finally acquiesced.

Aundair was paying Lyrandar enough that they expected the captain to risk his ship’s structural integrity. The captain, like all airship captains, was nervous about structural damage, and losing his commission because of it. There were far more airship captains than there were airships, and Lyrandar leaned on their officers to be careful with their toys.

The ship banked, and then began to spiral in a controlled descent. The real trouble wouldn’t begin until they broke cloud cover.

Chapter 9 – Part 15

2009-09-06T20:04:00.000-05:00

Bresbin casually chewed on a cold chicken leg that he’d paid entirely too much for. The locals were friendly enough to goblins, far more than some places as there were plenty of goblins in the Reacher armies who made life hell for Aundairan scouts, but they weren’t going to just give any grub to someone not wearing a Reacher uniform.

If you could call them uniforms. They barely had insignia. Bresbin disliked the lack of discipline that he observed, but he easily kept it off his face.

The Brelish advisers had discipline, but they spent much of their time trying to be friendly, and from what Bresbin could tell, part of that friendliness seemed to be living rough and not regularly cleaning their uniforms.

Fortunately the secondary officer remembered intelligence protocol. Such things were always left to the secondary officer. The primary was too busy keeping everyone alive.

The secondary officer had left a spool of blue thread to his left, with a red-capped needle in it, while he stitched his jacket up. In public, where he could be seen. It wasn’t that his uniform kept getting torn, it was that he was sending an alert to any Dark Lantern agents.

Gorka was in town, and the shifter expected any roaming agents to check in.

Bresbin stifled a frown, and turned to find himself a group of goblins playing dice. He’d lose some money to them and get them to talk. That would give him a way to get some information to Pienna before she went to challenge this elf and his strange messages about her.

Chapter 9 – Part 14

2009-09-06T12:03:00.000-05:00

The major had been introduced to her only as Major East. She knew that it was a code cover, and she could easily think of three good reasons why without straining, so Pienna didn’t take any offense. She was surprised that she’d been taken directly to such a high-ranking officer, but it wasn’t long before she found out why.

“I don’t doubt you,” the major said. He had deep-set, hollow eyes, and his face carried two day’s worth of gray stubble. “But it seems strange that you would return to Varna by this great magic, and not go right to the city.”

“I seek the lay of the land, Major,” Pienna said softly. She stroked Missy’s fur and the big cat rumbled, making three nearby guards nervous. One of them wore a red scarf, but Pienna did not grasp its significance. “That is all.”

“You had a goblin with you?” the Major asked. A soldier to his left nodded.

“Brezzy,” she said. “A Gatekeeper follower, although not a druid. He is trustworthy. He is checking out some things for me. Nothing to do with your army, I do not sell information to Audnair.”

“You do not,” the Major said. “You are Chu-bat’s friend, yes?”

A tear came unbidden to her eyes. “Yes,” she said.

“And another Gatekeeper living with Vadalis, making potions for them, and elf, he wants to see you badly, does he not?”

She blinked at this. “I wasn’t aware that this was common knowledge.”

“We are a careful people, Pienna,” the Major said. “And it is my job to keep track of such things. But you have caught us at an – uncomfortable time. And your request for aid, well, we wouldn’t mind helping you, if we knew everything that you know.”

She smelled suspicion, and she saw that the soldier with the red scarf seemed to take a very serious interest in things. They clearly wanted to help her, and get helped by her in return, but just as clearly they were frightened of trusting.

Someone had burned them, and recently. There had been a bustle of activity as she’d been lead to the central of the camp, and she’d then been made to wait for a good fifteen minutes. She’d been patient, and had caught someone whispering about calling for the Medani.

She hadn’t understood what that meant, but the tumblers were beginning to fall into place.

“Major,” she said. “I know little of the local situation, and it is clear that I have come into a situation that is developing. Perhaps if you could tell me in what way I can assist you, then I can demonstrate my trust to you, rather than expecting you to take it on faith.”

The Major considered this, and then a weak smile broke out on his face. “I’m sorry, Ma’am, we’re just very nervous right now. Maybe you could come back later?”

“Of course,” she said, tapping Missy. The great cat rose to walk beside her.

“I mean no offense, Ma’am,” Major East assured her.

“I take none,” she said. “Your time is valuable, Major, and I appreciate it.” She turned to leave.

“Ma’am,” he said, sprinting to catch up to her. She turned towards him, surprised. “This Aruunis, the money he’s been spending, the alliance that he made with House Vadalis, who is spared the bombardment that periodically afflicts Varna, well…the fear is that after you assisted us, you would feel that you had to prove that you were neutral, and so you’d have to…well, we don’t know what to think right now.”

She suddenly comprehended. “You just caught a changeling, so you’re as jumpy as a spring-loaded gnome’s toy.” His face showed shock, then a sheepish acknowledgement. She gave a small head bow. “Major, as long as I am in Varna, you may call on me.”

He grinned, gave a small salute, and they parted ways amicably.

Chapter 9 – Part 13

2009-09-06T10:02:00.000-05:00

Tettalla, or Tetty, as his grandchildren called him, was fussy. It was his business to be fussy. He had been a clerk in the army of the Eldeen, and a butler after that to a lieutenant who had been promoted to a captain, and then a major, and finally a provisional general. When Tetty had first met the young man, he’d been more concerned with studying the druidic mystics than commanding an army in the field. Due to the fact that he’d survived battles that his superior officers hadn’t, the young man had both aged rapidly and been promoted rapidly.

And Tetty had been with him, assisting him, helping the provisional commander move the things that needed to be moved.

At one time he’d had twelve grandchildren that called him Tetty. Now he only had three. The other nine had been lost to Aundairian weapons, Aundairan spells, or famines caused by Aundairian attacks.

It shamed Tetty that he could remember a time when he saluted Aundair’s flag. Before Aundair had abandoned them, then sought to reclaim them in blood.

Tetty dusted first, then checked the ties on the clothing bags. The cords had to be drawn most tight, then sealed with wax in order to prevent humidity damage. After checking on the ties, he turned down the bed. A spot of something caught his eye, but he couldn’t identify it. He made a note to do more laundry.

He then checked the desk. It was a simple thing, with drawers that never carried anything other than pens and ink, as the important papers were kept in locked and trapped boxes, but Tetty always studiously waxed the desk surface three times every day. There was always a chance that the scratches on the desk may give a clue to someone who ought not be there, so he waxed frequently. This was even more important lately, as the provisional commander was about to move the army into Aundair before the heavy snows came.

Tetty wasn’t supposed to know that, but he was a keen observer, and the provisional commander had been fretting about challenging the major, and other junior officers that were older than he. The middle officers wanted to disband, but the provisional commander was determined to advance.

The man had been so worked up about it, that he hadn’t given Tetty the usual cheery greeting that morning. Ever since they’d survived an attack two years before, the provisional commander had always greeted him the same way. “Good morning to you, Tetty, and mind the arrows.”

This morning it had just been “Good morning,” and the man’s eyes had been puffy and sleepless. The provisional commander had barely touched his breakfast, and he’d departed with his bodyguards to get to the meeting early.

Tetty felt bad for the man. He was so overworked. It was so much responsibility for one so young.

The gnome bustled over to a corner of the tent where a long chest sat. He frowned. It should properly be standing. There were delicately folded winter linens in there.

Tetty lifted the chest, or tried to. It was much heavier than it should have been. He frowned, and fingered the latch.

There was a lock on it. A new, unknown lock.

Tetty whirled and looked at the boxes with the military documents. They were still sealed, untouched, the magical alarms in them having not even been jostled. The gnome then turned back to the long chest.

A cheer went up from outside. Shifter and human voices began animatedly discussing the rumor that they’d heard, about being discharged for the winter.

Tetty grew cold inside, and slid a long, slim took from his belt. He’d been apprenticed to an artificer in his youth, and while he’d gone in a different direction in the end, he’d learned something about locks.

He was rusty. It took him a good three minutes to get the lock open and discover the provisional commander’s body. It took him a whole ten seconds after that to alert the red scarves that the provisional commander had been killed, and that a changeling was currently giving orders to disband the army.

Chapter 9 – Part 12

2009-08-28T10:33:00.003-05:00

Henry rubbed his arms to keep the circulation going. The civilian clothes were not as warm as his uniform, but he was sacrificing come comfort for deniability. He’d kept the cap, however. One military-issue cap wasn't unusual. Even civilians scrounged for good winter clothing.

He had four men including himself, not ten, and one wasn’t exactly a volunteer. But he’d put them together well before he’d finally made the colonel guilty enough to give him permission. They were coming now, to yet another graveyard produced by the war. Some two years ago a number of men had been hastily buried here, several of them enemy dead. The Reachers avoided the place, which made it perfect for this clandestine meeting.

The shifter arrived first. He was tall and burly, and he wore leather armor studded with metal plates and rivets. It made not a squeak as he walked, no, loped into view. Standing upright, he might have been two or three inches over six feet, but the beast-man preferred hunching when he stood and moved. It kept his broad, wolf-like nose closer to the ground.

He called himself Dawn, notwithstanding that in Breland that was a woman’s name, and when he shifted he could track like the wolf that he resembled. He could also produce wickedly long and sharp teeth like a wolf. And like a wolf, he was loyal to those who were loyal to him.

Carl had saved Dawn’s life twice, and the beast man with his bulging muscles and reddish-brown body hair had sworn that he would find the Brelish human, wherever Aundairian or Karrnathi troops were holding him.

“Captain,” the shifter said, raising his head a bit, if not saluting.

“I’m just a soldier,” Henry said. “I’m not an officer, Dawn.”

“You a captain now,” Dawn grunted, absent-minded checking the hilts of the three swords that he wore, and the crossbows strapped to his legs. Dawn was not long on smooth words, but he wasn’t short on weapons.

Or brains, no matter how he talked. Dawn was cunning. Like a wolf.

The Halfling came with the gnome next. Dawn heard them before Henry did, but the old soldier had battlefield reflexes, so he heard the soft footfalls only a few seconds after the shifter. Of course light as Phillen’s feet were, if the Halfling had cared about being heard, they’d not have known he was there until his body parted the mist.

Phillen wore armor like Dawn’s, only a miniaturized version of it. The cocky Halfling had a shaved head and bright blue eyes, and the only visible weapon on his person was a sling. A sling he was very, very good at using, especially in conjunction with the several dozen magical stones he kept on his person.

Phillen’s sister, a baker, not a soldier, had been killed by a nervous Aundairan infantryman some twelve years ago. The Halfling had been mad for killing them ever since.

Right now he was grinning that wide, cocksure grin that he had, bouncing a key from one gloved palm to the other. The key was to the collar that was fastened around the neck of the fourth member of their expedition.

Manfred Oboken was the name that he’d been convicted under, although doubtless he’d used others. He’d been a small-time crook and a moderately talented illusionist who’d finally been caught by the Dark Lanterns. Manfred had thought that he’d been involved in a lead-as-gold scam, and had been horrified to find out that he’d been unwittingly assisting Cyran spies. He’d been even more horrified to find out that he’d been accused of treason and they were going to behead him.

They didn’t of course. They’d offered him a pardon if he spent ten years in the army instead of twenty at hard labor.

Manfred didn’t like army life any more than he liked the simple and itchy wool robe that he wore with his collar. But he’d used his illusion magic successfully on a number of occasions, and he would be very, very useful in hiding them in the Aundairan countryside.

Manfred’s black, glittering eyes locked on Henry, then on Dawn, then on Henry again. “You’re going to rescue that junior officer, Carl, aren’t you?” he asked.

“He’s not stupid, this wizard,” grinned Phillen. “No he’s not. So tell us, boss, what’s next?”

“Anita’s Ford,” Henry said.

“That’s seasonal,” Dawn grunted. “Summer only. Rest of the time the water’s too high and too cold.”

“Phantom’s Crossing,” Henry told him.

“That’s a myth,” frowned Phillen. “You sure you don’t want to steal a boat instead, boss?”

“Not a myth,” Manfred said suddenly. “But the key has been lost for over two score years.”

“I don’t have the key,” Henry told them. “But I know how to find the keymaster. Or at least I think I do. If we get there and it doesn’t work, we’ll try another way. But we can’t go the regular ways, they’re being watched. And the idea is to not fight the entire Aundairan army.”

“Let’s go then,” growled Dawn. “It’s quite a walk.”

“I procured some mounts,” Henry said. “I don’t know if Manfred can ride, but –”

“I’ll tie him to the saddle,” grinned the Halfling.

Chapter 9 - part 11

2009-08-19T12:25:00.002-05:00

“If you can’t tell me why you’re so pissed, can you at least tell me what we’re going to do about it?” the younger, red-haired Medani asked his second cousin.

“There are some things I don’t share with anyone,” Parnain told him. “Don’t take it personally. You’re my closest living kin in the House, you know far more than any other.” The two were sitting together in a second-story room, drinking tea and eating sandwiches while looking past heavy curtains to the street below them. A illusion spell had been cast on the front of the window, making it appear as if the curtains were drawn tight, and the room had been rented through a series of double blinds.

“We have six more changeling heads in that chest over there,” the younger half-elf said. “We were going to move on anyway, but then you go see a druid who gave you some intel and come back mad as Khyber’s whore-spawned goblins, demanding that we get to Aundair of all places by magical transportation, but we can’t use a teleporter. What’s going on?”

Parnain stirred his tea, and watched the street below. Some petty criminals had been impressed into doing public service, and they were raking pebbles and clay into the street in an attempt to even it out from the damage that the heavy rain did to it. From here he could count the sacks and guess their weight. It was a primitive way to do street maintenance. “So I wanted to leave before and now I really want to leave,” Parnain said. “What bothers you?”

“We don’t have a gig in Aundair, and they’ve got to be irritated that we butchered their agents here,” the red-haired Medani pointed out. “But we’re going there? What did this druid say to you?”

“This is the druid that saved us from a nasty ambush and let us trip up the gnome’s double-cross,” Parnain pointed out. “Let’s just say the druid has a nasty habit of unearthing facts that others prefer to stay buried.”

“He gave you a job in Aundair?” the red-haired Medani told his cousin. “Is that what this is about? And it’s a high enough target that you think that the Orien teleporters will be watched as a matter of course?”

Parnain sighed. “I’ve taught you too well it seems,” he said. “You can’t tell anyone about this,” he said, peering carefully at the younger half-elf.

“Parnain, you can trust me,” the red-haired Medani said, an affronted tone coming into his voice. He set down his tea cup and caressed Parnain’s hand. “What haven’t I given you? What haven’t I let you do? Who have I told?”

Parnain jerked his hand away like his cousin’s touch had burned him. “We don’t talk about that unless I bring it up first,” he hissed.

The red-haired Medani hung his head. “Sorry,” he muttered.

Parnain’s eyes coldly watched the younger half-elf, and a painful, awkward moment passed. The younger half-elf looked up, blushed, and then looked away, shamed that his mentor and lover was angry with him.

And when his attention was so diverted, Parnain’s fingers passed over the other half-elf’s teacup.

“Think nothing of it,” Parnain said after a while. “My temper got the better of me. How about we figure out another way upriver, then once we’re out of this town I’ll tell you everything?”

The other Medani grinned and took a big swallow of tea. “Thanks, Parnain, I’m sorry I – talked about what I will never talk about again. Okay?”

Parnain gave a half-smile.

The younger half-elf paused, his face wincing in pain.

Parnain’s half-smile evaporated as the younger half-elf then gasped, and dropped his tea cup.

“You made the mistake of thinking that because you were useful, because I enjoyed using you, that you were my friend,” Parnain told him. The blonde half-elf stood, cold eyes on the cousin that he had just poisoned, as the red-haired half-elf fell off of his chair and onto the floor. The younger man’s eyes rolled wildly as his tongue expanded, blocking his airflow, and his heart slowed.

The red-haired Medani was tough. It took him a good three minutes to die. He spent most of the time paralyzed by pain, crying wordlessly for mercy. He got none.

Chapter 9 – Part 10

2009-08-12T20:16:00.001-05:00

“Our sixth serious insubordination in a week,” the major said, slapping the report down on the battered wooden table in the command tent. The table wasn’t the only piece of furniture that wasn’t the most luxurious. The Reachers had no intention of making the tent where their most senior officers met easily identifiable.

They were many miles from the border, and some serious money had been paid for the services of a certain notorious Medani hunter of changelings to limit the spying against them but still they took such precautions.

“It’s close to winter,” snarled a half-elf. She’d lived with shifters most of her life in a remote area of the Reaches, and their habits had rubbed off on her. “They need to return to their tribes, their people, to hunt, to provide. Aundair is bloodied, and our people need not stay here. So tempers are short.”

“They’re soldiers,” snorted a white-haired Warden of the Wood. A druid and a warrior, he carried a bastard sword on his hip. He held the hilt in one hand, and stroked a wolf with the other. “They ought to do what they are told. Begin flogging the insubordinate ones.”

“You sound Deneith,” grumbled another human. He’d jumped up in rank quickly over the past year, mostly due to not dying. It was commonly thought he’d been promoted past his competence. “Send them home and they’ll be back in spring to fight twice as hard. Try to hold them, and they’ll rebel. They cared not for Aundair’s demands, they’ll not care for ours.”

“Ridiculous coddling,” snapped the white-haired man.

“Morale is a weapon!” the half-elf woman spat out, gnashing her teeth.

“We need to do something,” the major said, sitting in a creaky chair. “Either let them go or attack across the border. They can’t sit and do nothing for long.”

“Weather won’t allow it,” muttered a half-orc druid. “More rain, more sleet. Hard to get across the river.”

“We let them go home, we have to pay them, and nobody knows what will turn up in that wagon,” sighed a man with an eye patch. He hardly talked at these meetings, and when he did, he worried over money or food. “We need someone to calculate what we’ll pay them if we disband for the winter, and if we have it.”

“The tension is becoming racial,” the major said. “Some of the shifters feel that the Deneith humans look down on them.”

“They don’t?” snorted a shifter woman holding a longbow.

“If we go across,” the half-elven woman said. “Will the blue coats go with us?”

The conversation stopped, and their eyes turned towards the provisional commander. He was young, and he was a druid of only middling power, but he was a tactical genius. As such he’d been raised in rank to general, and been given command over the growing army near Varna. It was now the largest single concentration of Reacher troops, more than triple the size of the next largest. Originally conceived as a blacking force, it was being rethought following surprise victories that blunted the Aundairian advance.

“Breland will defend our borders, but not advance,” the provisional commander told them. Several of the officers present cursed, and the half-elven woman spat. “Given that they’ve had incidents of our own going rogue and attacking them despite the current truce between our nations, I suspect that they’ve no desire to be caught between our forces and Aundair. Aundair isn’t ready to attack us, not yet. We hurt them, and they’re tied up with Thrane so badly that they can’t come again. So for now, between Aundair’s reluctance and Brelish bolstering, we are safe.”

“We send them home then?” the major asked. “Or we take the initiative and attack?”

“According to Brelish intelligence, Karrns have sent undead to bolster the border between us and Aundair,” the provisional commander said. He pursed his lips. “I see no reason to wait the time it will take to pass this matter onto the high command, let’s start letting them go. Do it in phases, not everyone at once. That way we can stay on top of the accounting –” He directed a wry grin at the man with the eye patch. “- and we can remobilize if we need to.”

“How do we organize it?” the white-haired Warden asked.

“I’d talk to the middle officers, get rid of the troublesome first,” the provisional commander said. “Then the hardship cases, the folk with the farthest to go, and kin to provide for. Keep Deneith, and keep the cavalry. In general go for about a sixth of our force in weekly spacings, keeping the last sixth through the winter.”

“A sixth is Deneith and our full-time force,” the major noted.

The provisional commander nodded. “Yes. Everyone goes home.”

Chapter 9 – Part 9

2009-08-12T15:15:00.000-05:00

“Hold steady now, steady,” Van Deers d’Kundarak said, eyeing the crack in the warforged’s leg as he applied the adhesive. The elderly dwarf used a thick magnifying monocle, attached to his head by a worn piece of leather tugged around his wool cap. He eyed the warforged’s limb to make sure that not a dab of the substance was wasted.

“This unit, Saul, follows your direction, Master Artificer,” the warforged responded with a deep bass tone. Of the three in the camp, he was the only one with adamantine plating, so it was ironic that he had been injured when excavating the gully that the accounting wagon was hidden in.

“I keep telling you to just call me Van, I’ve no official rank,” the bemused dwarf said with a smile. “Ah! That ought to do it.” He paused, watching the air dry the exposed sealant in second. “Flex the leg a bit, would you please?” The warforged obeyed. “Splendid!”

“Thank you Van,” Saul told him. “May this – may I return to my duties?”

“You are quite welcome, Saul, quite welcome,” Van Deers said. “And yes, you can go back to guarding the wagon with John and Davv.”

The warforged called Saul nodded, and turned to walk the few yards to the wagon. Van Deers sighed, removed his monocle, and rubbed his mostly bald head through the cold weather cap. The damp was hurting his bones. He’d left Mror because he was tired of this weather.

And because he was tired of the ghosts.

Van Deers tucked his monocle and its strap into a pouch, and pulled on some gloves as he encircled the wagon. John was at its front, so he soon saw Davv at its back. The warforged, sleepless creatures that they were, always had two of the three on the outside and one on the inside.

“Good morning, Davv,” the dwarf said with forced cheer as he walked up to the basket on the peg. The coals had long banked, and even a warforged felt this sort of cold.

“Good morning, squad leader,” Davv said in a quiet voice. Davv was always quiet. His composite plating was black-coated mithril, and it had been silenced when Davv was first acquired by the Eldeen army. Van Deers had enhanced that silence, and as a result Davv always saw the dwarven artificer as another commando, despite any evidence to the contrary.

“Too cold and wet,” Van Deers said, laying his hand above the basket. It was made of iron mesh, and with the proper infusion the coals fired up, generating enough heat to keep the warforged from being damaged by the cold. “There, that should hold for another four hours.”

“You are considerate, squad leader,” Davv said.

“I try, anyway,” Van Deers beamed. “You’re a good fellow Davv, and I like you and the others a lot.”

“Why do you call us these names?” Davv asked suddenly. His voice was as flat as usual, and his eyes unreadable, but something in his stance said it was important.

“Well, er, that is…” Van Deers trailed off. “You are entitled to names, and you didn’t object to my naming you, I mean to call you by numbers, when you are valued, er, well…”

“I do not object to having a name,” Davv said. “Nor do I object to the squad leader who repaired us on the battlefield being the one to choose the name. I just wondered why these three names.”

“They – they meant something to me,” Van Deers said. His eyes were misting with tears. “I have to go.”

The warforged called Davv watched the dwarf go, its face impassive. If it was aware that it had accidentally upset the artificer, it didn’t show it.

It had a job to do. An important one. The records of which soldier would be paid what were stored in the wagon. Without them, the soldiers could not be paid.

And soldiers, particularly the independent-minded ones in the Reaches, would not take kindly to not being paid.

Chapter 9 – Part 8

2009-08-10T20:18:00.001-05:00

“Geddup!” Young Red heard. He snarled in his sleep, twisting deeper into his thin blanket, trying vainly to shelter himself from the cold morning. Let the human find him well-dug, he would not come out! Young Red had been in a wonderful dream. He’d been back in the Deep Wood, hunting with his pack, shifting his teeth long to catch a fat rabbit.

The reality of where he was wasn’t exactly something he wanted to wake to.

“GEDDUP!” bellowed the sergeant. Cold water hit Young Red as the human dumped it on his head, and wakefulness rushed into the young shifter like an avalanche.

His body hair bristled and lengthened as he rolled out of the blanket, hissing and snarling, his teeth growing long. The others in his tent may have been tempted to laugh, but they held their tongues. He’d kill them all if he had to!

The human sergeant stood there grinning, not even drawing his sword as he let the empty bucket clang on the floor. “You’re late for your shift, again,” the man said.

Young Red screamed, hurling himself forward, ready to bite them man’s neck out. The human didn’t flinch.

Pain, scraping, falling backwards. The magical, invisible armor had been conjured about the man. Young Red had slammed full force into a shield that he could neither see nor smell, and now he lay on the ground, stars in his vision, shivering in the cold.

“Do it again and you’ll be at a court-martial,” the human sergeant said calmly. Four months back when the sergeant had come to command their unit, he’d told them that there was the way that they’d known before, and there was the Deneith way, and they’d better do things the Deneith way.

“No difference between you and Aundair!” snarled Young Red, feeling the swelling on his bruised face begin. A few others in the tent hissed at this insult, but the sergeant remained unmoved.

“You have three minutes to be at post,” the sergeant said. “Understand?”

Young Red didn’t answer, but he didn’t snarl either. For now, the sergeant had the power. For now.

The sergeant must have seen something that satisfied him, so he turned and left. Once he was gone, Young Red howled at the others, but they would not meet his gaze, would not give him the satisfaction of a fight.

With twenty seconds let, he’d gotten into a somewhat drier uniform, and headed to guard the pile of barrels filled with lamp oil.

Boring duty, guarding huge stacks of barrels. It wasn’t like they were going anywhere.

As he took his post, he began to fantasize about biting the sergeant in all of his veins.

August 10th, Posts Coming

2009-07-27T15:39:00.005-05:00

I will get caught up, honest. I'm sorry that I've really, really fallen behind in posting, but there's a good reason (several good reasons, including major work shifts, but one that I will address here).

See, I don't write the story in order. I work on some parts, and then others, and I skip around. And there are some parts that I tinker with more than others, needless to say.

So there's actually several posts done, just teh ones preceding them aren't done.

So...(drumroll), on August 10, 2009, watch this space! I've set a deadline for myself, n which I hope to dump a lot of posts at once.

See you then!

Chapter 9 – Part 7

2009-07-07T11:42:00.000-05:00

“Damn cold,” growled the shifter, hefting his shortbow. He might have been as tall as his human companion, but he walked hunched over, gritting his teeth. “Sun not better than a candle! Damn!”

“Still got to walk the perimeter,” said the shifter’s companion. He was a human male in studded leather armor who carried a sword at his hip and a crossbow in his hands. “We’re done in another half-hour, we can get coffee and sit by the fire.”

“Feh!” spat the shifter. “Why the night watch not over once it ain’t night? Damn!”

“For a guy with a fur coat you sure complain about the damp a lot,” chuckled the human. “My gloves are wearing out, and my fingers are going numb, but you don’t hear me complaining.”

“My hair gets wetter than yours, nor warmer,” snorted the shifter. “It paused to spit a phlegm ball into the bushes as the walked around the great camp. Some ten thousand or so soldiers were stationed just southwest of Varna, off the road, and supposedly hidden by the trees. The Reachers rarely congregated in numbers this large, to keep Aundair from hitting them with area affect spells, but now was different. The army had been first assembled to relieve Varna, expecting it to be besieged at best, overrun at worst. But the Aundairian advance had been stymied, and now the army hid under trees, hoping that their druids had convinced the many creatures of the forest to keep them hidden, or at least keep the firmer details from being found.

Rumors ran wild in the camp. Some said they were to invade Aundair, some said they were to be sent home, others said that they were to turn on their Brelish allies. The human suspected that the generals didn’t know what to do. They’d not expected the Aundairian advance to falter.

But he was alive, if wretched cold, so he wasn’t going to complain. And there were worse duties than a simple perimeter guard.

“Stop!” hissed the shifter, grabbing his companion with an uncomfortable strength as his teeth grew magically long. A moment later the human heard it too. A humming, almost like music. A smell of freshly unfolding leaves.

The underbrush shimmered, and green light, comforting somehow in its hue, came into being and then became three figures. Within a heartbeat, the magical display faded, and three figures stood not twenty feet from the two guards. One was an older human woman, a wooden circlet on her head. Standing beside her on her right was a large, heavily muscled panther with too-intelligent eyes. To her right was a goblin in sharp leather, carrying a drawn shortbow.

“Halt!” gulped the human guard, fumbling for his sword. His shifter partner drew a pair of scimitars while keeping his fangs bared. The display made the panther bare its fangs as well, and the human didn’t want to calculate the odds on who would win a biting contest.

“We mean you no harm,” he woman said, her voice sweet and comforting. “I am Pienna, of the Gatekeeper sect, and I have come a long way. I take it we are west of Varna?”

The human looked at the shifter, and after a moment they nodded to one another. The shifter’s teeth shrank and he put his weapons back in their sheath. The human let go of his sword hilt. In response, the panther relaxed, and the goblin put his bow and arrow away. “Um, Miss Pienna, you’ve – uh, whatever you did – you’re on the edge of the largest army encamped in the Reaches.”

“Pienna?” sniffed the shifter. He cocked his head to one side. “This name I know.”

“I have fought for the Eldeen before,” the woman stated. “Though the Gatekeepers are neutral, I have defended myself and my companions when attacked.”

“You, um, won’t mind coming to see our commanding officer, will you?” the human asked. He had a feeling that he wouldn’t be able to force her if she said no.

“I would love to, dear boy,” she said. “I need to get a lay of the land in any event, and you may have comrades in need of healing.”

“And we won’t say no to breakfast, oh no,” said the goblin. He grinned, showing many teeth. “Missy here is hungry.”

The human took a look at the size of the cat and nodded.

Chapter 9 – Part 6

2009-07-06T15:26:00.000-05:00

Aruunis’ companion alerted first, well before the elf heard anyone at the door. A moment later, the large brass handles turned, and a well-muscled half-elf in a chain shirt shoved them both open.

Aruunis eyed the half-blood across the length of the library. Tables and movable shelves had been pushed to the side, to make the forty feet or so between the library’s main entrance and the chair upon which the elven druid sat bare of any furnishings. Even the rugs had been removed, leaving a cold, wooden floor.

The druid had cast a fire-resisting spell on the floor, placed several potted plants near the doorway and along the walls, and banked the fireplace to blazing. He’d also cast several defensive spells on his person. There were several ways that this could end, and Aruunis had calculated only a one in five chance that he and Parnain would not come to blows.

The half-blood picked his head up, the proud face staring from a tangle of blonde hair, the icy blue eyes clearly meant to intimidate. But Aruunis could tell it was half bravado, or at least half.

He hadn’t even been sure that the Medani would come. There was no profit in it, at least no profit that the half-elf was yet aware of.

“Won’t you come in, Master Parnain?” he asked pleasantly. “There is mead and water, should you be thirsty.”

Parnain smirked, but did not answer. He stepped into the library and let the doors fall shut behind him. The half-blood tipped his head to the side slightly and studied the elven Gatekeeper.

“What do you want?” Aruunis finally asked, after a half-minute of silence.

“Shouldn’t that be my question?” Parnain chuckled. To Aruunis it sounded forced, but the half-blood’s walk was casual as he walked forward and held his hands out to the fire’s warmth. “You sent out a call for me, but wouldn’t say why.”

“And you came, without me paying off the bookkeepers of your House,” Aruunis said. “Quite against protocol. But you came anyway, before a contract was negotiated. So you want something. And you think I can give it.”

Parnain snorted. “You tickled my fancy, dirt-worshipper, nothing more. I was here anyway, so I decided to see what there was to see.”

“Parnain d’Medani,” Aruunis said. “His father was Medani, his mother was not, he rose quickly through the ranks after his parents were killed during a naval engagement between Cyrans and Lhazaar pirates that caught many civilians in the crossfire. Infiltrated a cult worshipping the Mockery, and some say he learned their faith with their tactics.”

“Aruunis, son of the tapestry makers,” Parnain countered. “Liquidated his family’s assets after he was the sole survivor of a political purge, which publicly was blamed on fanatical Silver Flame worshippers. Supposedly wrote off Karrnath, couldn’t stand the undead, and became a druid. Married into an Aundair family, a wealthy one, but didn’t advertise it to his fellow druids. You’ve spent decades if not centuries being low-key, but in the past few weeks you’ve been spending money like water. For some reason Vadalis is giving you succor.”

“Breland hired your services over two months ago when they decided to bolster the Eldeen with their troops,” Aruunis returned. “You were given carte blanche to do your favorite thing, kill changelings. Theoretically you only go after changelings who are Aundairian spies, but with no one else possessing you uncanny ability to find shapeshifters, you’re able to kill who you want and claim that it’s part of the job.” The elf grimaced. “Not even our deathless-worshipping ancestors bathed in so much blood.”

“Your ancestors, you mean,” sneered Parnain. “I’ve heard of your distaste for the Khorvar, watering down the blood they say.”

“In your case even more so,” Aruunis said. Then the elf cast a spell.

Parnain was quick, but the humanoid form that stepped out of the fireplace was quicker. It was a fire elemental, rough in form at first, merely a walking blob of flame some six feet tall. But as it placed itself between the druid and the assassin, it began to take on sharper detail.

“I do not fear your summoned playthings,” Parnain snarled, drawing a dagger in one hand and a longsword in his other.

“No, of course not,” Aruunis said, as he gripped a bunch of holly and mistletoe. The potted plants came alive, and their long branches and vines whipped out, trying to ensnare the Medani.

“So you called me here to kill me, is that it?” spat Parnain. “Better that you have tried!”

“Medani prides itself on detecting threats,” Aruunis said. “Information is key.” He twisted his hand, and the plants moved in, catching ankles and wrists. Parnain slashed at them, severing branches, but they kept him occupied. “But the smallest bits of knowledge lie in the oddest places.”

Aruunis gestured again, and the fire elemental finished its shape. It now resembled a glowing red half-elf, not too different in features from Parnain, carrying a flame version of a heavy pick. The weapon that Parnain’s father used.

Parnain growled a curse, and severed one of the plants. Another swing went towards the center of the fire elemental, but it dodged. “Going to kill me or talk me to death?” the half-blood growled.

“Making sure I have your attention,” Aruunis said. “And keeping you too busy to study me for a death attack, as the Mockery’s cultists taught you.” He spoke a word in Ignan, and the fire elemental lost its fine detail, becoming a humanoid blob again. “Some years ago I was talking to some fish in the Scions Sound,” he said casually. Parnain and the plants continued their battle, while the fire elemental made lunges at the half-blood designed solely to keep him off-balance. “Some think talking to fish is a silly waste of magical power, but it is a wonderful way to gather information, especially about shipwrecks.”

Parnain spun, uprooting an entire plant with his blades. “I will kill you druid, for this attack on my person!”

“You’ll not,” Aruunis said, casting another spell. Poisonous snakes formed from the magical energy of the natural world, and surrounded the half-blood, fangs glistening. Parnain gritted his teeth and whirled, trying to avoid vine, fang, and fire. If they’d been doing more than merely trying to keep him off-balance, he would soon take serious injury. “Instead you will dance with my creations and hear my story. And try no to take it personally, because you likely would have attacked me anyway.”

Parnain’s inarticulate growl was an acknowledgement of this, as the half-blood severed one of the summoned vipers with one blow.

“Anyway,” the druid continued, after summoning two more vipers to keep the half-blood dancing. “I found the ship at the bottom of the sound. The bodies were mostly devoured by crabs, but the skeletons were still fairly recognizable. Many human, some hobgoblin, and some half-elf. But no half-elf females. No elf-shaped skulls on bodies with large pelvic bones.”

Parnain got a wild look in his eyes as he slashed at the fire elemental. It responded by singeing his shoulder with a hard punch.

“But there was one body, female, with long, rubbery bones. A changeling.”

The fire elemental took detail again, this time of a half-elven woman, a wedding band on one hand, and a Medani sigil on her gown. Parnain howled with rage, and slashed at the fire elemental. He grazed it, but a vine tripped him, and a newly summoned large monkey landed on his back and began pummeling his head.

Aruunis cast another spell, this one boosted by a dragonshard, and an air elemental formed. The summoned elemental picked Parnain up, monkey and all, and flew high into the ceiling, slamming the half-blood’s head on a rafter, before dropping him to the floor with a crash. The snakes bit, but at the bidding of their master, did not inject venom. The vines wrapped around Parnain’s wrist, taking advantage of the stunned killer’s weak grip.

“It took me a long while to put all the pieces together,” Aruunis said, gesturing again. The firey half-elven woman’s face ran together like wax, and a changeling’s face showed. “Even then it was speculation. I shelved it, concentrating on other things.”

Parnain staggered to his feet and slashed again, then again, and then again, killing plants, snakes, and monkey. He then stood with his back to a bookshelf, his chest heaving. “Call them off and we talk,” Parnain said.

“Put your weapons away,” Aruunis said. Parnain hesitated. “Half-breed, if I had wanted you dead, you would be dead,” snapped Aruunis. “I thought I proved that. Now put your blades away.”

Parnain hesitated, then did so. Aruunis gestured, and the elementals took a step back. “You called me here to tell me you claim my mother was a changeling?” Parnain scoffed. “More original lies have been told.”

“No, I called you here to let you know that a cleric used a speak with dead spell to discover that her own son had killed her,” Aruunis said. “Her last words to you were ‘Parnain, understand, understand that I never meant to lie.’”

The blonde half-elf’s face contorted with rage, and he threw two daggers through the air. The air elemental flew upwards and caught them with its body, spinning them to the floor. The fire elemental, its body a humanoid blob once again, stepped forward, its limbs reaching forward. The books behind Parnain began to smell of smoke, and the half-blood’s skin began to sear.

“Get control of yourself,” Aruunis said. “You cannot defeat a druid who is prepared, and you cannot get out of the Eldeen alive if the entire House Vadalis is looking for you. I do not want to fight you, and I do not want to blackmail you, and the cleric in question didn’t know the significance of what I had paid him for. Not to mention that this was almost ten years ago and he died shortly thereafter while trying to direct some ghouls against a Talenta tribe. The dinosaurs ate ghouls faster than the ghouls could paralyze the dinosaurs’ handlers.”

Parnain forced himself to be calm. “Fine. Make them stand back.”

“I’ll do better,” Aruunis said, waving his hand. Both the fire elemental and the air elemental unfolded and winked out. “But come no closer, I can bring them back faster than you can act.”

Parnain took a step away from the bookshelves, and quickly drank a potion to caused the majority of his bruises and burns to fade. “Even if what you said about my mother is true, what’s the point of all of this?”

“You’re here,” Aruunis said. “I’m taking advantage of that. I didn’t plan it.”

“You want me to do something for you or you tell everyone this lie about me,” Parnain spat.

“You spot liars better than you like yourself,” Aruunis said. “But no, I’m not going to try to blackmail you. Nor will I try to buy you, I don’t think I could afford it, not with the money I’m spending, anyway. I want to trade with you.”

“You’re going to produce some potions for me?” snorted the half-blood.

“I’m going to give you a line on one of the highest-ranking agents in Thrane intelligence,” Aruunis said. He smiled, hoping that the potions of glibness that he’d purchased worked as advertised. If not, at least this would be a test run. He only had one more left, and he’d be needing it more than he needed the one running through him now. “The changeling paladin of the Silver Flame? The one reputedly in Droaam?”

“She’s out of service now, vanished months ago,” Parnain said dubiously. Aruunis could tell that the half-blood believed him, even if the Medani’s words were still skeptical.

“Let’s jump past the dickering,” Aruunis said. “You’re going to slip into Aundair’s main camp on their western front, just across the river and to the north, I’ll tell you where. There’s a half-elven commander named Hackkim. I need him killed, and a book bound in black lizardskin, maybe dragonskin, stolen. It’s heavily trapped, but you should be able to bypass the traps with your training. It’s a book of ciphers. I need to see it, then you can sell it to the Reachers, or the Brelish, or whoever you want. And then, I tell you how to find a woman named Ois Silva.” He gave a grim smile. “And you get to take down a changeling that has a huge price on her head in certain quarters. And ah, any speculation I have about your mother stays with me.”

Parnain stared at him for a moment. “This doesn’t mean I won’t kill you someday.”

“You have two sunrises from the one occurring now to kill Hackkim and bring me the book,” Aruunis said. “Otherwise I’ll go through other channels to achieve the same result. Not to mention that my intel on Ois won’t stay fresh for long.”

Parnain snorted. “We have a deal, druid, but after Hackkim, and after Ois, comes you.”

Only after the half-elf stormed out and slammed the doors behind him did Aruunis allow himself to exhale noisily.

Chapter 9 – Part 5

2009-07-06T08:00:00.000-05:00

They wore winter clothes, the gloves tightly cinched by cords. Masks covered their faces, with bottles of fresh air attached, else they would fall faint in the thin air this high up. Steel cleats on their boots kept their purchase on a deck perpetually coated with ice. A wizard stood by with prestidigitation spells, trying to keep the deck and the equipment reasonably clear, but the equipment helped.

They were on a specially reinforced Lyrandar airship, a good half-mile over what was considered the safest maximum travel height. The Lyrandar crew had been reduced to the pilot and the captain, and a grand total of five Aundairian special forces operatives were preparing the barrels of incendiary fluid that they hoped to rain down on the center of the Reacher army encamped near Varna.

It was a tightly run operation, one that no one in the Aundairian command would have spent money on, under other circumstances. Dropping barrels from a great height was not the most accurate method of aiming a weapon, and the cost of each barrel rivaled that of a newly-minted warforged with a feather fall enchantment.

But something needed to be done to keep the Reachers off-balance, and a new offensive was not in the works, not after a dwarf named Chubat had carved through Aundair’s best battle wizards. So when an officer named Hackkim procured an intelligence source, one that the Reachers supposedly would not expect at all, the decision was made to move on it.

Because there are always those who feel a need to do something, if only because they cannot stand doing nothing.

Down on the ground, it was wet and cold, less than an hour before sunrise on the 4th day of Vult. This high up in the air, it was freezing cold, and perpetually wet as they flew in between the ragged clouds. The bound air elemental that powered the ship whined in protest at the temperature, and the Lyrandar pilot gripped the wheel tightly with gloved hands to make the thing obey.

Finally, a magical timepiece worn on the belt of the commanding officer chimed. The officer, a gnome with a penchant for artificer magic, called out a command over the winds that howled at this altitude, and the airship began a slow, angled descent.

Chapter 9 – Part 4

2009-07-05T13:24:00.000-05:00

The colonel was already up when the tap came from outside of his tent. He’d been up for a good ten minutes, and he’d spent the last two lathering his neck in front of the mirror balanced carefully on the wooden stand. The colonel shaved everyday, twice a day. He had when he’d first been made an officer. Even when he was standing hip-deep in mud and blood on the Cyran front, he’d shaved.

It was important to look like you have your act together. No matter what was going on, your men needed to see that you had to have your act together.

His first commanding officer had told him that. He’d last seen the old man on leave in Sharn. Some walking Karrn corpse had shattered the old man’s mind, and even House Jorasco was unable to put the man’s mind back together.

But the man’s nurses kept him cleanly shaven. It was part of being an officer in the Brelish forces.

Even if the officer was halfway across the world in an overgrown, dirt-encrusted, savage forest that no sane man would want to live in.

“Come,” he sighed, beginning to shave his upper neck.

The flap opened, and he saw his personal guard salute. “Colonel,” the young man said. He was human, and only nineteen years of age, but what was in his eyes could age a dwarf. “He’s back again.”

There was no need to say who the guard was talking about. Only one man had been constantly demanding an audience with the commander of the Brelish expedition in the northern Eldeen. Only one man could do that and not get court-martialed.

And not just because he was the oldest infantryman anyone knew. The colonel’s staff knew that their boss blamed himself for the deaths of Henry’s sons.

“Let him in,” the colonel said.

“Sir?”

“Let him in,” the colonel said again.

He continued to shave as his guard went out. He scraped the razor as he heard his man talk briefly to Henry. Then the canvas rustled and Henry stepped in.

The colonel continued to shave, but he regarded the man in the mirror. Henry stood, weariness evident on his face, his cold weather cap twisted between his hands, his shoulders thrown back in proper parade rest. The man’s uniform was worn, but his weapons were clean and ready.

Life on the front left its marks.

“You want me to order an incursion across the border,” the colonel said. It wasn’t a question.

“Permission to speak freely, sir,” Henry said. He locked gazes through the mirror with the field commander.

“For you,” the colonel said. “Always.” He began shaving his cheeks.

“We left a man out there,” Henry said. His eyes accused.

“We have orders to defend the Reachers,” the colonel said. “Defend, not attack Aundair. We’re to help the Eldeen forces hold the line, not go on the offensive against their former masters.” He finished the cheek and started on the other. “I sent not one, but two requests to my commanders. We’re part of an overall strategic plan. A plan that does not allow for crossing the river.”

“We crossed it once,” Henry said.

“Failure of chain of command,” the colonel said, finishing up. He began to wipe his face with a towel. “You’ll recall I got this position a few weeks ago, after an Aundairian sniper took out my commanding officer. In the gap of command, some people got overzealous.” He set his thinks in the basin, then turned to face Henry. “We’re buffering the Eldeen border to keep Aundair busy so that we can advance on other fronts. We have to keep the Reachers happy, but only to a point. They don’t exactly want us here.”

“The Karrns were in the field,” Henry said. “One of their cursed corpse-things took him. Alive.”

“War is a horrible thing,” the colonel said. He suddenly felt weird that he was in a sleeping robe rather than a uniform, or better, armor. “I have only so much in the way of resources.”

“Don’t hand me the official line,” Henry said. His voice had suddenly gone up, and the pretense that he was addressing a subordinate officer was now gone. “The Karrns took Carl alive. Do you know what they’re likely to do? Karrns.”

“Infantryman, I have cut you some slack over this matter,” the colonel said, feeling the heat rush into his voice. “But you had best watch your tone, because –”

“Carl was like my son,” Henry growled. “Given that I have no others living.”

The colonel looked down, biting his lip. Logically it hadn’t been his fault, but he still blamed himself. “Henry…Henry, I can’t. I have orders. I mean the fact that Karrnath is bolstering Aundair’s western front so that Aundair will have more of a free hand to deal with Thrane, which frees up Karrnath elsewhere, and we’re doing the same thing –”

“I’m not stupid,” Henry cut in. “I know that something major is coming, and it’s either Cyre or Karrnath, but that doesn’t matter to me. We have a missing man. We followed Carl ever since the battle of Chubat’s Stand. Carl held us together until we rejoined the rest of our people. Carl rallied us when we hit the lines, again and again. Now he’s being held by a Karrn expeditionary force. Unless he’s become food for one of their monsters.” Henry paused, and waited until the colonel met his eyes. “We. Can’t. Leave. Him.”

The colonel sighed. “Ten men, volunteers only. No uniforms. No other official marking. Not even Brelish weapons. If caught you will be disavowed. One day there, one back.”

“Understood, sir,” Henry said, stress melting from his posture. “Thank you, sir.”

The old infantryman saluted. The young colonel saluted back. They would not see each other again.

Chapter 9 – Part 3

2009-06-30T14:28:00.002-05:00

Parnain ascended a wide set of stairs, dimly light by a single torch in the pre-dawn. His boots made little sound on the polished wood as he walked, both because he was trained in stepping lightly and because of a muffling enchantment in them.

Few were up at this hour, as Vadalis was primarily a house of humans. He noted the sounds of slumbering, the snores and fits of those stirring to wake, and the other minor, whispers of sounds.

Nothing escaped his notice. He was Medani. He was the ultimate Medani.

And he was doing his best to hide the flip-flops in his stomach.

He passed by what he knew from an aerial sketch was a secured wing of the Vadalis compound. A small antechamber with no doors guarded the passageway down that wing. Parnain saw no guard, no pressure plates or glyphs or other sign of a trap.

Although there was a large, raven-like bird on a perch, eyeing him, and eyeing a peg holding a panel on the wall closed. Parnain suspected that should someone enter the room and not speak the right command to the bird, it would fly off of its perch and pull the pin, likely releasing some extremely poisonous reptile.

A trained animal trap. How very Vadalis.

Parnain walked on. Portraits of House elders began appearing on the walls, setting off his thoughts on his own House supervisors.

You are Medani, the old man had told him. Parnain had been young, and he had been set upon by a band of thugs in Wroat while he was tracking a lead. He’d fought them hard, refusing to back down, rolling through a store window. Medani notice things, the old man had said. Whack! The hard cane in the old man’s hands had smacked down on Parnaian’s shoulder’s, but the young, angry half-elf did not flinch. Medani notice, but do not make themselves noticed. That foolishness is for our Lyrandar cousins. Whack! Master Hassan was driving his disapproval home with a painful lesson.

A year later, Parnain had infiltrated, then studied with, an assassins guild that worshipped the Mockery. Two years after that, once he’d learned all their secrets, he’d killed every single one. Only then had he returned to his House, who had written him off as dead when they hadn’t heard from him in over eight months. Only then did he slip into Master Hassan’s room, and smother the old man with a pillow.

He frowned slightly. That he was mentally revisiting the crucial time in his life, the time that made him - was a sign of insecurity. He was trying to reassure himself of who he was. The druid's invitation had rattled him, and he didn't want to admit why.

Parnain had carefully cultivated a reputation as being implacable. He was not flashy, Master Hassan had been right that such an attitude was for Lyrandar, but he made sure – sometimes through action, sometimes through carefully massaged leaks to certain newspapers and intelligence agencies, that he always found who he wanted to find.

That’s why Breland was paying such a large sum for him to find every single changeling spy in Aundair’s employ. They knew that he either would find them or they would run on hearing of Parnain’s presence.

That’s why he couldn’t afford to ignore an invitation from a highly-placed druid. He couldn’t afford to be seen as, well, uninterested.

But he did not like this. Some Druids could change shape, like shifters, like the changelings. The filthy, disgusting changers.

And most importantly, the druid's invitation did not fit. Why should one of the Gatekeeper sect care about changelings? They were supposedly obsessed with swamp monsters. And if this wasn't about changelings, why contact Parnain?

Parnain didn't like that he didn't know why it fit, and that made him - nto nervous, surely not that.

But if Aruunis hadn't sent him the invite, Parnain wouldn't have come. In fact he would have left Varna as soon as possible. No point in staying in one place too long.

Parnain went up another staircase, and saw a human male in a chair. The human male had both a wand and a sword, and a wolf sat at his feet.

“Stop,” the man said, very quietly.

“I’m invited,” Parnain said. But he stopped nonetheless, and stared hard at the man’s earlobes. Those were usually not formed well, they were the afterthought. They seemed real enough, this was likely a real human.

“Your name?” the man asked.

“You don’t know who I am?” smirked Parnain.

The human looked at him for a moment, then waved his hand. “The druid is in the library, unless he’s resting in the loft above it. Don’t make trouble and don’t damage any books.”

Parnain pursed his lips. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “Why don’t you go back to sleep?”

“F’test you!” snapped the man, his hand drifting towards the wand. “You’re in our House now, you –”

“Sleep,” Parnain insisted, scattering a pinch of sand at the man and his wolf. The man’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he leaned back, unconscious.

The wolf resisted the spell, but since its master seemed to have relaxed, it didn’t bother the half-elf. Parnain flexed his fingers, then stepped forward and pushed the library open.

I Shall Return!

2009-06-29T13:24:00.002-05:00

Okay, I am sorry, first and foremost. You don't know how many times I've attempted to rewrite Parnaian's meeting with Aruunis, or other things.

On June 1, my family mvoed into a new pat. We still haven't finsihed unpacking or egtting everything out of storage. Also, given that I practcie foreclosure defense and bankruptcy law, my work life has been a little out of control.

Here's the good news: The next part of this chpater has been written and I like it! The bad news, it's still on my home computer, I forgot to put it on the UBS key.

So, um, hang in there with me, okay?

Chapter 9 – Part 2

2009-05-27T15:57:00.001-05:00

“Neddiken, quit pacing,” Aruunis snapped. The two elves were alone, save for the druid’s eagle. “I am trying to construct a potion, if you don’t mind.” The druid was hunched over a worktable, eyeing a vial that was slowly ceasing its bubbling.

“I wondered how you were financing this,” the pudgy elf noted as he forced himself to take a seat in a chair covered with bearskins. “Couldn’t figure out why Vadalis was so hospitable. You get a little loft, you see people, you get contacts…”

“Stop yammering,” Aruunis told him. Neddiken stopped yammering.

After a few minutes, the druid was done, and he carefully stoppered the potion that he had created. Anyone drinking it would gain the power to talk to animals, and do so for a longer duration than most nature spellcasters would be capable of.

As always, he felt a bit tired when was done. He own life energy went into keeping the spell locked into the swirling liquid. “Done then.” He stood and stretched before turning to regard his pudgy guest. “Any word from downstairs?”

“That Medani psychopath is in the courtyard,” Neddiken said, checking a scrying mirror. The mirror was a fixture to the room, although the wary Aruunis always kept it draped in a lead-lined blanket when he wasn’t actually using it. “Your instructions about keeping his kinsman away is slowing things down, like you figured.”

“Yes,” Aruunis said. “And I’m glad I did. I don’t want you here when he comes in.” The druid took some gloves from his belt and put them on carefully. The gloves appeared to be leather, but were soft, and a fine stitching covered them, showing the shapes of rearing forest animals. “Of course if you had come when you were supposed to, I wouldn’t have been involved in my potion work, and you’d be gone by now.” He sighed. “Tell me your instructions.”

Neddiken visibly stifled a sigh. “I take the berth in the Brelish ship that you arranged, and head to Wroat. Once there I check in with the herbalist professor that you know, and he’ll set me up with a key to a Kundarak vault that will hold new identity papers for me and some money.”

“Yes, originally intended for me,” Aruunis said. “But I don’t need that particular back up plan anymore.” He narrowed his eyes. “But you forgot something. You didn’t tell me your other instructions.”

“Wherever I stop, I mention the strange warforged with no armor plates,” the pudgy elf said hurriedly. “A warforged that fought in Merylsward and is friends with Pienna. I say that I saw him here, with House Vadalis in Varna.”

“Correct,” Aruunis said.

“Now, um, don’t get me wrong,” Neddiken said. “I’m going to do just what you said, honest. I’m just curious why. You know, so I can do it right.”

“You’re another thread I spin,” Aruunis said. “Leave it at that.”

Neddiken raised his hands in a gesture of peace. “I merely chatter, good druid. I usually trance at this hour, and that plus the early morning cold makes me jittery.”

Aruunis harrumphed, and then checked the scrying mirror. “You’d better go,” he told the other elf, finally handing him the passage papers. “He’s on his way up.”

For an overweight elf, Meddiken moved very fast to avoid being in the same room with Parnain.

Chapter 9 - Part 1

2009-05-17T20:40:00.002-05:00

BY OATH EMPOWERED

Varna, in the Eldeen Reaches, the 4th of Vult, 993 Y.K., very early morning, about four hours before dawn

Beads of perspiration formed on the human male’s forehead, despite the late autumn chill in the courtyard. “Only one of you comes in,” the man said. His eyes darted left and right, noting the crossbowmen on the parapets and the pikemen on either side. Most were human, as was he, but more than one was a shifter employee of House Vadalis.

And they cared not for the two demanding entrance.

“Hey, one of your guests wants to see us, captain,” sneered the younger one, a half-elf with bright red hair that peeked out under a steel cap. “We got the word, you let us both in the courtyard, so what’s your problem?”

“I’m the night commander, not a captain,” said the sweating human male. He felt every one of his forty-six year, even as the sweat dripped into a thick gray mustache. “Bu that's okay, my House, unlike yours, doesn’t get so hung up on rank.” His voice hardened. It wasn’t the red-haired pup that made everyone on edge (whether they had shape-changing abilities or not). “But like your House, we in Vadalis take our orders seriously. Especially on night watch. Only one of you enters the building. I assume it’s Parnain.”

His eyes darted to the blonde half-elf with the cold eyes who stood to the right of and in front of the red-haired one. Parnain was everything the legends told of, and more. Since coming to Varna he was rumored to have killed over twenty people.

By Oalian’s root, what were the city fathers thinking allowing this madman free reign? The night commander wondered to himself.

“We didn’t mean to disrupt your watch, night commander,” Parnain spoke. His words shocked. Until that point he’d been letting the other one talk for him. The man’s hands rested on his belt, next to the hilts of his weapons. His tone was without passion, a man reciting formulas of civility by rote. “I understand that those without elven blood get tired.” His eyes suddenly swiveled to the pikeman on the night commander’s left. That man gave a start and took a half-step back. “But, you have to understand that it’s my job to be suspicious when things are out of order. Do you always limit early-morning guests to only one?” He blue eyes stabbed the human with their glare.

“No,” the man answered simply. He’d heard that the half-elf known as Parnain could smell lies. “But we limit people we consider dangerous to the House to only one.”

Parnain made a brief smile, the barest wrinkling of the corners of his mouth. “Well, I am dangerous.” He turned his head to his red-haired accomplice. “Stay here. Don’t kill anyone.”

“Fine,” the younger half-elf sighed.

Parnain stepped forward, as if unaware that there were nearly half a dozen steel-tipped crossbow bolts pointed at him. “Now, you’ve a gatekeeper in there who said he wanted to see me. And I’m running out of changeling spies and saboteurs to kill. So stop wasting my time.”

Anger began to grow in the night commander’s breast. “You watch how you talk to me,” he finally bristled. “I’m not scared of you.”

Parnain leaned in, and the shutters behind his eyes gave way briefly, letting the human see unfettered rage, if only for a moment. “Yes you are,” he said.

A long silence followed as they stared at each other.

“This way,” the night commander said, averting his gaze as he gestured at the men to open the doors.

The night commander led the half-elf into the building, and six armed men waited within to escort them both.

Chapter 8 – Part 19

2009-05-11T08:16:00.000-05:00

“We’re bringing in record hauls,” Baruk told Orphan and Delegado. “The temporary vacuum left by the hag’s demise has made finding and gathering easier.”

“So why aren’t we doing that?” Delegado asked. It was maybe two hours after the ceremony, and the druid was guarding Bartemain’s body in a storage chamber. Delegado, Baruk, a young, mustachioed half-orc named Grullik, a gnoll wearing a suit of armor, and a gnome who had barely had time to introduce himself as Nebly, were all in a council room on the top floor of the tallest building. “What the Khyber are we doing here, making tea, is that it?”

Orphan noted that Delegado was in an exceptionally foul mood. The ceremony had made the half-orc angrier, not calmer.

Baruk tossed a disk onto the middle of the table. “Nebly, you first.”

The gnome took the metal and examined it closely, first with his eyes, and then fumbling for a small lens on a stick that magnified the image. “An unusual alloy,” the gnome said. “Some brass, but also some tin, and then something I can’t tell at all. Definitely aged, you can tell from where the acid damaged it. Part of a fight of some kind, a power struggle here in the Wastes.”

“Feh, I figured that out already,” Grullik muttered. It seemed to Orphan that Grullik was acting irritated because Delegado was acting irritated. The younger half-orc seemed to be in awe of the famous bounty hunter.

“It’s an unholy symbol,” the gnome said. “There’s some magic left, not much. This was used to command undead.” Nably slid the disk down the table to Orphan. “Commander Baruk says that this warforged can help with knowledge of magical and religious matters?”

Orphan picked up the disk and studied it. “This is an evil bound by law, rules and axioms,” he said. “I can tell from the patterns on the edge. It’s old. An old cult. Worshipping undeath, not just commanding it.”

“Blood of Vol?” asked Baruk.

“Something older,” Orphan said. “Maybe demons that worshipped undeath?”

“Why would an immortal being care about undead?” asked Grullik.

“They can’t die of old age, but they can die,” Delegado said. “And if their zombies or skeletons or whatever are stronger than the run of the mill stuff, it’s a potent army.”

“Then why they no use it now?” asked the gnoll. Orphan turned, and was surprised to find that the gnoll had come up with a good point. “Why fiends not use corpse of fiends now?”

Nebly tapped his lips with his fingers. “It is believed by some that they consume each other, but perhaps, just perhaps, you see, there are rumors that many fiends worshipped slain ones, expecting them to return.”

“Under the Wastes are many corpses of great fiends slain by the dragons, long ago,” Orphan said. “If the lesser fiends worship them, they wouldn’t like someone animating the bodies as undead.”

“Not really possible, anyway,” Nebly said. “You would need a store of expensive gems to contain the magic, the more powerful undead, the more gems to channel the necromancy…” His voice trailed off as he realized what he was saying.

“So,” boomed the gnoll, tightening the straps on his armor. “We go find the hidden gems now?”

Baruk grinned. “You bored, Del? You wanna sit here until the eastbound ship comes?”

“Orphan, what do you say?” Delegado asked.

“I say bring Foallus,” the warforged said. “And maybe a dozen others. In case they’re any moving corpses out there.”

“Oh, I’d like to come too!” Nebly said. “I have a journal I’m writing, it would make wonderful notations, really.”

Delegado and Grullik snorted at the same time.

Chapter 8 – Part 18

2009-05-07T10:52:00.000-05:00

The blessing ceremony was fairly straightforward, and Orphan found that the simplicity was beautiful, and he could tell that the rest of the compound was moved as well.

And it was the rest of the compound. Everyone who wasn’t actually standing guard on the walls came. Orphan had wondered several weeks ago if Delegado had been boasting about his father’s importance to House Tharashk. If anything, the half-orc bounty hunter had understated things.

The druid stated that he would not try to give a complete rendering of Bartemain’s life, that would have to wait for a ceremony in Yrlag. But he did say more than Delegado had ever had the inclination to tell. Not that the half-orc wasn’t proud of his father, far from it, but it hurt Delegado to talk about his father while his body was not ‘returned to nature,’ as the druid put it.

Regardless, what he heard painted an even broader picture of Bartemain. Adventurer, explorer, businessman, husband, father, grandfather, and general pillar of the United House.

And what he didn’t hear said more. No mention of Gatekeeper faith, Sovereigns, or any general druidic following. Orphan had gathered that Bartemain had been skeptical of religion, if not out rightly cynical.

Orphan found himself wondering if the torturers of Ashtakala had reinforced Bartemain’s religious skepticism or had made the man turn to some form of faith in the end.

Near the end of the eulogy the druid mentioned those who had avenged Bartemain. The whole assemblage had turned and bowed their heads in respect to Delegado and Orphan.

A single tear rolled down Delegado’s cheek at that point.

“Who can give affirmation that Bartemain was the best of our House?” asked the druid. He was a half-orc, and he made his voice boom across the compound.

The reply was thunderous, as orc, human, half-orc, and even gnoll, raised their fists in the air and howled with all they could summon in their lungs.

Chapter 8 – Part 17

2009-05-04T08:50:00.001-05:00

“You’re a f’testing idiot,” Baruk said as he walked through the hallway to his office. Grullik jumped up from the rickety chair that he’d been sitting in. “Follow me.”

The young half-orc smoothed his long mustaches, adjusted the two battleaxes on his belt, one edged with silver, the other with cold iron, and followed his superior into Baruk’s office. “Commander,” Grullik said, closing the door behind them both as they entered the office. “I didn’t spend your time, I went on my off time, and I – ”

“Oh shut up,” Baruk said, dropping his weary bones into his chair. Grullik stood stiffly until Baruk waved for him to sit. “You’re one of out better trackers,” Baruk said. “Tenacious. You don’t give up. You’ve found some good deposits out in the wastelands.” Baruk paused to glare. “And you’re a seventeen year-old punk with no dragonmark that has no business leaving our compound without security backup.”

“Commander, Dancing Orphan killed the hag, and I’ve been asking you for months to check out the collapsed case that we found,” Grullik said, making his words in a rush. “I figured you’d be cool if I –”

“Oh shut up,” Baruk said. Grullik shut up immediately. “We have narstones and dragonshards to collect, not wild goose chases in collapsed sand pits.”

“Not totally collapsed,” Grullik said, pulling something out of his shirt and setting it carefully on the desk.

Baruk stared down at the worn stone disk. No, not stone, metal, and not a complete disk. It had been damaged, long ago. Its surface was pitted. But the metal had no rust. It felt warm to the touch, as if some magic yet held.

“What is this?” he asked.

“Not sure,” Grullik said. “But it was old, inside of a corpse’s hand. Or at least I think it was a corpse, pretty far gone.”

“Some people say dragons and fiends warred here millennia ago.” He caught Grullik’s befuddled blink. “That means thousands of years.”

“It was really old,” the younger half-orc said. “I think it’s a religious symbol. Maybe when the druid is done with the ceremony, we can ask him.”

Baruk pursed his lips. “Or we can ask Dancing Orphan,” he mused, thinking about what Delegado had said about the headband.

“So I did good?” Grullik asked.

“Don’t know yet,” Baruk told him. “Let’s go to the ceremony first.”

Chapter 8 – Part 16

2009-04-30T09:48:00.000-05:00

“Your headband tell you what this is about?” Delegado asked, his huge biceps straining as he shifted the stone bier. Bartemain’s body lay on it, covered by a linen shroud.

“You are trying to align the bier, which is a quadrilateral with right angles, so that the top and center of your father’s head is aligned with the rising son,” Orphan recited. Delegado recognized the sing-song quality of the warforged’s voice when Orphan was repeating whatever data was built into the artifact he wore on his head. He was also impressed with the fact that the warforged was saying it in orc. Orphan spoke nothing else now, as he was hard bent on mastering the language. “This is a druidic ritual that acknowledges light and heat from the sky as the source for true life. It’s general druidic, but with a flavor of Gatekeeper. The ritual will involve placing a representative of the classical elements on each corner, then casting spells designed to purify the body’s remains. This honors your family, as they strive to keep his body natural, and it honors him, as it is believed to be free whatever vestige of trapped spirit that may remain.”

“Right,” Delegado said, finally setting the bier correctly. He sighed and stretched. “And there will be a eulogy, and I will shed one tear.” The half-orc hadn’t realized that he spoke that aloud until he saw the warforged nod.

“I didn’t get that from the headband,” Orphan stated. “I just figured the war orcs are about showing grief, when they actually do it, it’s tightly controlled.”

“Good guess,” Delegado said. He took a water canteen off of his belt clip and took a swig. “You still have that hag’s magic stone?”

“Baruk said that by law of battle it is mine,” Orphan said. “I figured I’d sell it in the Marches, you’d tell me where. Get myself a snake.”

“A ‘stake,’” Delegado corrected him. “Starting money. Yeah, I’ll help you find a good buyer.” He put the canteen back. “The ship with supplies is here, druid will be by after he disembarks, they’ll do the ceremony within an hour or so.”

“The ship will continue on, so it’s not important,” Orphan said. “But the next one is eastbound, right?”

“Yeah,” Delegado said. He was not looking forward to that part. He found his hand straying to his sword hilt.

A stone and wood hand reached out and clapped itself on Delegado’s shoulder. “I’m the only one who disarms anyone,” the warforged said.

Delegado forced a smile, if a hollow one. The cocky idiot machine had never met Tatyanna.

Chapter 8 – Part 15

2009-04-29T10:47:00.000-05:00

Baruk frowned, drumming his fingers on the railing of the east wall. The sun was coming up on the 14th day of Zarantyr, and the guards were changing. The full-blooded orcs were heading below to escape the hard light, and the human members of the House were coming up. Gnolls and half-orcs were parts of both shifts.

He liked to be seen at the changing of the guard. He wanted to remind them all that he set the rules here.

It wasn’t that they weren’t disciplined. It wasn’t that they were likely to slack off at what they were supposed to do. It was that if they felt no one was leading them, the stark, creeping terror that was always present would go a little farther and farther until they would bolt.

He could tell them about magical defenses, and strength of arms, but morale was held together by actions, not words.

A gnoll came trotting up a ramp, and then quickly ascended a ladder. “Boss!” it coughed, in a passable orc that was only marred by an ever-present rasp. The throat wound had never healed right, but Beghk didn’t complain, her was lucky to be alive. “The one called Grullik is back.”

“What the Khyber?” growled Baruk, irritated. “Dancing Orphan kills the hag, so now everyone is going out by themselves?” This was a time for more vigilance, not less. The night hag was a known factor. What would replace her was unknown, and in that way, more dangerous.

Beghk gave a shrug while holding his hands out, palm up, curling and uncurling his fingers. Some one had once told the half-orc commander that gnolls did that to show uncertainty, specifically that they did not know which weapon was appropriate. “Grullik like to search, boss, he’s trying to be like Delegado.”

“He’s going to end up dead,” Baruk snorted. “Find him and send him to my office.” The gnoll nodded and ran off.

“Commander,” came a call from the wharf below. “Ship coming!”

“That’ll be the druid and the gnome, and none to soon,” Baruk said to himself. “Got to get a ceremony done, Grullik, what the Keeper are you playing at?”

Baruk turned around and looked over the compound. Delegado and the warforged were directing people into setting up for the memorial ceremony. Whatever the fiends had done to Bartemain’s body – and it was creepy, touching limbs that felt like a sand doll – the druid was here to give a blessing. And a day or two after that there would be a ship heading east, not west, and it would get Tatyanna’s brother the heck out of here.

Baruk had survival to deal with, he didn’t need to be stuck with House politics. The sooner Delegado was gone, the better.

Chapter 8 – Part 14

2009-04-27T18:09:00.001-05:00

“And tell me,” hissed the slithering thing. “Tell me exactly, tell me precisely, tell me and tell me why I should do as you say?”

The rakshasa rajah wrinkled his nose, disgusted with the slime that dripped to the cavern floor. “Aside from the fact that I could kill you and cook you until you were edible?” it sneered. Behind him, the three zakya attendants lifted their pikes and licked their fangs in anticipation. “What’s your alternative, staying here and worshipping this tomb?”

The slithering thing uncoiled itself, showing its great length and snapping its many miniscule claws that lined its sides. “Not a tomb. The Great One only sleeps. The fiends will arise.” It drew out the last syllable in a loving way as it rubbed the top of the calcified corpse lovingly. It had been a Balor magician, many millennia ago.

The rajah gritted his teeth. “There was a time the fiends were united, would you cast aside plots worked for so easily?”

The slithering thing turned twice, and focused three red eyes on the tiger-thing. “Your plots have done what? Stirred up lesser races into killing themselves for a few score years? Have you expanded our boundaries?” The fiend’s voice lowered several octaves as it went into a mocking laugh. “You can’t even keep Ashtakala free from intruders.”

“We’ll find those responsible for –”

“Who cares?” boomed the slithering thing. The zakyas readied for an attack, but the slithering thing did not try to breach the rajah’s personal barriers. “You’ll find where the petty races are hiding? Kill a few to get our respect back? Who cares? The larger picture escapes you! You get lost in the little races, and you have become little yourself! The intruders would not have even gotten in without the dragon’s feint!”

The rajah forced himself to regain his composure. “We have no lost sight of the greater issues.”

The slithering thing turned itself upside down in mockery. “Then why are you looking for my subservience? Not three centuries ago you said you didn’t need me.” It leered. “I know what the others have told you. You’re losing this fragile unity. Accept that. We were never meant to be unified.”

The rajah was silent, and then after a long pause he spoke. “Too many think like you, preferring to worship old glories, rather than look ahead. If we don’t keep prodding the little races in their war, they may end it from weariness. And if that happens, the dragons will be far less busy.”

“That you think the dragons care about the little ones shows how out of touch you are,” the slithering thing snorted. “The rakshasa grip slipped long ago. That Ashtakala was violated only proves to us all what we knew. Catch the intruders if you like, if they are indeed still alive. It will have proven nothing except that you act too late.” The slithering thing turned to caress the calcified corpse. “We have nothing further to discuss.”

The rajah considered killing this thing, he could, if he had to. But he might lose one of the zakyas, and he would need every one. Already the rajahs we infighting, no one trusting another since the discovery that one of them had found the place where the coutal’s ghost had been and kept it to himself.

In the past few months, the fragile unity of the fiends had been shattered, thanks to whoever assisted the intruders who escaped on the Crimson Ship. That burned the rajah’s heart. Centuries of planning, ruined!

But what burned more was the knowledge that this lesser one was also correct, in a fashion. Catching the intruders now, if they were indeed alive, would prove nothing. First he had to rebuild his own standing.

And aside from needing all of his zakya, he may one day need this one.

“We will have what to discuss in the future,” the rajah promised. “For now, I leave you.”

He snarled as he teleported away with his retinue, but the slithering thing, if it even noticed, did not care.

Chapter 8 – Part 13

2009-04-23T09:20:00.000-05:00

Delegado sat atop of his horse, firing his longbow at the fleeing Carrion Tribesmen who weren’t able to get out of range quickly enough. He’d come on the scene as Orphan was slamming the hag’s head into a boulder that jutted out of the ground. Her infernal strength has made her almost as good of a wrestler as the warforged, and her sharp teeth had done a number on Orphan’s neck and sides almost as fast as he had damaged her, even with that resistance to weapon damage that all the fiends had. Almost, almost, and almost added up to a dead hag and a living, if seriously damaged, warforged.

Foallus using the last bits of his magical strength to repair Orphan during the fight hadn’t hurt either.

“Hey hero, I’m running out of arrows, here,” Delegado chuckled. “You want to hunt some of these guys down?”

“I’m not a hero,” Orphan said quietly. The battered and gouged warforged was helping the survivors and the other Tharashk servants who had arrived on horseback shortly after Delegado clean things up. This generally meant searching the bodies of their slain enemies and putting their corpses in a pile to be burnt. Despite Orphan’s condition, he bore the brunt of this duty for obvious reasons.

“We say you are hero, Dancing Orphan!” called out a beefy half-orc who was using a silvered saw to remove the dead hag’s head.

“Don’t argue with orcs, Orphan, you could lose an arm,” chuckled Delegado. He sent another arrow into the back of a fleeing Carrion Tribesman.

“I couldn’t get here faster, Delegado,” Orphan said.

“No,” Foallus said, hobbling over. Aside from various minor bruises and cuts, the human had lost a couple of teeth, and his left arm was broken in two places. He’d barely been breathing when the druid had showed up and put some magical healing energy into rebuilding Foallus’ lungs and ribcage. “You couldn’t. So stop blaming yourself. You’ve slain our greatest opponent here.” The sorcerer looked at Delegado, then a the warforged. “Word is that Del is going to Yrlag. I’m guessing that you two will want to stay together, but if you’re not, or you swing by again, we could use you here. Good pay.”

“I go where Delegado goes,” Orphan said.

“Figured I’d ask, no offense to either of you,” Foallus said.

“None taken,” Delegado grinned. “Where do you sleep again?” To his credit, the human sorcerer laughed.

The Tharashk people hurried in their task. It would be dark soon, and it was cold enough as it was when the sun was out.

Chapter 8 – Part 12

2009-04-22T11:50:00.000-05:00

The Carrion Tribe that followed the hag who had Blood Crescent in her sights was greater in numbers than anyone had suspected. The hag had carefully recruited members of other tribes who were defeated in battle, choosing to keep some of them rather than slaughtering them all.

She was a clever being, really. It had helped her survive all of her sisters’ assassination attempts.

Fifty of the most expendable had been sacrificed just to gauge Blood Crescent’s defenses. She was not pleased that their loss had taught her nothing other than the fact that Tharashk had acquired an incredibly quick warforged. She had plans of getting the Tharashk wealth and weaponry and using it to assimilate a group called the Moon Reavers. Thus strengthened, she would turn to a careful consolidation of power in the southern Wastes.

Only now she had lost an additional three hundred followers in the attack on the Tharask expedition. The human sorcerer had blasted them with magicks that she hadn’t credited to him. He apparently had a significant number of Tharashk scrolls on him that boosted his natural powers.

And a wand that cast spells that shielded the soldiers from the hag’s magic missiles, confound it.

Her forces were down to barely four score, and they had again surrounded the remains of the Tharashk forces. Six men total, including the human sorcerer, whose remaining spells were weak, pitiful things. Six men, desperately using the carcasses of their dead mounts as makeshift walls against her worshippers.

She hung back, waiting to see the last of it rather than participating in the hand-to-hand combat. If not for those disgusting shield spells, she would be firing her bolts of energy – out of boredom if nothing else – but melee combat was for the lesser creatures.

Annoyingly, she was running out of lesser creatures. She’d thrown away the work of a decade, apparently. It had taken her that long to get to nearly five hundred warriors, and now she had less than a fifth of that. Likely her soldiers would finish off these few rabble in minutes, but it hadn’t been worth it. This whole thing would injure the Tharashk outpost, but not fatally. They’d replace the magic-user with another in weeks, and whatever the artifice was that kept her from entering Blood Crescent ethereally would still be functioning.

A waste.

And thanks to this mysterious warforged, a waste that had produced no serious intelligence.

Something about the warforged made her think she should investigate him more. Perhaps even open up channels to the other fiends. There had been some attempt to contact her a few weeks back, but she had ignored it. She’d gone a century without direct contact with the rajahs and their servants, and she could easily go another century more. Their arrogance was disgusting. Everyone with sense knew that the hags were formed from Khyber’s first drops of blood, not the tiger-men who came later.

She watched as a Tharashk soldier fell, finally succumbing to multiple club blows. Her tribesmen began to pour into the space that the half-orc had been slashing at with the greataxe.

And then everything was spoiled.

She screeched with rage as the warforged jumped high in the air, tackling a whole knot of her worshippers. They screamed with rage and fear, and the Tharashk soldiers hooted with relief and delight. The warforged did not stop moving, dodging blows, kicking stone clubs away from her followers’ hands.

“Kill him you idiots!” she cried, first in her infernal tongue, them in their own, primitive language. But they could not. Oh they occasionally struck the warforged, but only with glancing blows, mere scratches. The warforged hit every time his feet and fists flurried around, or so it seemed. Soon the Tharashk soldiers were merely giving the warforged breathing room, rather than fighting for their lives. Soon thereafter her followers began running, declaring that the stone-and-wood thing could not be killed.

She swore she’d make a paste from their livers. While they watched.

“Stand and fight!” she howled, walking forward. She fired one of her magical missiles at the warforged, and she had the satisfaction of seeing it raise a small, smoking pit on the thing’s back.

The warforged turned around, and from over a hundred feet away she could swear she saw glee in its eyes.

“The hag is mine!” the warforged yelled, somersaulting under the legs of her troops. She hit him with another magical missile, raising another insignificant pit on the thing’s leg. She panicked as he grew closer, firing an enfeebling ray that went wide of its target.

She was pulling out her heartstone to flee into etherealness when he knocked it from her hand.

Chapter 8 – Part 11

2009-04-21T09:49:00.001-05:00

Orphan maintained the best speed possible over the broken ground. The trail wasn’t the smoothest, but it was better than the pockmarked and cracked earth to the sides. For the first four or five hundred feet outside of the walls of Blood Crescent the ground had been more or less flattened. Beyond that point only the trails beaten down by many Tharashk feet were paths on which he wasn’t likely to crack an ankle pinion when moving at more than a hustle.

And he was running at a far faster clip than a hustle. His trip from the gate to the edge of the flattened perimeter took maybe ten seconds. Now he was ten minutes and almost five miles out, and he could see flashes over horizon, just past a ridge that poked up from the broken ground. Foallus still had some magical energy left to throw around, apparently.

Orphan slowed as the trail got rougher. He’d passed excavated areas, old pits that Tharashk had long before cleared out. The area that he was entering was less-traveled territory. If he made one misstep, he could seriously injure himself.

And if he didn’t hurry, more people would die. Small battles were things that were over quickly.

He stumbled over a sinkhole that he had barely noticed, but righted himself with a somersault. Gritting his hinged jaw, he muttered a prayer to whatever power might have been listening.

He couldn’t let anyone else from Tahrashk die.

Chapter 8 – Part 10

2009-04-20T11:21:00.000-05:00

The attack came about an hour before sunset.

A group of a dozen prospectors, accompanied by twenty soldiers, including the spellcaster Foallus, had gone out shortly before dawn. They’d left to collect a rich deposit of Khyber shards that a dragonmarked human had detected. The reason for the large accompaniment was that the shards were a good twenty miles from Blood Crescent.

Twenty miles through the Wastes. Delegado and Orphan had traveled through far more than that, but the fiends and the Carrion Tribes watched Blood Crescent with a wary hatred. What ventured too far from it was subject to attack.

But, each Khyber shard that was brought back was worth thousands of gold galifars, so Tharashk went.

Around noon, Foallus cast a message spell to Baruk. The hag’s forces had encircled them, and they’d lost half their number. They had finally broken through, and they were fleeing back to Blood Crescent.

Baruk summoned all hands, and called forth riders to meet the hag’s forces halfway. When he was still explaining what had happened in his booming voice, Orphan had bolted out of the gates.

“What is the Dancing Orphan doing?” demanded Baruk in orcish to Delegado, who was mounting a horse while sending Feather ahead to scout.

“Dancing Orphan can run faster than any horse!” Delegado bellowed back. “I will follow him now to use my mark to find the survivors! Come after our trail!” And with that Delegado’s horse bolted for the gate as well. Behind him the hooting cheers of orcs, half-orcs, gnolls, and humans could be heard.

The wind felt good on Delegado’s face as he bolted across the cold, bleak landscape of the Wastes, but once his visage could not be seen by the defenders of Blood Crescent, his mien grew more troubled. Orphan, do you realize that you’re trying to take on a hag single-handedly?

Forgive the delay, again, sorry

2009-04-07T12:22:00.002-05:00

I fell behind due to a variety of reasons, mostly an increase of work, so that's a good thing. I plan to resume on April 20 with extra postings that week.

Some previews:

Iron Orphan and Delegado fight off a small army alongside the defenders of Blood Crescent, and Orphan goes toe-to-toe with a night hag.

An elder water elemental wants the Branch of Air and Water back - NOW.

The Gatekeepers plan to infuse Orphan's body with Byeshk particles so that he can fight aberrations.

Aruunis (a 7th level druid) vs. Pienna (I think she's currently 13th level) in a fight. Place your bets, but don't bet you know the answer.

Chapter 8 – Part 9

2009-03-30T09:35:00.001-05:00

Delegado became aware of the pounding in his skull first. It was huge, relentless, a behemoth of a pain.

He cracked open one eye. The searing light stabbed at him, burning him.

He quickly shut the eye and rolled over. The rough cot creaked in protest, horribly loud in his ears. The empty clay jug – which had been full of whiskey when he’d first lay down for the night after watching her go – rolled off the end of the cot and shattered against the stone floor.

It was like hearing an earthquake.

Finally the pounding stopped, or slowed at least. The door opened, letting in a cold morning air that the remains of the fireplace could not hold back.

The half-orc grunted and fumbled for the blanket. “Shudda fi- fi- test – shudda door.”

“Delegado, are you all right?” came the warforged’s voice, from so far away.

Delegado sighed, feeling a horrible taste in his mouth. “Shut. The. Door.” Each word was like pushing a boulder uphill.

Orphan shut the door, and it seemed to Delegado that it shook his bones. “Did you drink all that whiskey?”

“No, Feather did,” spat the half-orc. An affronted squawk came from the perch in the corner of the room. Delegado shoved his head under the nearly flat linen pillow. And this was considered one of the nicer rooms.

“I take it that your father’s body is in that stone bier?” Orphan asked.

A dull rage began to build in Delegado. “Your point?” the half-orc asked. Do not blow up at the warforged. He says dumb stuff because he doesn’t understand what it implies.

“My point being they should have given him something fancier, wasn’t he someone important in your House?”

Delegado sat up slowly, feeling a thousand needles in his skull. “He still is.” The half-orc pinched the bridge of his nose, waiting for the room to stop moving before he opened his eyes. “This is the fanciest they have. Blood Crescent is pretty much just a military outpost that collects dragonshards and narstones.” He opened his eyes slowly. Slow was the key.

“You drank all that whiskey because she left?” the warforged asked.

Delegado creaked his neck to look at the warforged. “No, I just figured it was what an honor guard for my father’s body should do,” he snapped. “There, I said it, I’m weak, I dishonored my father by getting drunk. Happy?”

Orphan walked over to him and stuck out a hand. After a glower, Delegado took it and rose to his feet with the warforged’s assistance.

They stood in silence a moment before the warforged finally spoke. “I do not judge you for drinking, Delegado. I think you should realize that I’m a better friend than someone who would criticize you in this situation.” He then produced a flask from one of the many pockets in his monk’s outfit. “Here, citrus juice mixed with a powder, got them both from the adept. He thinks it’s for someone else, an unnamed orc.”

“Damn, you’re becoming Riedran,” the half-orc said, taking the flask. He sucked half of it down in one long swig.

“No, I just know you really well,” the warforged said. Then he continued in orc. “We’ve spent time together so that we’ve given our brother stories.”

Delegado’s eyes widened in surprise. “You became very fluent,” he responded, also in orc. “Let me get myself together and we’ll get a real tour of this place. Take my mind off Ois.” He began to take another swig from the flask.

“You can also explain sex to me again,” the warforged said.

Delegado nearly spit the juice and powder mixture out. A moment afterwards, he realized that the warforged was flexing the corners of his mechanical jaw ever so slightly.

Chapter 8 – Part 8

2009-03-26T10:07:00.000-05:00

That night, the full-blooded orcs talked to him about different things. Mostly they talked of home, and what they would do with their pay when they returned. They liked Orphan, and not just because Delegado vouched for him, and they discussed things with him freely. They’d also been told by the famous Delegado that Dancing Orphan was trying to learn their language, and this made them proud to teach it.

Orphan found other tasks to keep him busy aside from language skills. There were plenty of mundane tasks to be done, pumping water, stacking firewood, taking out trash, and sharpening weapons. The monk didn’t see any of this as beneath him, the Balanced Palm taught that such work purified both mind and body. He enjoyed being useful.

He also enjoyed the constant activity. The full-blooded orcs, which were roughly a quarter of the population at Blood Crescent, worked at night, and slept during the day. Orphan was used to being alone at night, as he did not sleep, and he enjoyed the camaraderie.

Some of the gnolls were awake at night as well, and a couple of them tried to talk to him, but they made him uneasy. They wanted to discuss the cries of pain from Orphan’s vanquished foes, expressing that they were upset that he had been too far away for them to hear.

He had little to say to such a mindset.

By the time the morning of the twelfth of Zarantyr came, Orphan had picked up a great deal of orc, and learned the names of everyone on the night shift.

The warforged was in a much better mood than he had been earlier when it came time to wake up Delegado.

Chapter 8 – Part 7

2009-03-23T09:41:00.001-05:00

Ois left that night on the Lyrandar ship. Now wearing the form of a half-elf, she approached the captain as the crew was unloading supplies, and they softly haggled over price. There was no bound elemental powering this ship, but it seemed seaworthy enough.

Orphan jumped down from the battlements, to the shocked oaths of a half-orc sentry that he had been practicing the orc tongue with. Lightly touching the wall as he fell, the warforged tumbled gently to the ground without the slightest scratch, and somersaulted up to Ois.

“What the Keeper –” The Lyrandar captain put his hand to a rapier, then relaxed. “Somebody ought to program this Tharashk tinkertoy that charging up at people isn’t the healthiest thing!” the half-elf captain snapped.

“So you’re leaving, are you?” Orphan asked Ois, ignoring the Lyrandar officer.

Ois looked at the half-elf, said something in elvish to him, and the Lyrandar turned and walked away, muttering deprecations about crazy golems. Once he was decently far enough away, she turned to Orphan with cold eyes.

“For someone who was going to leave me in the demon capital, you pick an odd time to care if I leave,” she said coldly.

“I care about Delegado,” he told her bluntly. “And I think you should at least say good-bye to him.”

“Go f’test yourself,” she said to him. “Take your morals, your piety, your certainty about what everyone else needs to do, drill yourself a hole, then shove them all in there.”

“Don’t tell me that you don’t care about him,” Orphan said. “Don’t tell me that you aren’t aware of what your leaving will do.”

“I’m not telling you anything,” she snapped. “You came to me, remember?”

Orphan began to realize that he’d picked the wrong tack to take with her. Belatedly he realized that his bluntness would be expected by an orc, but not by a changeling. “I know you care about right and wrong,” he pressed.

“I’ll not have a creature without a soul lecture me about right and wrong,” she snorted.

“I am alive,” he stated.

“You’re alive,” she agreed. “But that doesn’t mean you have a soul.”

He could tell she was saying what she was saying in order to get at him, to hurt him. “You obviously think I do, else you wouldn’t have tried to convert me in the Wastes,” he pointed out.

“We’re still in the Wastes,” she countered. “And I’m not trying to convert you, or anyone.”

Orphan considered this. “Ois, look, Delegado –”

“Has his extended family,” she said. “And for all of his frustrations with them, they’re what he needs. So we’re done with him needing me.”

“And what about what you need?” Orphan pressed. “You don’t need him? Really?”

“Apparently not,” she said.

Orphan looked at her, watched her eyes. She was serious, in a way. But also she was not. But then she was a trained Thranish intelligence agent, so perhaps she could fool him.

“Ois,” he said again. “Are you sure? Are you blaming him? Is that it? Like you blamed him for Droaam?”

“No, I’m not blaming him,” she said. “Now good-bye.” She turned away from him and began to walk towards the Lyrandar ship’s gangplank.

“What were you promised?” he called after her, playing a hunch.

“What?” she asked, turning around, a puzzled look on her face.

“We were all promised something to get us to go to the Wastes,” Orphan said, remembering a conversation that he’d had with Delegado while the two contemplated a flying wall of volcanic shards. “What were you promised?”

She stared at him, and for a moment he thought she wouldn’t answer. “The truth,” she finally answered.

“Of what?”

“The truth of my relationship with the Flame,” she said.

“And you found it?” he asked.

She dug into a pocket, producing the silver arrowhead holy symbol that he had seen her use. “I did,” she said.

Then she tossed the arrowhead into the water, and boarded the Lyrandar ship.

Chapter 8 - Part 6

2009-03-19T10:20:00.000-05:00

There were about fifty of the Carrion Tribesmen who came attacking. Almost all were humans, and every single one of them bores traces of disease and rot. They came over the ridges, hooting and hollering, screaming phrases in their infernal language, brandishing scavenged armor, stone axes, and crude spears.

The first three died within seconds, not knowing what had happened. The next five weren’t killed, their legs were broken instead, and they fell forward, tripping the ones behind.

The warforged had been hiding under a thin layer of cold sand, and was now twirling and punching, kicking and fighting. The thing made of stone, wood, and metal bounded forward and back, fists and feet crunching bones, breaking heads, and otherwise causing havoc and mayhem.

The plague-infested tribesmen had been promised nirvana by their leader. The hag was persuasive, controlling their minds, telling them magnificent lies. Her entire intention was to deplete Tharashk’s arrows and to test their defenses. Maybe even actually get close to one of the Defenders of Blood Crescent and infect the place.

They didn’t even get within decent longbow range. The warforged who had been hiding was destroying them. He moved faster than them, bounding forward and back, striking with impunity. The few times someone managed a swipe at him, he easily avoided it, as if he anticipated the strike before it was made.

It took five minutes, maybe six, and then entire group lay dead or dying. Orphan stood among them, looking them over.

He supposed he should have pity. Maybe when he got back to civilization. For now, if it came from the Wastes, especially if it worked for one of the fiends, he had none.

He waited another few minutes, his head turning, trying to spot the hag. Something in him wanted another fight.

He saw nothing but the Wastes.

Finally he turned, jogging back faster than a horse could run. Delegado met him at the gate.

“Feeling better?” the half-orc asked him.

“No,” Orphan said. “You?”

“Nope,” Delegado said. He stepped back, and a half-orc adept stepped forward to paint Orphan’s bloody hands and feet with a disease-purging laminate. “But a whole lot of other people are feeling better.”

Orphan was puzzled, but once the adept was done, the warforged stepped through the narrow entryway into the courtyard of the main compound of Blood Crescent. There he saw a mass of orcs, humans, half-orcs, and even gnolls.

And when they saw him, they let forth a tremendous cheer, hooting and yelling words in orcish.

“They’re calling you ‘Dancing Orphan,’” Delegado said, clapping his arm around the shoulder of the stunned warforged.

“Um, thank you,” Orphan said to them. “Thank you, but, wow, I was glad to help.”

“Say ‘Deh’g’nad,’” Delegado instructed.

“Deg – nahd,” Orphan said, stumbling over the word. Several of the orcs laughed.

“I’ve got to teach you more orcish,” Delegado chuckled. He hollered something and the Tharashk warriors ran forward to carry Orphan around on their shoulders.

Chapter 8 - Part 5

2009-03-16T11:18:00.000-05:00

Iron Orphan found himself feeling oddly relaxed. The Tharashk outpost was bristling with weapons and soldiers, and Foallus was watching him like a hawk – albeit a hawk with a pleasant demeanor, but this was nothing compared to the tense stress that he had been under since he’d entered the Wastes so many weeks earlier.

Ois was anything but. She still wore the human woman guise, marked with the scar that never left, no matter what form she took, but she kept her eyes on the floor, and her fingers clasped and unclasped around her sword hilt. The Tharashk soldiers considered her the lesser threat, however. The ones passing by stared at the warforged and whispered to one another.

“I’m not sure what you mean about lattices,” Foallus said. Orphan had taken him for a wizard, but apparently Delegado’s cousin’s spells were inborn things, not from study. Orphan’s headband gave him a greater understanding of Foallus’ magic than Foallus had.

Of course Foallus could summon bolts of lightning that could fry demons, and Orphan could not. Foallus was a doer, not an understander. It was a very orc-like trait, the warforged decided.

“Structures of magic, waiting to be tapped,” Orphan explained. “Sometimes magic is there, just waiting to be ordered. And sometimes it’s already ordered, but it needs shaping.”

“But you aren’t a spellcaster,” Foallus asked, curious.

“Hm, no,” Orphan said. He tipped his head, trying to get the entire conversation that was going on behind Baruk’s door.

“He’s a monk,” Ois said suddenly.

Orphan turned to stare at her in shock. Foallus reacted first however, with a suaveness that belied the orc side of his family. “My Lady, may I ask who you are, to be plucked from the Wastes by one of our best hunters, and his warforged…monk?”

“I’m someone who found something,” Ois said. “I found what I was looking for, and I wish I hadn’t. So I don’t think I fit in here, do I?” Her eyes were rimmed red.

Orphan was shocked by the raw emotion in Ois’ voice. Even for what she had been through, she seemed so despondent, very different from the confident paladin.

The door to Baruk’s office opened, and Delegado emerged, laughing at something the Tharashk commander had said. “Hey Orphan,” Delegado called out. “Let’s you and me show these fellows how to wipe out some fiend-worshippers, eh?”

Chapter 8 – Part 4

2009-03-13T10:20:00.001-05:00

Delegado knew he was in for trouble when he sat down across the battered desk from Baruk. The steely-eyed half-orc looked unpleasant, tough, rigid…but not surprised.

“You’re going to Yrlag,” the commander of Blood Crescent said bluntly.

Delegado pursed his lips, and then sighed. There weren’t too many people who could speak to him that way…and they were all high-ranking members of his House. This is why I stay away from the Marches. “You want to tell me why these are your first words to me?” Delegado asked. “You want to tell me that, Baruk? Or did my sister not give you permission?”

The green skin of the other half-orc didn’t flush, and his eyes didn’t twitch. “Tatyanna doesn’t give me orders, Longbow,” Baruk said, using an old childhood nickname of Del’s. “I answer to the Triumvirate. Thought you knew that.”

Del ground his tusks. “Thought you knew Tatyanna is the one who called me Longbow because she didn’t me to have my sword.” He was trying to hold in his temper but not succeeding. “My father’s sword. My father who I found, a prisoner in the Wastes.”

“I’m not responsible for Bartemain getting taken!” Baruk snapped, finally showing some emotion.

“Didn’t show well on you though, did it?” Del noted. “And the thanks I get is what – being treated like a naughty child who can’t go an play?” His voice was rising.

“Keep it down, we’re not putting on a show for your friends down the hallway,” snorted Baruk. “I’m boss here, and I can’t let these thugs see me weak before you, got it?”

“You think they don’t know?” Del said. Baruk had kept Ois and Orphan out of this little sit-down, but as sure as an ogre slept in his own waste, the warforged could hear every word. “I’m sponsoring the warforged into our House, by the way.”

“Like I give a sh’pash?” Baruk asked. “My job is keeping the profit moving out of here. My job does not allow for you to come here and argue with me. I have Khyber shards and narstones to harvest. I have crews to keep in line. I have a ledger sheet that has to justify the cost here. I’ve got no time for your emotions. The Triumvirate says that you go to Yrlag, so you go to Yrlag. Your pet warforged want to go somewhere else, or that lady you picked up – who the Medani sensors identify as a changeling, if you didn’t know – I don’t care. They came get on the Lyrandar supply ship that’s coming tonight and continue on to wherever it’s heading.” Baruk exhaled slowly, then inhaled even more slowly. “But you are going to Yrlag.”

Del looked at him. They stared at each other for over a minute.

Del broke first. “So, you gonna tell me why?”

“Null contract,” Baruk said.

“What?” Delegado said, blinking.

“Null contract, you heard of it?” Baruk asked.

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” Delegado said.

“Null contract is when somebody pays for an agent of a dragonmarked house to not do anything,” Baruk explained. “It’s mostly used when someone wants a Thuranni contract killer to stay out of the game for a bit, or a Phiarlan agent, or someone. The price is very high. The last I heard of it, some ten years back Karrnath paid Jorasco’s best healer to stay out of Mror for six months. They were trying to send the dwarves a message.”

“Who paid for my null contract, and for how long?” Del asked.

“You have a greater dragonmark now, don’t you?” Baruk asked.

“You’re not answering my question.”

“You think I know the answer.”

“I think you know more than you’re telling.”

Baruk finally cracked a smile. “I always do.”

Delegado leaned back and put his dirty, booted feet atop Baruk’s desk. It was hard as stone. Word in the House was it was carved out of a demon’s bones or something. It sure wasn’t wood. “Don’t play Phiarlan with me, commander. We’re the people born from nature’s strength, not snippety woodfey. Tell me what you know.”

“Breland,” Baruk said. “I’m not supposed to know, but I do. Breland paid for a sixty-day null contract on you at a greater dragonmark rate. When you were supposed to be dead. Not one diviner could find you. And Breland drops a ton of cash on a null contract, stating that if you showed up, you were to be kept within a hundred miles of the Shadow Marches. The null contract is paid through and including the first of Ollarune.”

Delegado blinked. “Are you – are you kidding me? What the Mabar for?”

“I was hoping that you could tell me,” Baruk said. “Now if you weren’t dead, how come nobody could find you?”

“I was outside of time,” Delegado explained.

Now Baruk blinked. “What?”

“I don’t understand it either,” Delegado sighed. “I came here on a ship captained by a fiend who isn’t evil, drives something called the Crimson Ship. He got us off the beach when we thought we were dead. A half-daelkyr screwed around with the Crimson Ship and shot us forward a month or so.”

Baruk rubbed his eyes. “I got less than half of that. And what I got tells me the fiends want you, and I get enough attacks on this outpost as it is. You are definitely on the next ship to Yrlag.”

“Medani,” Delegado said.

“What?”

“Medani. Who else would Breland listen to and drop a bundle like that?”

Baruk snickered. “Yeah, that was my first thought. Second was the Dark Lanterns. Ahh, f’test it.” The other half-orc reached into a drawer and pulled out a bottle and two cups. “Gnoll whiskey. Usually it’s horrible, this time it came out okay.” He poured a cup and handed it to Delegado.

Del took the cup, understanding that with this, Baruk was telling him the business was over, and that he wasn’t trying to treat Del like one of his soldiers. “So, while I’m waiting on the next boat that’s bound to Yrlag, what do you let the fellows do for fun here?”

“We expect a small horde of come Carrion Tribe folk to swarm attack us in a few hours,” Baruk said. “A local hag is testing our defenses with her dumber worshippers. Your warforged any good?”

Delegado smiled. “You want a wager?”

Chapter 8 – Part 3

2009-03-09T08:51:00.000-05:00

The approach to the docks was unheralded, to say the least. The Captain had taken the staff that Oalian had given to Thomas, and conjured up a fog so thick that it was nearly solid. Orphan considered this the least of the staff’s powers, but he also understood that the Captain wasn’t quite as good at manipulating magical devices as Thomas had been – the fiend’s command of the Crimson Ship notwithstanding.

And so they disembarked. Delegado and Feather first, the half-orc stepping carefully down the plank, their bags on his back and the body of Bartemain in his arms. Ois followed him by several feet. Her armor’s glamer was currently disguising itself as simple mail, and she presented the face of a simple human woman. Gone from the casual eye was any indicia of the Silver Flame.

Iron Orphan thought that Ois’ disguise would merit hiding the Flame insignia, but he suspected something deeper was at play.

The warforged came last. He didn’t descend the gangplank, but instead chose to jump and tumble, though he could scarcely see the dock. It was a fun challenge, but what was more fun was telling the Captain that he would be back one day. The Captain’s response was to snort and throw Oalian’s staff at the monk.

A fine quarterstaff, Orphan thought to himself, whistling it through the air as he moved to stand next to Delegado. “I hear people ahead,” he whispered to the half-orc.

“Yep,” Delegado said.

The trio stood in silence for a moment, and felt rather than saw the Crimson Ship slip away in the fog. Then a breeze stirred, and the fog moved. It was a minute, maybe two, and the fog suddenly vanished.

Many sets of eyes blinked at the sudden morning light, what little came through the thick clouds. The Crimson Ship was gone, and to the casual observer, the warforged, the half-orc, and the ‘human’ woman had appeared with the fog.

Of course the observers were not exactly casual. The dock was nestled in between two high walls, with iron-reinforced firing positions, and many were the longbows, crossbows, and other weapons pointed their way. At first casual scan, Orphan saw thirty armed individuals, mostly human and orc, but not a few gnoll, and even an ogre ready to toss down a barrel with a lit fuse sticking out of it.

None of them were particularly friendly.

“Czharr’kann!” bellowed Delegado. Orphan had picked up enough orc to know that Delegado was demanding their attention. “I am Delegado of the United House! I have been to the far ends of Khorvaire, and I have found many things!”

Here he paused, and raised his burden high above his head.

“I have found what you in Blood Crescent have lost!” the half-orc bellowed. “I have found the body of my father, Bartemain!”

There was a stir, and the double iron doors at the other end of the docks opened wide. Full-blooded orcs with long, curved blades came out, then stood to the side as a majestic human male with striking features, salt-and-pepper hair, and a flowing ermine cape strode forward. A raven rode his shoulder and appeared to whisper briefly into his ear. The man wore no armor and carried no visible weapon, but Orphan saw flashes of light at his fingertips and knew that this man carried magical power.

And his features looked somewhat familiar.

“Cousin?” asked the man in the cape. “Can it be?”

“It can, Foallus, and it is,” Delegado said. “I bear the body of your uncle, my father, retrieved from the fiends. Now take my companions and I to Baruk, he needs the tale first.”

Chapter 8 – Part 2

2009-03-05T10:56:00.000-06:00

About two hours before the Crimson Ship came into the narrow docks of Blood Crescent, Delegado had come to visit with him.

“Can you even see anything in here?” the half-orc asked, letting Feather flit off of his shoulder to find a crate to perch on.

“A little, there is some ambient light,” the warforged told him. He could tell that Delegado was looking to get his head involved in something other than a changeling paladin.

A changeling paladin who was a rape victim.

“My mother’s people can see in the dark,” Delegado said. “So can gnolls. There may be others at Blood Crescent, there’ll certainly be my father’s people. Might be some warforged. Figured I’d best get you briefed on what we’re walking into.”

“Might be your people, but it’s still the Wastes, so you want me to be as prepared as possible,” Orphan stated. “I’m listening for every detail.”

“Good man,” Delegado said. “Alright, the gnolls are hired mercs from Droaam, we have the choice of muscle since we’re the broker. The gnolls are archers, we’ve been training them to hunt the fiends. Given the enemies we’ve made in the past month – or months – or whatever the Khyber happened when we went out of time – I plan to pick up on some of that training myself.”

“Walled compound, compound longbows almost as strong as yours, range beating numbers?” the warforged monk guessed.

“Right.” Delegado flashed a grin when he was quoted, but aside from that he was all business. Orphan knew why. The half-orc hated the fact that Thomas had forced Delegado’s forgiveness before the end. And Delegado hated knowing that Ois knew about that. And Delegado had to blame something for the wall that grew between him and the woman he loved, so he blamed himself.

Orphan never would understand the complex motivations that roiled from gender interaction.

At least he could engage Delegado now, get his mind off of it. “And given that different fiends have different weaknesses, this damage reduction, multiple archers on each presented target is the best way to go.”

“Right again,” Delegado stated. “That headband of yours got more to tell on that?”

“Magical fields that hold back tissue rupturing, instant rebuild from previously auto-saved information at the cellular level,” Orphan stated. “Pure metals of certain types break up the field. With some it is silver, with some cold iron, with some byeshk. Sometimes a magical or theological source of energy is needed as well. Sometimes there’s a kinetic structure along with the magical fields that requires that the penetrating trauma be blunt, piercing, or slicing. Sometimes – ”

“Okay,” snorted the half-orc. “Right. Anyway, when one of the damn things is charging the wall, you can’t worry about what’s what and figure out which one. So multiple squads with multiple arrows. Last I heard we had an artificer, were going to get more, some more soldiers and some family spell throwers.”

“We going to stay there a bit?” Orphan asked. “Run security?”

“We’ll have to wait until the next outgoing vessel that’s headed back to the Marshes,” Delegado told him. “Preferably not Yrlag, even though it’s the closest port.”

Orphan was confused. “Why not? Isn’t that a Tharashk outpost?”

Delegado sighed. “Yeah, it is. And the city administrator is my oldest half-sister.”

“The one who said you shouldn’t keep the sword.”

“Yeah.” Delegado threw a glance back down the hallway to his cabin, where his father’s body was stored. “But I have to stay with my father’s body, have to get it to the druids so that they can – undo whatever those Keeper’s whores in the Wastes did. And I don’t want her in charge of that.”

“Her father too, no?” Orphan figured he ought to tread lightly here, but he wasn’t sure why.

The half-orc nodded. “Tatyanna never did like to share.”

Orphan realized what the conversation was about. “If word comes from her to bring you and your father’s body to Yrlag, you want to jump another ship, is that it?”

The half-orc blinked. “Well…maybe. Or maybe just you, I have to answer to –” He stopped, frowning. Been too long since I had to answer to someone. When I’m in the Marches I have to. But you could carry my father’s body, jump to another ship, head the way I tell you.”

“I don’t know the Marches, Delegado,” Orphan pointed out. “I would be utterly lost. And besides, I think that the prophecy indicates that we are supposed to stay together.”

Delegado’s expression hardened. “Tell that to Ois, then,” he said, rising and storming out.

Feather stayed behind, and Orphan and the bird looked at each other in silence.

Chapter 8 – Part 1

2009-03-02T18:56:00.001-06:00

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS BROKEN

Dawn on the 13th of Zarantyr, the first wall of Blood Crescent

“Feh!” snorted the orc, squinting at the rising sun. “Dancing Orphan, you coming up here?” A blur and a soft thump, and the warforged was standing next to him.

“Get below, Mechan,” Iron Orphan said, flexing his arms. Like Mechan, Orphan spoke in orc, a language that he had learned rapidly. “Your strong axe and sharp eyes served Tharashk well this night.”

“Mechan rests his eyes from the hard light,” the orc said. “But you call, hard light or no, Mechan comes!” The orc spat over the wall onto the hard ground of the Wastes. “Don’t want to give those gnolls the glory.”

“Feh!” Orphan said, doing a passable imitation of an orc snort. “What glory can a gnoll find?”

“Heh, ‘find’!” laughed the orc. He high-fived the warforged, and Orphan managed not to stagger backwards.

As the orc went below, the warforged flexed and watched the sunrise. The colors slowly came alive on the ground, and he considered the turn of events that had brought him to this place.

Chapter 7 – Part 8

2009-02-26T10:44:00.000-06:00

The oil lamp dripped slowly as Gorka tapped the table with his fingers. The shifter intelligence chief was thinking, trying to get his mind around the loose threads in his mind.

The problem wasn’t so much a lack of information, despite the spectacular and lurid accounts in some of the broadstreets. The problem was too much of it, and trying to figure out what was important, and what was not.

A respectful tap at the door, and his aide stuck a head in. “Boss, Parnain got the changelings saboteurs, and he dropped off the gnome,” the man said.

“What shape is the gnome in?” Gorka asked.

“Battered, but nothing serious. We gagged him after we bandaged him. Do you want to interrogate him tonight or tomorrow?”

“House Orien teleporter is coming at dawn,” Gorka told his aide. “Send the gnome back with him to Sharn, and order him locked in a hot cell in the Cogs. We’re not in a hurry. Let him sweat a bit.”

The human paused for a moment. “Ah, boss, our budget only allows for so many teleports.”

“I know,” Gorka said. “I’m staying here for a while, we’re sending back the gnome in my slot.” The shifter sighed. “Parnain leave either of the changelings alive?”

“No, and two of the five changeling merchants have vanished,” the aide told him. “The Wardens questioned Parnain, of course, but he was actually with them at the time of their disappearance.”

“The red-haired Medani who showed up yesterday and is probably gone now,” Gorka said. “Parnain’s cousin, you know. Wants to be like his uncle, hunts shapeshifters.”

“Anywhere near as good as Parnain?” the aide asked.

“No one is as good as Parnain,” Gorka snorted. “That’s why we put up with him, that’s why Medani sells him, and that’s why even given the sociopath that he is, he finds work.”

“I hear Tharashk has a tracker, really good one named Delegado,” the aide said. “Maybe they should go against one another. We’d sell tickets and raise our teleport budget.”

Gorka considered that for a moment. “I’d put my money on the half-orc, if it came to that,” he said. He sighed. “But even money says Delegado drew his last breath in the Demon Wastes.”

The aide blinked. “Are you – are you serious, boss?”

Gorka rubbed his eyes. “Unfortunately all too serious. There was serious potential in that half-orc boy, and now he’s likely filling a demon gullet.”

Chapter 7 – Part 7

2009-02-23T09:16:00.000-06:00

Night fell early on the 3rd of Vult, especially so in Varna, as the towering woods to the west blocked the sun before it disappeared from sight. Varna was small by Khorvaire’s standards, but as the largest populated center in the Eldeen, it did have a night life. And as a place through which armies passed, certain services were always to be provided.

“Hey baby, you want a good time?” called a young shifter woman with long hair. She wore a heavy coat to brace against the chill, but she opened the front of it to her customer at the same time as she activated her inborn shifting ability to enhance the physique that she displayed.

She was talking to a tall man with a finely cut coat of his own, polished armor, and two blades that he carried on his hips with an air of proficiency. The man paused in his even, tireless stride, and turned his blue eyes on the shifter woman. He casually turned down his hood, showing blonde hair, and sigils on his clothing with the insignia of House Medani. The look that he gave the shifter prostitute was neither aroused nor friendly.

A human woman, one with a pretty face due to cosmetics, and aged eyes, grabbed the shifter woman’s arms and pulled her back. Like the shifter woman, the human showed more of her flesh than she ought to, given the weather. “Get away from him, Honey Bear,” the human woman said. “He don’t like your kind.”

The shifter woman called Honey Bear thought for a moment, then recognition passed across her animalistic features. She covered herself quickly with her coat, and took a step back. “The one called Parnain,” she hissed. “You stay away from me!”

The blonde half-elf smiled. The smile was not warm in any way. “Honey Bear,” he said, his voice idly amused. “I’ll remember that name.”

The two prostitutes pulled back, staying under a hung lantern so that any passerby would see them. “We ain’t done nothing,” the human woman said. “You got no authority over us!”

“Never said I did,” Parnain d’Medani said, pulling his hood back up. He chuckled and turned away, continuing on his walk.

It was not a long one. He spotted the red reed tied to a wooden porch post, and turned that way down a dark alley. The starlight was sufficient for his eyes to make out a door of simple wood. And next to the door, hiding behind a stack of firewood, a mithril-plated warforged.

Parnain strode confidently to the door, acting as if he didn’t notice the warforged guard. He knocked three times with his right hand, while his left rested on his shortsword, ready to draw if necessary.

The door opened soundlessly as Parnain felt the magical wards within drop away. The interior was warm, and chairs sat around a table next to a fire. “If you’re done scaring the hookers, you can come in and we can talk business,” said a voice in flawless elvish. It came very close to an Aerenal accent.

Parnain stepped through, then whirled around, both blades out, to hold level at the neck and torso of the warforged that assumed that the half-elf hadn’t heard it move.

The warforged held its hands out, showing that it held no weapon, as if its metallic hands were not weapon enough. “This unit does not threaten the elf,” it said softly.

“Half-elf, you idiot piece of tin,” came the same voice that had spoken in elvish before. It now spoke in common. “Stay outside and keep an eye out for anyone following the Medani.”

The warforged nodded and backed up. The door shut, untouched by any hand. On this side it was banded with iron. Parnain sheathed his weapons and turned back to the direction from which the speaker’s voice had come. “You can drop the invisibility field, or this doesn’t go down,” the Medani promised.

The air rippled, and a gnome sat in the chair closest to the fire, a flute across his lap as he cleaned his nails with a dagger. “And who else would you go to, hm?” asked the gnome. “Who else can tell you how the changelings were hired by Phiarlan to kill the Thuranni who were pretending to be Phiarlan, and take their place? Who else can tell you where they are right now?”

“I know where they are,” Parnain stated. “They stay in the inn across from the fish market, on the third floor. Deneith guards provide security, so I am careful.”

“You should be,” chuckled the gnome. “They have descriptions of your face. Five changeling merchants, open changelings, who wear their wax faces, hired them when they heard Parnain d’Medani was in town. Very convenient for the changelings in House Phiarlan’s employ.”

Parnain’s eyes flashed. “I wonder who sold them that bit of information.”

The gnome laughed and laughed, tucking away his dagger so that he could clap his hands. “Oh, Parnain, you are so suspicious!”

“For good reason,” the half-elf said. “Now, since you want payment, and since I want information, and since we both know that there are two invisible thugs of yours - one a shifter, by the smell – holding loaded crossbows, I say we should get this done before someone makes a bad mistake.”

The gnome’s laughter ceased, like fire doused by water. “Well, well, well, you are no fun at all.” He reached into his tunic and threw a tied piece of rolled-up parchment at Parnain. The half-elf caught it and tucked it into a pouch without looking at it. “Don’t you want to look it over and confirm that it’s correct?” asked the gnome.

“It’s a schematic of the docks, and it shows the hidden tunnel that the two changelings have been working on, yes?” Parnain asked. “I need to check it? I can’t trust the Trust?”

The gnome snorted. “It has the name and description of the dock guard being bribed, and the name and description of the shifter agent whose loyalty belongs to Aundair and whose lycanthropic blood includes good diggers. The tunnel isn’t complete yet, but they want to act before you find them.” He smiled. “Now, you have a Kundarak bearer bond for me?”

“No,” Parnain said.

The gnome raised his eyebrows. “No?” His little eyes glanced almost imperceptibly to the left, but Parnain spotted it. The half-elf marked the location of the first invisible crossbow-holder. “We had a deal, Parnain.” The gnome’s eyes became dangerous.

“Did our deal include giving me a schematic that didn’t show the side tunnel where they planned to ambush me from, since you also sold them information about me?” Parnain asked. His voice was far too calm.

“That’s ridiculous,” the gnome said. It was a good lie, one of the best.

“They gave you a leather bag with ten emerald chips in it,” Parnain said. “And you gave them me.”

The gnome eased himself off of the chair. “Parnain, you think about these statements, you hear me? You think about the business relationship that we have.”

“You think about the fact that I have an invisible henchman here of my own,” Parnain said. “And if either of your men move to attack me, he will kill them.”

It happened fast. The gnome reached for a wand, and yelled something out. Parnain was already moving, and the paper packet that had been hidden in his palm spun through the air, bursting in the gnome’s face. The little humanoid gagged and retched, his hand spasming and the wand dropping as his eyes teared up and he fell off of the chair.

The crossbow-holder to the left became visible as he fired. He was an older human male with an eyepatch. It was an older model, with a twine crank, but it was a heavy model that fired a massive bolt. Before the bolt was halfway to Parnain, another invisibility field dropped. This revealed another half-elf, also with House Medani insignia, but with close-cropped red hair. Wearing greased leather, the Medani warrior held a rapier in both hands, and in one swift crossing motion he decapitated the crossbowman.

Parnain ignored the bolt, as the enchantment from the scroll he’d used earlier was still active, and normal missiles could not touch him. Indeed the magical field turned the bolt just so, and it bounced sideways to shatter against a wall. He slapped a plastic mask over his face as he ran forward. A Cannith artificer had made it to allow divers to breathe underwater, and to protect the diver’s eyes from pressure. It would suffice to protect him from what he’d smacked the gnome with.

The gnome was deceptively tough, like all of his people. He was stumbling clear of the small cloud of particulates that had formed around his face, and trying to get a weapon in his hand. Parnain was faster. The half-elf could fight with his fists as well as his blades. A series of punches staggered the gnome.

The other crossbow-holder decided against the gnome, and his crossbow became visible as he dropped it, the sound of his footsteps heading out of the room at high speed.

“We need to worry about the warforged?” the red-haired Medani asked Parnain.

Parnain slammed the gnome’s head into the floor an extra couple of times. “Not for a while,” he answered. “It will follow its orders as long as we don’t make too much noise.” Parnain produced manacles and began binding the gnome’s wrists behind his back. “Help me frisk this one, then we go out the front and get him to the Brelish shifter. The gentlemen with the blue tunics will pay well for him.”

“As much as we paid for the info that this short rat was double-selling us to the Phiarlan changelings?” the red-haired assistant asked, turning out potions and scrolls from the gnome’s pockets.

“I didn’t pay for that,” Parnain said. “I exchanged a favor for a druid.” The blonde half-elf hauled the bloody, filthy gnome up and tossed him over a shoulder. “This guy Aruunis has had birds and mice looking all over for him, for all sorts of stuff. He sent the info to me, told me he’d ask me for something in return down the road.”

The red-haired Medani readied his rapiers again and followed, ready to protect Parnain. “That Aruunis, isn’t he a Gatekeeper?”

“That he is,” Parnain said, kicking a door open into a foyer.

The red-haired Medani with the rapiers moved around Parnain, and tipped the front latch with one of his blades. “What the heck kind of favor would a Gatekeeper want from you?” he asked. “Aren’t they all about sealing up underground bugs or something?”

“Everyone wants something,” Parnain said. His assistant pushed the door open and they stepped out into the night air.

Chapter 7 – Part 6

2009-02-19T10:56:00.000-06:00

Pienna sat quietly in a small tavern, her back to the fire that blazed in the hearth. Missy stretched out at her feet, the big cat rumbling as it slept.

The druidess had picked at her meal, a fine vegetable stew, and now she was toying with her tea. She’d ordered it with brandy, something that was truly a rarity with her.

The tavern was not crowded, not this early in the afternoon, but none sat near her. The proprietor had taken one look at the panther when she had entered and begun to protest, but she’d handed him a ruby the size of her littlest fingernail, demanding good service and adjacent rooms, and he’d gone quiet right away.

For all I with to be disassociated from Cannith, I use its wealth when convenient, she thought to herself, taking another sip of tea. The brandy was suitable, even if she had quite obviously overpaid. She had three hidden stashes of gems and money in the Reaches, and she was dipping into one now.

The doors to the tavern opened, and an elven woman in fluttering pastels entered. She’d come in before and played a wonderfully carved flute for the lunch crowd. A stir greeted her, and she smiled at those who hoped for an encore performance from this daughter of House Phiarlan.

“Sit, flutist,” Pienna said, a bit over loudly. “I would buy you a drink.” She winced somewhat at the hollowness of it. These cloak and dagger situations were not her cup of tea.

Of course her cup of tea didn’t usually have brandy in it either.

The elven woman bowed. “Never would I refuse one so high in House Vadalis,” she said smoothly. All in one graceful motion she sat and waved for a serving wench. “Mayhap you can tell me how you came to tame such a great cat.”

Pienna waited until the serving wench had come, deposited a fine bottle of wine and two reasonably nice goblets, and gone, before she raised a sarcastic eyebrow. “Vadalis? You think anyone here thinks I am anything but a druid?”

The elven woman smiled as she poured herself a full cup. “It’s more important to me that they think I don’t know the difference.” She sipped her cup, and then drained it. “Hm, not bad. Well, this half-elf priest –”

“Gatekeeper, like myself,” Pienna interjected with irritation. This woman had received quite a bit of money, and the druidess expected her to at least get details right.

“Yes, right,” the Phiarlan woman said. “You said that he approached you because he was embarrassed, because this elven man named Aruunis had tried to recruit him to find you based on racial loyalty of some kind.”

Pienna nodded as she drained her tea. Most Gatekeepers were orcs, humans, or orc-human hybrids. Those Gatekeepers who were not of those races sometimes had cause to feel that they were looked down on. Pienna liked to believe that her order was above such petty things, but she was not naïve. Of course Aruunis had been a Gatekeeper for over a century, and if anyone should feel as if he fit in over a long time, it should be he. “Fortunately the half-elf was unnerved by such a mindset, and he didn’t care to track me.”

“He said that he would not have even tried to find you, but that you appeared in Cree,” the Phiarlan woman noted. “This Aruunis, can you tell me more about him?”

Pienna took a goblet and toyed it, wondering at the wisdom of putting wine atop brandy in her stomach. “He grew up in Karrnath,” she said. “He loves order, he’s very into law, somewhat preachy about it, like a Karrnathi. He hates undead, claims that exposure to Karrnathi practices is what lead him to become a Gatekeeper. He arrived in the Eldeen and took his oaths over a century ago. He was moving back and forth between the Eldeen and Aundair freely when the Reachers declared their independence, and he was emphatic to everyone he met that the gatekeepers should not get involved in the war.”

“But you have,” the elven woman noted.

Pienna glared at the elf, and her oak circlet glowed a bit. She had the satisfaction of seeing the woman flinch. “Are you selling me information or are you collecting it from me?”

“I am trying to understand,” the woman said, holding her hands too steady, likely because they wanted to shake. “I have heard tales of Merylsward, I do not seek to anger you.”

“Then help me understand why Aruunis is trying to track me,” Pienna demanded. “Or give me back the small fortune in gemstones that I gave you.”

“Aruunis is desperately trying to get ahold of you,” the elven woman said. “He is even putting out word with smugglers and arms runners, and he is spending a great deal of money. He hasn’t said why, but he is spending money I would not expect a druid to have, and his is desperate.”

“How desperate?”

“Desperate to use such a clumsy tactic as racial loyalty with a half-elf who admires you, and desperate enough to spend serious money contacting people who he must know are freely overcharging him. Oddly, he has not contacted my House.”

“Maybe Thuranni is giving him something more solid,” Pienna said sarcastically.

“Patience,” the woman said. “Your investment in me is not without merit.” She poured herself another cup of wine. “The money Aruunis spent caught our notice, because of where it came from.” She took another drink. “Please, dear lady, remove the scowl from your face, people will think poorly of us.” Pienna forced her face still. “He cashed in a store of Kundarak bearer bonds, some ten thousand gold pieces worth.”

Pienna was shocked. “Where on Eberron did he get that kind of money?” she asked.

“He has some family money stashed away, as you do, no doubt,” the Phiarlan woman said. “But in the past two months he has been obtaining funds, small bits, here and there, and taking them to a Kundarak banker in Varna to turn into the bearer bonds.”

“Why?” Pienna asked. According to an idle remark that she had heard, about two months ago Aruunis had disappeared briefly, and when he returned from wherever he had been, he was in a foul mood.

“We don’t know, but we do know that his wife’s estates in Fairhaven were sold shortly beforehand,” the elven woman stated, sipping more wine. “It appears as if the two of them are liquidating, but why we don’t know. It never occurred to anyone to inquire why the actions of an avowedly neutral druid should be important.”

Pienna did her best to keep her face frozen, but her thoughts were exploding like a bolt of lightning. “Get out, take the wine with you if you want,” the human druidess told the elven woman.

“Excuse me?” the Phiarlan agent asked. Then she started as a sudden, sharp pressure was felt against the base of her spine.

“Lady Pienna told you to leave,” Bresbin said. The little goblin had been seen by no one, hiding in a patch of shadow from a half-shuttered window, but he was now pressing the tip of a dagger against the elven woman’s back. “So you leave.”

Missy lifted her head at this, and casually bared her fangs.

“I see,” the elven woman said, slowly standing up. The Phiarlan agent had a reputation for playing the flute, but also for hearing soft footsteps and spotting hidden dangers. But Bresbin had clearly caught her off guard.

Some people at a nearby table were also startled by the goblin’s sudden appearance, but they quickly decided to look down at their food.

“Bresbin, sheath your weapon,” Pienna said. The goblin immediately did so. Pienna withdrew another pair of gems from her purse and tossed them on the table. “As for you, take my thanks, and this bonus.”

The Phiarlan agent took the gems with a tight mouth and exited quickly. Bresbin watched her go, then climbed into her chair. “Elf forgot her wine,” he noted approvingly, pouring himself a cup. He looked into Pienna’s eyes as he sipped. “What bothers the Lady?”

“Aruunis has never told anyone in our order that he was married,” Pienna told the goblin. Her voice sounded cold, and she struggled to control herself. “Let alone that his wife had property in Aundair.”

Bresbin sipped more of the wine. “More than a hundred years in the Gatekeepers, and he does not say that he is married?” The goblin cocked his head to one side. “No one notices?”

“We tend to be preoccupied with our duty,” Pienna said. “And we do not wear unnecessary jewelry to denote marital status.” She stood, and Missy stood with her. “Enjoy the comforts of this place as you desire, Bresbin, but do not overindulge. At first light I will cast the traveling spell, and we will be in Varna.”

Chapter 7 – Part 5

2009-02-16T09:19:00.000-06:00

“You’re three days late,” Aruunis said. The elven druid did not even look up from the maps spread forth on the table before him. The library in the Vadalis compound in Varna had but one study room, and he was occupying the whole of it.

Neddiken raised an eyebrow as he stepped into the room and shut the door. “Truly, brother dear, your woodslore has helped you hear the quietest step.”

“We are not related,” the druid told the other elf in a frozen tone. “If we were the bit of Aerenal that remains in me would require some sort of attack on your person to erase a stain on family honor.”

“That’s not funny,” Neddiken told him, eyeing the room nervously. No doubt he was wondering where the eagle was. Aruunis had no intention of letting the sneaky, double-crossing merchant know that the druid’s animal companion was not nearby. The possibility of losing an ear might keep Neddiken from lying too much.

“If you’re here, it must be for good reason, since so many people want you dead,” Aruunis said in the same frozen tone. He frowned at the map. If Pienna really was visiting seals and doing other Gatekeeper duties out of guilt, and if she really could plant-walk, she’d be hopping all over the Reaches. The stern druid was contemplating a pattern, trying to intercept her. To that effect he’d also sent out feelers to various groups, trying to find her, but they were all preoccupied with the war, not with one wandering druid.

“This is one of the safest buildings in Varna,” Neddiken noted, stepping forward cautiously, no doubt to see what map Aruunis was looking at. “House Vadalis has ties to the Aundairan Throne. The wizards across the river will blast any building but the one we are in.” Neddiken gave a nervous smile. “Maybe that’s why I’m here.”

“The village of Merylsward tends to disprove your theory,” Aruunis said. “So quit bantering. What do you have for me?”

Neddiken nodded and crept forward. “A middle-aged human woman with an oak circlet and a pet panther, appearing in three locations, hundreds of miles apart, within a few days. She’s picked up a pet goblin, which fits with what the shifter commander from the Battle of Chubat said.” He handed a sheaf of parchment to Aruunis. “Dates and locations, along with sources. Not one source knows of the other, and they all think I’m looking to use her in my smuggling operations.” A nervous giggle. “Maybe I will.”

Aruunis studied the notes, then the map. If she was moving in a pre-determined course, rather than randomly, and if he knew Pienna, it was a pre-determined course, then she’d be in Cree today or tomorrow. Pienna would be looking for clues related to her prophecy, but she was avoiding Varna. Why?

The druid lifted his head and flared his nostrils. He and the other elf stared at each other for a while.

“You have contacts in House Orien,” Aruunis finally said. It was a question, but not really. Neddiken had been known to escape just ahead of angry mobs, with none knowing how. The smuggler nodded. “Have them spread the word that you found a warforged of interesting construction, no composite plating. It is inert, very damaged, but you have reason to believe it may be valuable.”

“Then what?” Neddiken asked.

“Then I make you incredibly rich,” Aruunis said. The other elf nodded and licked his lips.

Chapter 7 – Part 4

2009-02-14T21:31:00.000-06:00

The footfalls were soft, almost too soft. Few who would have seen the short, somewhat pudgy figure in the rumpled wool coat would have credited him with such stealth. Fewer still would have heard him, or recognized him through his mundane and magical disguises. This was to his benefit, of course. Neddiken Cloudtalker was a severely hated man in the Reaches. The fact that he was still alive was a testament to his cunning.

And his resources.

A human male wearing scaled mail armor walked down the polished wood hallway, two dogs trotting behind him. He was whistling to them, and they seemed to dance as they followed him. The man’s tabard bore the hippogriff rampant in the verdant forest, but his skill with the dogs showed his membership in Vadalis more than the tabard or even his familiarity with which he walked the halls of the compound.

The shortish, pudgy figure stopped down the hall and removed his wool cap, despite the fact that the interior of the building could not fully banish the chill in the air. The removal of the cap showed swept, pointed ears, and a receding headline marked by a thin fringe of gray.

Neddiken had celebrated his two hundredth birthday over a decade previously. Given how decades earlier he had sold out every person who he’d traded with to the Aundairians, then sold out the Aundairians to the Brelish, then both of them to House Deneith, it was amazing that he was still breathing.

“Can I help you?” the human male said. His hand drifted to the sword at his side, even though the months of training with the dogs made them the more dangerous weapon. Theoretically no one unauthorized should be this deep within the compound, but there were rumors of changelings in league with dragonmarked agents.

“I’m sorry, young man, I don’t want to bother you,” said the older elf, putting his cap back on. “I’m afraid I am looking for your library, and I am fairly befuddled.”

The human looked him up and down, his suspicion slowly dissipating. “Alright, it’s this way.”

The elf followed, the slightest of smiles on his face.

Chapter 7 – Part 3

2009-02-09T11:14:00.000-06:00

“Missy, heel!” Pienna commanded impatiently. Her loyal companion had obviously found a fish or something, and was hissing and spitting as she reached a paw down into a small gap in the docks to swat at whatever it was. The cat’s sudden lunge and bared fangs was scaring the wits out of the sailors and making Captain Notak very nervous.

“Mistress Pienna,” the human male said, mopping his brow with a handkerchief, “I really wish I knew more, but I do not. I appreciate your coin, but I must direct the loading and unloading, else my best sailors will become ill with venereal disease and bad wine.”

She waved her hand, not really wanting to hear any more about the carnal desires of Notak’s men. Thankfully he silenced himself abruptly. “I thank you for your help,” she said, bowing her head. It wasn’t much for the two dozen pieces of gold she had spent, but perhaps the lack of knowledge was a good indication as to where they weren’t yet.

The Captain bowed back, eager to get back to hiding the contraband from Breland within larger boxes of innocuous goods. He didn’t only hear ‘whispers or words’ from Breland due to sharing stories in a tavern.

She snapped her fingers and Missy sprung up, her paw rather wet, and they headed down the docks back to the town. It was not a long walk, barely a hundred yards. The locals considered it a long walk. She did not. As much as she liked Cree, she had more global concerns.

She found herself remembering an animated bridge-laying wagon that her house had built when she was a child. First it had been used to enable river crossings, then crevasse crossings, and then finally to smash several platoons of Brelish infantry into smears of dead flesh. The metal extensions that it laid out, when fully put together, were half-again as long as this pier.

She’d hated it, seeing so much worked metal being used to end life, and end it so horribly. The Cyran general who’d watched the demonstration had been so gleeful at the carnage. She’d known then that House Cannith was not for her.

She abruptly found herself free of her reverie as a half-elf approached her. He was a druid, and he bore the insignia of her order. She seemed to remember his name. He was nervous, and the squirrel on his shoulder, his animal companion, danced on one shoulder with empathy.

“Sister Pienna,” he asked, as if there was another druidess with a panther by her side in the small town of Cree. He stammered a bit as she fixed him with a stare that was perhaps more determined than she meant it to have. “I – I have been sent to – to find you.”

“By whom?” she asked, stroking Missy’s neck.

She knew the answer before he told her.

Chapter 7 – Part 2

2009-02-08T11:11:00.001-06:00

The area before the Cree docks was a noisy one. The four main piers jutting outwards into Lake Galifar, as well as the smaller, homemade planks for the local fisherman, spanned almost a quarter mile of beachfront. In that area were sailors hooting at local prostitutes, fishmongers and salesmen hawking their wares, constables blowing whistles that most everyone else ignored, supervisors yelling at laborers, gulls squawking, bootblacks and pickpockets plying their trade, and a local town official snarling at a gnome bearing copies of the Korranberg Chronicle that he was supposed to come by every Mol and Zor, blast it, and he wasn’t interested in excuses about overworked barristers!

Of the four main piers, the middle two were the longest and strongest, sitting atop regularly spaced humps of earth and stone raised by some long-ago druid with a civic bent to her nature. It was against them that the larger barges and sailing ships docked. Of course given that Cree barely had more than twelve hundred people, some two hundred of which were transient soldiers heading north to fight Aundair, these were docks that could fall in next to any port in the Five Kingdoms without being noticed as anything more than a pedestrian walkway.

Still, at the end of the southmost long pier was a ship, and in front of that ship were a group of people, and one large panther. Most of the people were attending to the loading and unloading of the ship in question, a vessel known as Smooth Sailing. Even in Cree, where sailors braved the trip across the lake rather than hug the shores, the captain was rumored to be something of a lunatic when it came to taking risks.

The woman speaking to him was a druidess, the great cat at her feet that scared the dockworkers made that clear. What wasn’t clear was what she wanted. Passage? A certain cargo?

One individual trying his best to find out was silently swimming under the docks. A shifter, he was one of the few born from an aquatic lycanthropic heritage rather than a land-based one. This made him a somewhat isolated figure. His isolation was also compounded by the fact that he was heavily addicted to certain narcotics.

And his supplier of said narcotics, a human trader of House Orien who had thinly disguised loyalty to Aundair, had given him instructions that he had better follow if he wanted to lick his precious powder ever again.

“I’ve not seen anything like that,” a voice rumbled. It was the human sailmaster with nine fingers. “I would tell you if I could, Mistress, I would.”

“I do appreciate your input,” the human woman was saying. A gull cried and drowned out the rest of her words. The shifter flicked his feet, using his inborn powers to extend vestigial fins to a useful length, catching the wood pilings sunk into the earth mounds with his hooked nails to pull himself silently through the water.

He was almost underneath them now. The nine-fingered man was talking about warforged of different designs that he had heard of, and the human druidess was asking something about half-orcs. The thudding of feet overhead picked up, drowning out their words.

The shifter swam forward just a bit more, coming close to a fist-sized gap between planks. He turned his head, squinting and trying to grasp words amidst the noise.

A great paw, claws extended, reached down and ripped half of his face off. In shock he let go of the piling and found himself swallowing water into his lungs.

Forgive the delay

2009-02-03T11:03:00.002-06:00

I've been busy at work, and while the next set of story sections are written, I'm not happy with them, so I hope you'll forgive the delay on account of getting a better product at the end.

I plan to publish two story sections on Thursday, and hopefully a bonus on Sunday, and then back to regular Monday and Thursday posting.

UPDATE: I got hit with a horrible head cold, sorry, will be posting in a moment.

Chapter 7 – Part 1

2009-01-30T12:55:00.002-06:00

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY, ENEMY FRIEND DANGER ALLY

The Town of Cree, in the Eldeen Reaches, on the third day of Vult, 993 Y.K., in the mid-morning.

The first impression that customers got of the station was one of tidiness. There was not a speck of dust to be found, and the multitudes of cubbyholes and shelves were uniformly maintained. Each had just the right amount of wood polish, and the ones that held messages had the papers tied with the same exact length of ribbon, and each was inserted at exactly the same angle.

The Speakers Guild office may have been in the rustic town of Cree, but its standards were uniform across the continent. The gnomes actually competed at being fussier than one another.

To the left of the entryway was a long, low counter, meant for smaller folk, and to the right was a higher, human-sized counter. A large clock hung over the gate that joined the two counters. The markings on the clock were words in the gnome language for numbers, and each hand bore a stylized etching of a bird with leathery wings – a cockatrice, symbol of House Sivis.

A gnome in a long-tailed tuxedo stood precariously atop a tall stool of polished pine. The stools feet ended in tiny balls of elemental air that allowed it to rise up and down, slide sideways, or rotate clockwise. It was supposed to also rotate counter-clockwise, but the artificer who had last ‘fixed’ it had been in a rush, and as he was the office supervisor’s second cousin, no one was allowed to mention that little flaw. The gnome in the tuxedo had mentioned it. He was new. Now he was examining every square inch of the upper shelves for dust – and woe betide him if there was any to be found.

The bell over the door jingled, and the gnome turned to see who the visitor was. Or he tried to, since he first attempted to turn counter-clockwise. In any event, only a second or two passed before the gnome realized who was before him.

A humanoid of about three feet in height, plus or minus a few inches, came trundling through the door on feet that barely made a sound. It was a goblin. He was of a size with the gnome on the flying stool, but there the similarities ended. The gnome had carefully styled and greased hair, and perfectly trimmed mustaches. The goblin had a shaved head – or so it seemed, since a soldier’s leather helmet covered most of the things pate. A rough shadow around the jaw said that the goblin wasn’t much for shaving, either. The gnome had a fancy, long-tailed tuxedo, with shining brass buttons, and boots that gleamed. The goblin had ragged clothing, leather armor over a tunic so worn and stained its original color was only a guess. The gnome smelled faintly of cologne, and bathed at least three times a week. The goblin smelled of living in the woods. The gnome had a bearing of intelligence and decorum (or so he thought, from his practicing a professional demeanor in front of a mirror), but the goblin looked like it could barely string a paragraph of nouns together.

“We have no available lavoratories,” the gnome said huffily, sliding the stool so that it hovered above the counter to the left of the entryway. He enjoyed towering over the filthy creature. “And we do not encourage solicitors, beggars, or loiterers! Be gone, then!”

“Huh?” blinked the goblin.

The gnome sighed. “We are a message station, and we are not for –”

“Brezzy send message here?” the goblin asked, pulling out a bag and emptying some coins on the polished counter. Four silver coins, three coppers, and two gold galifars rolled out.

“Yes,” the gnome said, re-evaluating the creature. “You are someone’s servant?” The goblin nodded, a stupid smile spreading across its face. “Well then, you want a message sent I expect.” The gnome reached down and scooped up all of the coins. The idiot thing was over-paying, and there was no need to let it know that. “You have just enough here to use our dragonmarked agent here, he possesses a least mark, so it will travel at a mile a minute, it may take some day for the message to arrive. Where and to who, then?”

“Sharn,” the goblin said. The little wrinkled humanoid squeezed its eyes shut, concentrating so hard that its fangs slipped from its lips. The gnome shivered in revulsion. Even shifters were more civilized. “Ummmm…ummm…yeah!” The goblin’s eyes snapped open. Homer the half-orc! With Tharashk. Have to tell him about prospecting!”

“Ah, you found a mine, lovely,” the gnome said. “There are many Sivis stations in Sharn, which one –”

“Cogs,” the goblin said.

“Ah.” There was only one station in the Cogs. The deepest underbelly of Sharn invited all sorts of disreputable types. Likely this Homer fellow was looking for a private strike that he wouldn’t have to share with the rest of his House. No matter, not Sivis’ concern. “What’s the message?”

The goblin fumbled in another pouch, and finally drew out a nugget of some kind. The goblin turned it over, showing a spiraling pattern of quartz on the bottom of the nugget. “Describe this to Homer, yes? Homer will say if this is good value?”

The gnome barely kept from rolling his eyes. The idiot gnome had found pyrite! Fools gold! And it was attached to a geode of simple quartz! No doubt the filthy creature thought it was a dragonshard! “I will gladly describe it,” the gnome said.

“Get the pattern exactly right?” frowned the goblin.

“Exactly right,” said the gnome. He took a blank sheet of paper, produced a pen that conjured its own ink, and scribbled down a short message. The he looked up. “You can go now,” the gnome said. The goblin nodded, took his nugget back, and padded out of the station. The bells rang, and the door opened and closed, and the thing was gone.

The gnome shook his head, sniggering at the fool goblin, even as he cast a minor spell that cleaned the floor where the goblin had been standing.

An hour later the gnome was done inspecting the shelves and cubbyholes, and an hour after that the gnome with the least dragonmark of scribing came in, read the description, and sent it into the speaking stone. Twenty-two hours later the message arrived in Sharn, in the Cogs station.

And the following day, a changeling spymaster who carried great rank within the Dark Lanterns (a changeling who frequently pretended to be Homer the half-orc of House Tharashk), read the message, and passed the meaning of the nugget’s description on to King Boranel’s chief adviser. Bresbin Delavane was alive, and he was with Pienna.

Chapter 6 – Part 5

2009-01-26T09:48:00.001-06:00

“So we are one day out from Blood Crescent,” Orphan said again.

“Yes,” the Captain replied patiently, holding the ship’s wheel steady. In the two days since the warforged had woken, he’d asked the Captain the same series of questions in different ways, trying to find a lie. The fiend, who according to Ois really wasn’t evil after all had patiently answered some, and ignored others.

“We appeared back in time in the year 994?”

“You call this day the tenth of Zarantyr, yes,” the Captain said. Again. “Thomas caught me off guard due to Delegado’s arrows, and the ship’s ability to move reality around itself suffered. We jumped out of time. We barely made it back.”

“You think someone opened a window.”

“I think someone left me a beacon. Maybe it is one of your gods.” The Captain seemed totally uninterested in how they had all survived. “I don’t care. I do care that in less than 24 hours you will all be off my ship.”

“How did you find us?” Orphan asked. The Captain ignored him. It was one of the questions that would not be answered. Similarly the captain had ignored requests about why, if he was so connected to waterborne travel, he did not worship the Traveler. The Captain spoke little about himself, merely stating that like all fiends he was trapped by his nature, but that he had chosen a nature of travel rather than evil or good, and that he had made his peace with the dragons long ago. “It’s because you are attracted to conflict, right?”

“It is my price,” the Captain said. “One that my passengers usually pay. I am not used to being a combatant.”

“Of course,” Orphan said. “And you think that the fiends of the Wastes think us dead?”

“For now,” the Captain said. “Doubtless they were looking for you when we jumped through time, and doubtless they concluded that you were dead. They will know eventually, and one day they will seek revenge on you, have no doubt of this.”

“Joy,” Orphan said. “We were in their city, you know.”

“You told me,” the Captain said sarcastically. “And I wish that you had not. I prefer not to know. I refused to participate in the building of Ashtakala, and I really do not wish to hear about it at all. Please stop.”

Orphan considered this, quickly running through the index in his mind. He’d gotten used to the headband, and realized that its potential was enormous. It seemed to add to his natural level of perception and intuition, and to expand his monk abilities, even as it functioned as a great library for all things arcane or religious. He had no idea how much knowledge it held, but he was getting better at accessing it.

“What do you want to know?” Orphan asked. “I would feel better if I traded knowledge for knowledge with you, to repay your generosity.”

“Quit trying to flatter me,” the Captain replied. “You have not the gift for it.” Orphan heard that, but he waited there. Something told him that this time the Captain would give, if only somewhat. The wait was a long one, nearly an hour. Orphan stood next to the Captain, watching, waiting. The Captain watched the sea as the sun began to sink to the horizon behind the Crimson Ship. Whispers of conversation between Delegado and Ois, who were at the other end of the ship, sometimes drifted forward.

Orphan thought about those two. Both were in great pain. Both would not talk if he was around. Ois would not let Delegado touch her, or come in her cabin. Orphan had heard both weeping in the late of the night. He hadn’t meant to, but he had. He now spent his nights on deck, usually alone. Feather stayed below, comforting his master, and guarding the body of Delegado’s father. Orphan did not know what to say, so he stayed away. At least everyone seemed fully healed and mobile now.

The only company that Orphan had was in the one-sided conversation with the Captain. Most of the ship was off-limits to passengers, so if there was any other crew the monk did not know of them. This left Orphan quite alone when the captain went below decks (presumably to sleep, but who knew for sure).

“Alright,” the Captain said finally. “I will answer one question of yours, then I will ask a question of you, and then you will go below decks to the storage room that I allow you all to use until we dock. Do we have a deal?”

“Yes!” Orphan said. “Hm, one question. Very well, do you know, other than a sense of territory, what the fiends were trying to protect by keeping Bartemain prisoner?”

“The fiends have never been very united,” the Captain told him. “And less so now that you disrupted the plans of the one who sought to get the rod of power from the ghost of the coutal Sentry. They are convinced that some of their own number smuggled you in, and now their plans have slowed down tremendously.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” accused the warforged.

“You didn’t understand my answer,” the Captain replied. “And your question implied that the fiends themselves know why they always do things, did it not?” As Orphan considered this he asked his own question. “Tell me, new body for an old soul, what is it like to be touched by prophecy every day?”

“Are you referring to my actions based on what the halfling sorcerer told me?” asked Orphan. “As I told you when I was trying to interest you in our origins –”

“And as I told you, I don’t want to know all that,” interjected the Captain harshly. “Just answer my question.”

“My answer would be ‘I do not know,’ quite honestly,” the warforged responded.

“That tells me more than you know it does,” smiled the Captain. “Now get below.”

Orphan studied the fiend, then turned and went below. He looked briefly at Delegado and Ois, noting their pain as he went down the stairs.

The darkness of the storage room comforted him as he wondered how one healed a broken spirit.

Chapter 6 – Part 4

2009-01-22T07:51:00.000-06:00

The cold was his succor. He would return. He would.

A small piece of him, the smallest piece that there could be, no bigger than a river trout, wiggled its way down into the depths. Unable to see, it could nonetheless trace the eldritch energy of its anchor source.

He moved quickly. The crimson Ship was far behind. The dead half-daelkyr and his thrice-damned axe were far behind. He would return to the place of cold, rebuild himself, and then alert the fiend lords that the intruders to their lands had survived after all.

He would survive again, he would!

Something large loomed ahead. He sent his senses ahead and detected cold, but not his cold, not a friendly cold.

“And there you are,” said a deep voice, first in Draconic, then in Aquan.

He turned to flee, he could not. The white dragon druid was faster underwater than he was in his present form.

Her jaws caught him, and then he knew no more.

Chapter 6 – Part 3

2009-01-19T09:04:00.002-06:00

Delegado hid behind the mast as the beam of cold went by. It looked similar to minor frost rays that he’d seen student mages cast at enemies, but this one was thicker, and its very passage sought to stiffen muscles. The Cold Mage had come out of the water blasting spells in a spread, hoping to catch the half-orc.

But Delegado had lived most of his life in wildernesses where the slightest change in sound meant life or death. He’d heard the Cold Mage return, and fired an arrow before dodging.

The Cold Mage had been hurt, but had kept flinging round balls of ice. Unlike the explosive cold balls fired earlier, these were shot at the deck to make little squares of slippery ice. Clearly the Cold Mage was intent on boxing in his prey.

“Screw that,” Delegado muttered, waiting for the whistle he’d used to have an effect. Feather had been sent out earlier to scout around the Crimson Ship, to find something, any reference point. The hawk needed the air after the reality-twisting that they’d all gone through, anyway. Now the bird was about to return.

Time it, Delegado thought. He knew his animal companion. He carefully fit two arrows to the bow and listened.

The Cold Mage let out a startled oath. Delegado jumped around the mast and fired, noting with satisfaction that Feather was trailing water from his talons. The hawk had caught the Cold Mage off guard and distracted him. Delegado’s arrows fired. The Cold Mage’s shield broke one apart, and diverted the path of the other, but the second arrow still scraped a watery shoulder.

The half-orc had been hoping that the Cold Mage would be too distracted to return fire, or that the hobgoblin’s spell concentration would be thrown off. No such luck. A net of ice sprung from the Cold Mage’s outstretched hand, flying quickly towards Delegado.

And it was cut open but a thin line of fire. Snow and water fell harmlessly around Delegado.

“Take me on then!” roared Thomas, charging up the stairs from below. The deck quivered before him, shaking loose any patches of slippery ice that the hobgoblin had cast down. Delegado stared in shock. Thomas was naked, he’d shaved his ehad, he was covered in tiny cuts, and he had fresh bruises all him.

Bruises of a size and shape that Delegado had seen on those who fell before Orphan’s fists.

“What is this?” asked the Cold Mage, sneering. “A puppet?” Delegado then realized that the stormstalk was gone, and in its place were two thin quivering lengths of supple wood, apparently wood from the Crimson Ship itself, connecting Thomas to their vessel. “The Captain many tricks it seems.” He raised his hand and fired a cold ray at Thomas.

The half-dalekyr dodged, hefting his greataxe. “The Captain is not!” snarled Thomas, blood leaking from one eye, while the other one, which was swelled shut, seemed to leak tears. Dried blood also rested underneath Thomas’ nostrils and ears. More blood had traced thin lines down his torso, past scars old and new, and resting into his pubic area. Delegado fired another three arrows at the Cold Mage, trying not to think why the half-daelkyr was in the state he was in. Two arrows got batted aside, but the third sank into the Cold Mage’s thigh.

“I will have this ship!” gasped the Cold Mage, diving off of his pedestal back into the water, presumably to heal.

“The ship is mine!” Thomas growled. He extended a hand, and waves of something rippled the air. Red lines appeared around the Cold Mage, stopping his fall. The Cold Mage growled, and extended his own hands, slapping away the red lines with his own lines of blue. Sparks flew where they touched.

Delegado fired two more arrows, then ducked behind the secondary mast. The Cold Mage howled in pain as he was struck in the torso and then the face. The second arrow shattered the icy nose, and remained half-lodged in the hobgoblin’s skull.

Thomas grunted, and his hand shook. A fingernail fell off, and more of his blood spilled on the deck. The red net was touching the Cold Mage’s skin now, making the hobgoblin snarl with pain. Slowly the Cold Mage was being drawn closer, until he was right by the railing. At this point the blue lines thickened and redoubled themselves.

Delegado fired another arrow, but the flashing energy between the conjured red and blue lines shattered it before it could touch the Cold Mage.

Thomas grabbed his greataxe in both hands and pointed the end at the Cold Mage. “Do I finish him, then?” he asked the half-orc.

“What?” Delegado asked, shocked. “Keeper’s arse, yes!” The half-orc could see the Cold Mage straining. Behind the electrical arcs it was apparent that the hobgoblin was working his way free, planning on dropping back into the water where he could heal, and then return.

“I can tap no more from the Crimson Ship,” laughed Thomas. “Else I undo the repairs below. You can’t shoot him. His magical fields prevent almost any weapon from harming him, stopping most damage. Stopping, stopping, stop, she screamed stop, I wouldn’t.” The half-daelkyr hefted his greataxe. “But this, this was fashioned by my father’s people. It hurts goblinkind. This water-merged wizard, he won’t survive it.”

“Then use it!” snapped the half-orc. Delegado fired two more arrows, but the half-daelkyr’s assessment was correct. They pained the Cold Mage, but they did not kill him. The hobgoblin was even now oozing out of the net of red lines. “Do something!”

“Only if you forgive me,” Thomas sighed. “Only then, yes?”

“What?” Delegado said. “Fine! Forgiven! Kissy-kissy!” The half-orc ran the length of the deck, dodging the few remaining icy patches, to get his sword. Adamantine had a way of cutting through anything.

The wood of the deck suddenly animated, wrapping around Delegado’s ankles, stopping him in place. The half-orc swore, and looked over his shoulder to see Thomas pointing at the entrapping wood. Beyond Thomas was the Cold Mage, now half out of the net of red, magical force.

“I mean it,’ Thomas said. “This axe of my father’s people, the daelkyr that you hate, the half of me, all of me, that you hate. Hate it so much, despite our halves. Forgive me and I use it. Refuse, and I let you both go, yes, both of you fight each other. We die.” Thomas’ visible eye was glowing with some inner light, something was happening. His face was twitching oddly, sagging a bit, half-paralyzed.

And there was something on the half-daelkyr’s privates that was an encrusted fluid, but it was not blood.

Delegado swallowed the sinking thought that threatened to overwhelm his conscious mind. Forgive him or die, said the half-orc’s survival mechanisms.

“I forgive you,” Delegado forced himself to say. “But you will never tell me what you did. I can only forgive you in ignorance.”

“I’ll take that,” Thomas said, making an odd, half-paralyzed smile. He then turned and howled himself into a primal rage, hefting his greataxe above his head in both hands as he charged the Cold Mage.

The wood wrapped around Delegado’s ankles melted back into a normal deck. The Cold Mage burst the red lines around his body away, and they melted into nothingness. The Captain lifted his head weakly.

And, howling with rage and self-hatred, the man called Thomas leaped into the air over the railing, the trailing lengths of wood attached to his neck snapping off as he cleared it. His greataxe swung with the force of his charge, and he buried it into the body of the watery hobgoblin. Both shrieked in pain. Both had their voices cut off suddenly.

Both limply hit the ocean below, but the hobgoblin’s body was in two separate pieces.

Delegado grabbed his sword, then ran back to the railing and watched the ocean.

Nothing. Just waves.

The half-orc fitted arrows to his bow and looked around, expecting the Cold Mage to return, expecting Thomas to come crawling up the side of the ship.

Nothing.

“It is over,” coughed the fiend. Delegado spun around, sighting an arrow on the Captain’s chest.

“Don’t move,” the half-orc said.

“I am trying not to,” grunted the Captain. “I am in a great deal of pain. But I do have control of my ship again. Your friend Thomas is gone, as is the Cold Mage.

Delegado stood there, trying to think. Feather flew down, landing on the half-orc’s shoulder.

“Thomas is dead?” the half-orc asked.

“He was dying when he came above decks,” the Captain said. “But yes, he’s dead.”

“And the hobgoblin?”

“The hobgoblin was a wizard who wanted immortality, but didn’t want to be undead,” coughed the Captain. “About three centuries ago he stole some magic from the gnomes of Zilargo and merged himself with elemental powers of water and cold. Unfortunately for him the process that he used involved a certain undersea portal to Risia which he could never travel more than a hundred leagues from.”

“And how do you know all that?” the half-orc asked skeptically.

“Because I took him there,” the fiend said. “Look, I am not dangerous to you. I am a creature of travel. I am a prisoner of my own nature, like all fiends, but by nature is not an evil one. I have my path and I am content with it.”

“Why’d you mind-f’test me then?” asked Delegado.

“Oh, you would have come on board without fighting me?” the Captain asked, bemused. “I was rescuing you from my admitted kinfolk, and you would have trusted me? I needed distance, I hurried you below. Didn’t think you break free of the conditioning. You’re a rare fellow, son of Tharashk.”

“Don’t flatter me,” Delegado said, his mind racing. “Is the Cold Mage dead?”

“I certainly hope so. But if he is not we should be out of his range before he can recover.” The Captain stood slowly, rubbing his back. “Do you have to point that at me?”

Delegado frowned, then lowered the weapon. “Where are we and where are we going?”

“Some three hundred miles west of the mouth of Crescent Bay,” the Captain told him. “We are now headed east, towards the Tharashk outpost at Blood Crescent. And before you ask, no I am not double-crossing you, I normally an go wherever I wish with my ship, but the Demon Wastes still has a hold on me, to an extent, and I am very worn out from the mental battle for control with your late friend the half-daelkyr. He nearly killed us all, playing with the magicks that bind this ship.”

Footsteps on the deck. “I take it that he was trying to manipulate it, and he pushed us through time,” said Iron Orphan, coming to stand beside Delegado. At this the half-orc returned arrow to quiver and bow to shoulder. Orphan’s mind was too strong for the Captain’s mind tricks. Or at least the half-orc hoped so.

“Very good,” the captain replied. “Did you know that or did your headband tell you?”

“I don’t see why I have to answer that,” the warforged responded. “And you can quit trying to read my mind. You won’t get in.”

“Habit,” the Captain shrugged, lifting his hands and then lowering them. “You are an interesting creature, I desired to know more of you. Is the changeling asleep?”

“What happened to Ois?” Delegado demanded. The rush of adrenalin had faded, and his stomach began to twist. He turned to Orphan, fear and anger in his voice. “What happened to Ois?”

“The stormstalk got loose and paralyzed her,” Orphan said. “She managed to restore me and I killed it. I ran topside to find you fighting the Cold Mage. You sent me below, and I found Thomas assaulting her. I pulled Thomas off of her, and I cleansed her and wrapped her in blankets as best I could.”

The encrusted fluid. The insistence on forgiveness. The man’s nudity. The blood. “Assaulted her how,” Delegado asked, his voice seeming to come from far away.

“Sleep now,” the Captain said. Something soft covered Delegado’s mind, and he was lost into unconsciousness.

Chapter 6 – Part 2

2009-01-16T08:42:00.001-06:00

The pain was deep, everywhere, all-encompassing. There was no retreat, no salvation, no shelter, nothing but pain. Not even the Flame touched the pain. She had been tortured by Droaam’s best, but that had been pain of the body. Not the soul. Not the mind.

He was in her. He was taking her vows from her. Her vows of chastity.

Vows that she had been planning on breaking with Delegado anyway. Was this why the Flame would not help her?

“Stop,” she rasped. She wanted to scream it. She could not. She wanted to fight him. She could not raise her arms. His pet had seen to that.

She’d squeezed her eyes shut, at least not having to look at him, to see his bleeding face, his dazed and crazed look.

His stink filled her senses. His body on top of her, crushing her, taking everything from her. Invading her. Killing her in all ways.

Tears ran freely, mixing with his sweat. He was faster now, getting ready to climax. Revulsion fileld her more, self-hatred, a desire to die, to die forever and be away from this.

Rape. A word that she had feared, but seemed applicable to others only.

Rape. She had been threatened with it once by a pair of drunks when she was very young. She had turned herself into a visage of an old crone with sores. They’d run off.

I am being raped.

If she could kill herself, she would. If she could do anything, she would. But there was only helplessness.

Only pain.

Thudding feet, air, the pressure was gone. He was off of her! A thunking sound, striking flesh. Someone else wa screaming, not just her. Someone else was in pain, not just her.

She was free. But she could not move. He was not on her, in her, anymore, but the shame and stink seared her soul to an empty insignificant powerless dot in a never-ending darkness.

She opened her eyes to help make sense of the noise.

The warforged was pummeling the half-daelkyr, his hands a blur. Thomas was jerking back and around, feebly attempting to stop the assault.

“You filthy scum!” Iron Orphan was yelling. “You filthy, disgusting scum!” She heard real rage in his voice. The warforged hadn’t even displayed such emotion when he was furious with her back in the Demon city.

“Stop!” the half-daelkyr finally gagged out between broken teeth. He sheathed himself in some crimson energy, making a shield that Orphan’s fists bounced off of. It seemed to be energy growing from the walls of the ship. “I didn’t mean to do it!”

“And Khyber never meant to be hot and dark!” snapped the warforged.

Thomas looked at her with one good eye. It leaked blood. The other was swollen shut, a gift from Iron Orphan. “I’m sorry,” he said to her.

She closed her eyes. Years of teaching wanted to force recited expressions of forgiveness and piety to her lips. But she could not. The Flame had turned from her, for only one moment of passion, one plan to seduce Delegado. There was no Flame for her here. There would be no Flame for Thomas either. Let them both die. Let her pain and shame go.

The warforged and the half-daelkyr were fighting, arguing. Something about a cold-empowered hobgoblin, and how the ship would be sunk if Thomas did not take his greataxe and get topside.

“Get out of here,” she heard the warforged snarl. She heard Thomas’ feet move.

Flame, if you are still there, have mercy and kill me! Ois had never projected such spite into a prayer, mental or spoken, but she meant it.

Strong hands picked her up as if she was a child, held her gently. Hands made of stone, wood, metal, something not flesh, but something with pity, empathy, and mercy.

“I will take you to your cabin and wash you,” Orphan said softly, carrying her. “I know that females have taboos on males touching them, but I am not really a male. I will be respectful. I promise.”

“Can’t hide the evidence from Delegado,” she whispered hoarsely. “He’ll know, he can track anything, notice the smallest clue.” She could barely get words out, but the monk heard her nonetheless.

“If Thomas does not stop the Cold Mage, we are all dead anyway,” Orphan told her. “And I have little to offer in the fight. You restored me, but my frame is very weak, very vulnerable. I can help you, though. I can at least make you comfortable.”

You can never give me back what I had, she thought, but did not say.

Chapter 6 – Part 1

2009-01-14T14:42:00.001-06:00

LET THESE WATERS PASS BY

Mid-morning, date unknown, a cold sea believed to be near the Demon Wastes.

Delegado let his sword go, and slid down the rippling, tilted deck. The ball of cold exploded, but he was already outside of the blast radius. He hit the railing, and immediately began groping for his longbow.

The cold flattened out, and frost rose from the impacted wood. Aside from an irregular circle of white, the immediate effect was to stop the rippling. Whatever magic had been trying to trip the half-orc up was gone, and the deck returned to normal.

At the other end of the main deck, the Captain rose to his knees, grabbing his head in pain. He clenched his eyes shut, and the surface of his face rippled. A clambering was heard below-decks, and the ship slowly righted itself with the sound of timbers being returned to their place. Blood sprung from the Captain’s nose and ears, and after the ship righted, he collapsed anew.

While this was happening, Orphan was jumping from mast to mast, avoiding rays of frost from the hobgoblin formed from water and ice. He threw a few shiruken at one point, but again the hobgoblin was protected by summoned water.

“I am the Cold Mage,” sneered the watery being. “Your discs of metal cannot harm me.”

“Only because they are not enchanted,” Orphan responded, running down a yardarm. He jumped into the air. “But my ki empowers my body, vessel and soul within are one!”

The wave of water came up again, but Orphan passed neatly through it, and kicked the Cold Mage so hard that water and icy teeth flew in a burst from the hobgoblin’s mouth. Immediately the chair dropped, and both water-formed goblin and warforged monk dropped into the ocean.

“Devourer spit them back!” snarled Delegado. The half-orc found his longbow and quiver, and he rushed to the side of the ship. Once in the water the hobgoblin started to heal, but Orphan was not giving up. The warforged was attempting a wrestler’s gab, and he quickly worked an artificial arm around the hobgoblin’s throat. The hobgoblin aquatic seemed to have no problem breathing water along with air, but he did have a problem with breathing while his trachea was being crushed.

A swell erupted around and under the pair in the water, hurling them upwards. The warforged monk was thrown off of his opponent and tossed into the rigging. The Cold Mage rose up on his column of water, massaging his neck and snarling at Orphan with murderous intent.

F’test, that thing was a hobgoblin magician once, Delegado thought. Had to be some magic-user that merged himself with elemental forces. But if he was a hobgoblin then, he’s still partially a hobgoblin now. The half-orc sighted his longbow carefully, instinctively aiming for the pain points of his most favored prey. Which means this should really hurt.

The arrow went right through the hobgoblin, sending sprays of water and ice all around, and the Cold Mage roared in pain. The water holding him up collapsed and he fell backwards into the ocean again.

“Del!” the warforged called, dropping down from the rigging to land by his friend. “It is good to see you! But that hobgoblin, he regenerates when in water, and he will attack the ship again!” The warforged cocked his head to the side. “I seem to have a lot of knowledge now, and I feel more at one with myself. This headband’s potential was only fully unlocked when –”

Delegado grabbed his friend in a bear hug. “Shut up, would you genius?” After a bare fraction of a second of surprise, Orphan hugged back. “Okay,” the half-orc told him. “That thing is still a hobgoblin enough that I could put a special hurt into it, got it?”

“Because you know human and goblinoid physiology better than any other, yes?” Iron Orphan asked. “Right.”

“Right, and he’s healing in water so he’ll be back,” Del said. “And I spent my fire arrows on our Captain.” He jerked his head towards the unconscious fiend.

“He saved us?” Orphan asked. “Why? And then why did you fight?”

“Your headband can figure it out later,” Del said. “Right now you need to get Thomas. He wouldn’t come out of his cabin for me, maybe he will for you. That axe of his, daelkyr make from centuries gone. The daelkyr had to stand against goblinoid empires, so they made lots of goblinoid-bane weapons.”

“Yes, he mentioned his weapon was goblin bane,” Oprhan said, tearing off. “I will fetch him!”

“Good,” Delegado said, scanning the waves below. Satisfied that the Cold Mage was not about for the moment, the half-orc turned and trotted over to the fallen fiend. Probing fingers of strength found a pulse, albeit a weak one. “Hmph,” the half-orc muttered around his tusks. “And what do I do with you, eh?”

A rushing sound of water behind the half-orc informed him that he had more immediate problems.

Chapter 5- Part 8

2009-01-12T11:00:00.003-06:00

Bresbin stood watch as the sun set on the second of Vult, his mind racing. Pienna had told him only some of it the day before, and finally today she had told him all of it. For once he had not needed to put on an act with her. His eyes grew big and stayed that way.

Wheels within wheels, Bresbin fumed, turning the matter over in his mind for the hundredth time. Medani gave – ha! – sold the Dark Lanterns the information that set me off on this mission, but even the Dragonmarked House hadn’t understood it fully. Every scrap that came our way, from Phiarlan, from Thuranni, by Fernia even the scraps that the Halfling inn masters had pieced together, nothing approaches the whole picture!

Even Pienna would not have known the whole thing, save for her cousin who was worried about selling his tinkertoy warforged.

Was Pienna right? Did the fate of the world rest on some half-understood quest involving an odd group of a half-orc dragonmarked scion, a warforged built and programmed with something that no one would admit to, a half-Khyberspawn mystic ex-criminal hermit, and a Silver Flame preacher that Thrane had lost track of? What was next, a group of halflings were going to drop a magic ring in a volcano and thereby heal the lame, the blind, and those afflicted with hemorrhoids?

“F’test,” the goblin muttered. And to think his Grandfather Delavane’s biggest worry had been that some forgotten cousin in Darguun would feel shame that a Delavane would swear allegiance to a human king.

Missy rolled over and fixed the goblin with a baleful stare. Pienna may have fallen asleep, but the panther hadn’t. Bresbin shrugged and dropped his eyes, a tacit acknowledgement that he’d broken sound discipline.

He was not foolish enough to drop his simple goblin act in front of a druid’s animal companion. The panther was a good deal more intelligent than any other cat, and more than some people.

His façade worked yet again. Missy dropped her head down next to her mistress’. Bresbin pursed his lips and went on mulling things over as he stared at the lake.

They were back in warmer climes, which meant that it was merely damned cold rather than freezing. According to a nearby mile marker they were one hundred miles south of a town called Niern. Pienna had come down this way via her plant-traveling because she’d needed to turn into a fish to check a seal under Lake Galifar. She’d come back up saying that it held just fine.

Except for the seal that Ama’shay had been watching, there seemed to be no urgency about the places that Pienna visited. It was likely that she had felt the sting of the criticism from the druid named Aruunis and she was overcompensating as a result. Bresbin was trying to figure out how to get her back in the fight, away from the tedious if exotic travel to muck-encrusted stone slabs. It suited Breland’s needs for the Reachers to beat back Aundair, and Pienna was a most powerful druid. As far as Breland was concerned, her time was far better spent blowing apart Aundairan wizards.

Of course if this half-assed prophecy was correct, he needed to get her back with Delegado’s band. Which meant that he needed some intelligence on the Tharashk scion’s whereabouts. Which meant he needed to be somewhere with more intelligence resources than this lakeside campsite in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

I need to get back in the game, he thought to himself. I need to get this intel to Breland, and quickly. I’ve no more time to be wasting with a leaf-worshipper and her pet cat.

Missy opened one eye again to look at him, then closed it.

A cat that would like to eat me, no doubt.

Bresbin fingered his bow. The tension of going deep-cover around such a powerful nature priestess was getting to him. One slip, and he would be done for. Maybe ebtter to get out now. One arrow into the cat’s skull while it slept. Another into Pienna’s. If she wouldn’t go fight Aundair again, that might solve a lot of problems.

Or cause more.

The goblin figured at the very least he ought to leave her alive until she transported him to somewhere civilized.

Chapter 5 – Part 7

2009-01-08T08:23:00.000-06:00

The arrow whistled past Carl’s head, and he heard the man next to him gasp and gurgle as he lost his throat. The Brelish infantryman lowered his head as he charged with his halberd. Ahead of him an Aundairian arose from a trench, frantically trying to work a crossbow. Carl was faster, and the blade of his halberd found the elbow joint in the man’s cuirass. The Aundairian’s arm separated with a sound like wet meat falling onto a tabletop, and the crossbow was never fired.

A lightning bolt blew apart a great bear that staggered towards the Aundairan defensive line. Hawks dove down, clawing at the eyes of wizards who cast spells. Druids cast spells that burned knights alive inside of their armor.

And skeletons fired great longbows while zombies in heavy armor hacked skulls with longswords.

In the pre-dawn hours of the second day of Vult, Brelish and Reacher forces had swarmed across the river. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, even though no one had asked Carl. Aundair’s advance had been blunted a month earlier, and it was thought they were still off-balance. The Brelish forces that had gathered in Riverweep, including the pitiful remains of units like Carl’s, had needed a rallying point, some victory to give them morale. Something to make the Reacher’s see the Brelish as something beyond a necessary evil. Intelligence had shown that the Aundairans were digging in, making fortifications for the winter.

Intelligence had not shown that Karrnath had made a mutual defensive pact with Aundair, and boosted Aundair’s numbers by more than fifty percent, mostly with undead warriors who did not fear, and did not tire.

Carl jumped out of the trench, leaving the crossbowman to bleed to death. His left arm bore a buckler shield, and it barely deflected a heavy stone pitched from an Aundairian sling. Carl bolted to the right, halberd shaft gripped tightly in both hands, around a makeshift barricade.

A thing came around the corner. A thing of bone and hate that wore armor and enmity. Carl shivered, his mind reeling at the red sparks in the skull that faced him. The skeleton opened its mouth, sharp and yellow teeth wanting to tear living flesh, even as it lifted its great bow of yew.

Carl was a soldier, and an experienced one. He knew that an edged weapon did little to a thing of bone with no flesh or organs to slice through. But it would do fine on wood.

The skeleton fitted broad-tipped arrow to its longbow, ready to put the shaft through Carl. Carl was faster though, by just a hair. His halberd shattered the longbow before it could fire.

The skeleton dropping the kindling that its bow had become, and lunged forward with powerful hands of bone. Fingers reached to take out Carl’s eyes, and the Brelish infantry man spun his halberd shaft as a club, taking a splinter from the thing’s face.

The skeleton was upon him, its hands going for Carl’s throat. Calr dropped the halberd, now useless with the undead thing so close, and scrambled to pull out a small club from his belt.

The walking bone thing was clever. Its ankles twisted about Carl’s. The two fell on the ground. Carl’s breath left him for a moment. The skeleton had no such problem.

Bone tightened on his throat. Fingers long dead sought to take his life. The sounds and screams of the battle faded to a soft din. Carl kicked, fought for air, but there was none. His sight dimmed, and the evil face of bone before him began to fade.

A white light shone, and the skeleton screamed without breath. The tightness on his throat vanished, and air rushed into his lungs as the fingers of bone turned to dust and then nothing. Pitted, rotten armor fell apart as the skeleton unraveled, the fell magic that had given it motion and power dismissed by something sacred that would not abide a mockery of life.

Carl scrambled to his feet, finding his halberd again. He nodded his thanks to Chaplain Butemain, cleric of the Sovereign Host, and charged back into the fray.

The sun was not yet fully over the eastern horizon, and it stabbed into Carl’s eyes as he hurled himself over a barricade. Four men with swords awaited him on the other side. A half-minute later Carl was alive, if bleeding in the three places. His opponents were all dead, his halberd was smashed, and he was wielding a stolen longsword.

“Reachers, to me!” Carl screamed. “Breland, press on! Their ranks will not hold!”

An elf with a rapier in each hand leaped past him, yelling some woodsman’s oath. A shifter with claws extended came up on his other side. They closed with the Aundairans and their undead allies yet again.

And they died.

It took Carl a moment to realize what was happening. Chaplain Butemain had been torn apart but a quivering orb of acid that had taken out most of the holy man’s chest. Other clerics, along with druids who had been destroying zombies and skeletons, were being specially targeted.

A half-elf stood atop a small wooden tower, hastily erected the night before with a barricaded platform. The most dangerous of the battle mages, he wore studded leather armor with a bright red sash. He seemed to have to end of spells to throw, and it was he who made sure that the clerics and druids who might stop the undead would fall.

Carl climbed the side of the tower, stopping briefly to slice open a young woman with a wand. She was a young girl, perhaps seventeen years of age, a wizard’s apprentice no doubt, and she shrieked as her entrails fell out of her.

Carl slipped, scraping himself badly as he fell. He moved up again, his wounds leaking, and he crested the top.

The half-elf turned, and fanned his hands outwards towards Carl. Fire danced on his fingertips as he chanted.

“For Chubat!” Carl screamed, his longsword out, charging towards the Aundarian.

Flame met blade.

Chapter 5 – Part 6

2009-01-06T10:04:00.001-06:00

On the first day of the month of Vult, Bresbin found himself in a snow-dusted forest of tall pine trees. A wind bit at him, causing him to draw his coat tighter about himself. By now he was used to the jumping sensation of traveling through plants, but the sudden change in weather caught him off-guard.

It had been a brisk autumn day when they’d left Ama’Shay and arrived near Eldeen’s southern border. They’d spent three days traveling, checks old places. Bresbin had remained on guard, but the sites had not been disturbed. The closest they’d come to any real danger was a viper that had nearly bitten him, but Pienna had convinced it to slither on.

Now, they had arisen shortly after sunrise, and after a cold, quick breakfast, she had taken him and the overgrown cat through the plants again. As before, there was a heaving, a joining of warmth and life that lasted a split-second, and then a jumping sensation. The end result may have been the same as an Orien teleporter, but the effect felt quite different.

Now they were in this place. Higher altitude, taller trees, and a half-inch of snow on the ground. Ground that was broken by little more than game trails.

“This is a place with no people again, lady?” Bresbin asked carefully. She was sharp, this one, and he could not be complacent that his demeanor was accepted. The less he said the better. But he had to know where he was.

“With very few, really,” she sighed, absently-minded stroking her panther’s neck. The great cat rumbled its approval. “We’re still in the Eldeen, if in its most distant part. If that set of trees wasn’t in the way, you’d see the western edge of the Icehorn Mountains.” She cast a spell into her panther, and it bared its teeth in eagerness. “One dwells here, and she is not someone who I seek willingly. Nor is she someone to be ignored.”

“She is dangerous?” Bresbin asked, already with an arrow at the ready.

“Very,” Pienna said. “But she is not the one I fear, I fear the ones who sometimes some for her counsel.”

She did not elaborate, and Bresbin asked no more. He wanted to, but he knew it would not fit the meek persona, so silent he was.

The druidess snapped her fingers once, and Missy darted ahead to scout. The great cat was larger than a pony, but made less noise than a chipmunk. Bresbin made less noise than a falling snowflake. For her part, Pienna stepped lightly for a human, even if her steps were thunderous, but her druid powers prevented her from leaving marks in the snow. The only footprints were Missy’s and Bresbin’s.

The goblin stuck to stepping on rocks and tree roots whenever he could, and gritted his teeth.

Missy halted and let forth a low growl. She then bounded forward, and Pienna waved at Bresbin to hurry and follow.

It was a half-minute after they broke into a dead run, if that, that Bresbin smelled the smoke as well. A second later and he was following Pienna into a clearing with bodies and destruction.

Bresbin spun around, eyes darting, looking for a target for his arrow. He took in the hut, fallen off its stilts. The blood on the ground, some of it under the snow, some of it on top of the rocks. The marking that showed more bodies had fallen, and then been dragged off. Burnt spots on tree trunks where spells had missed their mark. The stilt feet that had been carved to look like chicken feet, and someone had hacked one of them in half.

There was a body in the remains of the hut. Humanoid, but of a make Bresbin could not pick out. Not that much of it was left. Pienna kneeled by the body, not touching it, merely examining the marks. Missy turned this way and that, nostrils flaring, teeth bared.

“Torture marks,” Pienna said quietly. Bresbin came up behind her, trying to see the remains of the face. He thought he could make out horns on its head, albeit small ones.

“What was he?” the goblin asked.

“She,” the druidess corrected gently. “She was a tiefling, a devotee to trickery, a malicious and cantankerous spirit who loved to cheat those who courted her. She was a diviner of great skill and powerful magic who could not be surprised, and was more than capable of holding her own. She was much wasted potential and could have done much good in her life.” Pienna swallowed. “But she did not deserve this.”

Bresbin examined the marks again. Maybe a day old. The body was at best twenty-four hours dead and there were no scavengers about, not even insects. Something had marked this place.

Bresbin turned around again, looking for a foe. Beside him, Pienna chanted softly. The goblin did a soft perimeter scan, moving quickly about the area. Missy joined him, the big cat looking for something to tear apart.

Pienna continued with her spells. Long minutes passed.

“Come,” the druidess said, standing. The panther bounded to her side in an eyeblink.

“What has the Lady learned?” the goblin asked, catching up to the great cat to stand by the human woman.

“I’ve talked to trees, wind spirits, and the rocks themselves,” she said. “The Chamber came by, and shortly after that a tiger-man and his fodder.”

The Chamber? Bresbin thought. He caught himself before voicing it. The Dark Lanterns had heard of a group calling itself the Chamber, but knew not what it portended. Clearly this woman did. He would have to ask about it later, when his curiosity would not be unseemly. So much of this job is patience. “Are there more about?” the goblin asked, playing the part of the frightened retainer.

“No,” she said. “He was here with men of metal and stone. Warforged. She set on them with fire and trickery, but her spells did not touch the tiger-man, for he is one of the fiends. They questioned her for nearly a day entire, but she had no answers for them.”

“What questions?” Bresbin asked.

“I know not,” she said. “The spells I used, they are limited by what the listeners understood. One thing I know is this. The fiends of the Demon Wastes do not enter the Eldeen lightly, for the might of Oalian gives them pause. What was it that they needed from her? What information did they expect her to give that they could not get in their own lands?”

They must not trust the information that they have been getting, Bresbin thought, but did not say. The goblin pursed his lips, and watched Pienna’s face. She looked like a woman crushed, whose hopes were gone.

A woman who was vulnerable.

The time was now. “Sister of nature,” Bresbin said gently. “May Brezzy be told all now?”

She stared at him with great, wet eyes. “Bresbin’s life is already at great risk. I do not care to cause more death.”

Be reached his hands out and took hers. His green fingers, long and dirty, grasped her light human ones, medium-length, clean and smelling faintly of rosewater. “Bresbin will die someday, and Bresbin hopes to know what part he played.”

A long moment passed. He itched to say more, but did not. He was a patient hunter, and he waited for his prey.

She finally blinked, then nodded. “Yes, I will tell you. I will tell you everything. But not here. Not in this place of death.”

Chapter 5 – Part 5

2009-01-05T08:47:00.000-06:00

Parnain d’Medani cinched his gloves again, making sure that they were firm and tight. His face betrayed nothing, and the ragged stubble around it may as well have been made from blonde stone. Only his eyes had anything in them, as they never stopped scanning the room. He would note broken yellow teeth of the dead changeling on the interrogation slab, the quivering lip of the nauseous guard wearing Brelish colors, the polished nails of the shifter who was currently paying his house, and the well-polished nature of his gloves. Parnain hated leaving blood on him. It was sloppy. The half-elf did not belive in sloppy.

“You pushed him too hard,” the shifter noted, crossing his arms. It was a male, stocky, but powerful in the shoulders and chest. He’d not given a name when he’d first made contact with Medani, but they knew who he was. They’d prevented two assassination attempts on Gorka in the past six months.

Parnain didn’t care what the man’s name was – if Gorka was in fact a real name and not an alias. Nor did he care (much) that Gorka was a disgusting shapechanger. Brleand paid, so Parnain worked with Breland’s agents. But that didn’t mean that the half-elf was about to listen to warrantless criticism. “I pushed him hard enough to find out that he believes a tall man named Wir who favors bastard swords is the one who his contact answered to. That’s what’s important. The filthy wax baby didn’t know anything else that was useful.”

The shifter considered this without cracking the slightest expression, but Parnain could read the body language. The half-elf had grown up hating shapechangers of any type, and spent his life tracking them. “You’ve confirmed this independently?” the shifter asked.

“Phiarlan dancing troupe in Cyre,” the half-elf said. “A tall man named Wir has had contacts with Thuranni, and through the Thuranni some unknown element within Cannith. This element has been trying to find a runaway warforged while screwing up Eldeen recruiting. So wax babies like the corpse here are told to count warforged along with other military resources.”

“And why would Cyre care about frustrating the Reachers’ ability to fight Aundair?” asked Gorka. He answered his own question before Parnain could. “It’s a false flag operation. This Wir fellow doesn’t answer to Cyre.”

Parnain shrugged. “I don’t look at the big picture, I’ll leave that to you. You have my services for six more days, with an option to renew. You want me to use my mark to check your food for poison again?” Parnain wore gloves in all weather for many reasons, primarily to avoid leaving evidence of his fingers, but also because he had a lesser dragonmark on the palm of his left hand. The cold, blonde half-elf preferred not to be noticed, so he hid his mark.

“Check our ambassador and the Reacher he is negotiating with,” Gorka ordered. “Then I need you to find a pair of changeling saboteurs down by the docks. Breland is sending alchemical weapons, and Aundair is paying those two to make sure they can’t be used.”

“Musky and Lusky,” Parnain said. “Twin sister changelings who openly worship the shadow, and have clerical spells in addition to their years of espionage work. High price on their head. You sure they’re after your boat full of glass vials that go boom?”

Gorka smiled a smile with no humor. “I am sure, and I am sure that they’ve been hired through Thuranni. Beyond that I know little that I can rely on.”

“You want them dead or alive?” Parnain asked as he walked out.

“Alive, preferably,” Gorka told him. “You enjoy killing changelings too much, and I want to make sure you got the right ones.”

Parnain turned, and gave the Breland intelligence chief a cold stare. “Not just changelings,” he sneered. Then he turned heel and left.

The guard let out an exhalation, then blushed out how loud it was. Gorka raised an eyebrow. In theory the guard was there to protect Gorka or Aundairan (or Reacher) assassins, but they both knew that the guard was also there in case Parnain decided he didn’t like working for a shifter.

They also both knew that the guard would barely slow Parnain down.

Chapter 5- Part 4

2009-01-02T08:12:00.001-06:00

The people of Varna moved with a purpose. The largest town in the Reaches, and the only one that could properly be called a city, Varna moved with a pace like no other place in the Eldeen. Portion of the streets actually were paved, and the buildings tended to be more permanent-looking affairs than the thatched huts found scattered throughout the great wood.

The buildings also sported damage not found elsewhere in the Eldeen. Varna may have been a city run by a Dragonmarked House, but it was also a city that moved thousands of troops for the Eldeen, and tons of supplies for the war. As a result, every kingdom involved in the war considered Varna a fair target. Lightning bolts and fireballs from Aundair wizards, as well as siege machinery of a more mundane nature had all left their mark.

The western edge of town had a whole section of the wall missing, with large burnt marks near where the Orien trade road came in. The collapsed gate and wall sections had been moved so that the road traffic could enter and exit the city. The wall was being rebuilt, but it went slowly, and for now the city guards let foot traffic pass freely through any wall gap that was not actually dangerous. The cold rain made the ground loose and treacherous, and the travelers and locals had to step carefully across ground that had not been meant for so many feet.

A pair of elves wearing bright pastel robes totally unfit for the weather stood beneath parasols, trying to keep the colorful paint on their faces from being disturbed by the inclement weather. Across from them, wearing heavy armor with an upturned face plate that dribbled rain, was a grizzled man with heavy mustaches and a badge of rank on his tunic.

“Dunno if I can have you folk go so far southwest down the road,” the man was frowning.

“There’s a whole company of soldiers waiting to be entertained!” exclaimed one elf. She had green marking on her face in the shape of a five-headed serpent, standing boldly against the white paint beneath, and her long hair was in braids that were dyed a twirling mixture of orange and purple. “Our company is small, but the prospect fo such an audience!”

“Plenty audience in the city,” snorted the man in armor.

“And they have seen our performances so many times!” sighed the other elf. He was male, or seemed to be. He wore even more jewelry than the elf woman. The five-headed serpent motif was found on his robes, his face paint, and the three thick rings he wore on each hand. “A new audience, can’t you feel the attraction, sir commander?”

“I’m not a commander,” the weary human in the armor was saying. “I’m just – look, can’t you just stay in the city?”

The stern-faced elf standing under an overhang was affecting to read the latest copy of the Korranberg Chronicle, but he was listening to the conversation between the two painted elves and the armored human most carefully. The stern-faced elf wore leather armor beneath frayed robes, and an eagle sat carefully on a perch nearby, scanning the area for enemies. The stern-faced elf wore no accoutrements that announced who he was, but the docility of the eagle next to him, and the ring of holly leaves around his neck told anyone who cared that he was a druid.

The human in armor was asking the two painted elves if they planned to count soldiers are something, and the elves responded in shocked tones that House Phiarlan were merely entertainers, whatever was he implying?

Aruunis snorted. What idiot would believe that these two were merely entertainers? The stern-faced elf looked over the human in armor. The man clearly did not believe the two under the parasols, but clearly also did not want to offend them.

One of the elves turned ever so slightly, the effeminate male, and caught Aruunis’ eye. The druid affected to still be reading the Korranberg. Then he decided to actually read it, in case the elf later queried him.

It bore today’s date, the 26th of Aryth. There were front-page articles about new warforged models that were killing thousands, and undead legions that were killing thousands more. A small blurb announced strange weather patterns in the Barren Sea, another discussed new security arrangements for the peace talks in Thronehold, while some letter to the editor protested supposedly biased coverage of House Cannith’s new weapons.

“Look,” the human said. “I will ask again, and I think that a meadow can be prepared, but I do not control the answer.” The elves thanked him, and the human turned away and began walking off. The female elf watched him go, the male elf watched Aruunis openly.

Aruunis sighed. He tossed the paper into a large puddle and beckoned the two painted elves to him. A few passersby gave him funny looks for throwing away the paper, but most ignored him. The painted elves raised all four of their eyebrows, but came over anyway, stepping around the puddles in their slippers – slippers!

“Inquiring about where you may find a performance by House Phiarlan, my friend?” the woman asked him in elvish, as she and her companion approached.

“I might be,” Aruunis answered in elvish, resting a hand on the sickle hidden beneath his robe. He gave a soft whistle, and his eagle alerted itself. He opened his mouth to say more, but waited until they joined him with no other around. “That is, I might be interested in a performance of Phiarlan’s, but given that you aren’t actually members of that House, it isn’t really relevant then, is it?”

The two painted elves stopped, their eyes going briefly to each other. “Good sir, good –” Eyes with lavender paint on the lids took in the holly and the eagle. “Good druid, you insult us if you think we are some second-rate pretenders.”

“Oh you were both born into Phiarlan, of that I have no doubt,” Aruunis said. “But your accents are Thuranni to my ears.” He stared at them carefully, ready to hurl forces of earth and fire at them if they attacked.

He’d been watching for it, so he saw it. The flicker in the eyes, the tensing of muscles, the initial reach for daggers or garrotes hidden beneath the ridiculous entertainer’s outfit. But they were cautious, these two, and they clearly decided not to attack a druid of unknown power.

“We’ve not time for riddles nor for insults,” said the woman. She sniffed and beckoned her companion.

“I have taken the shape of an eagle, many times,” he told them, reaching into his robes and pulling out the black dragon symbol of the Gatekeepers. “My companion and I have seen much with sharp eyes. Including recent disposition of troops. Including the regrouping of Brelish infantry. Including berths built to accommodate new warships on Lake Galifar.” He hid the symbol. “You’ll get better information from the sky than you will on the ground, especially when dodging the few true members of Phiarlan in the Reaches.” He grinned a cold grin. “I’m willing to bet that the bodies of the agents whose identity you stole won’t be found for years yet.”

“You make powerful accusations, friend,” the male elf said. His hand was in a pocket of his robes now. “You make powerful promises, too. Maybe you talk too much.”

“Maybe you take your hands out where I can see them and you don’t end up as ash,” Aruunis said.

The woman elf waved a hand somewhat imperceptibly, and the male held his hands out in the open. “What do you want?” the woman asked, putting a false smile on for any who saw. Her parasol had wavered, and rain drops had made emerald tears on her face.

“A potion,” he told her. “Specifically a potion of glibness. The kind that lets the speaker lie so convincingly that it fools even magical detection. I figure you keep several on you, in case you run into some serious trouble. I only want one.”

“You need to fool someone,” the man said, twirling his parasol slightly. “Someone close to you. One of your own.”

“You know what that’s like,” he told the other elf. “So then you know what I need.”

“Can you trust us to give it to you?” the woman asked.

Aruunis leaned forward, and his eagle leaned with him. “I. Am. Not. Someone. You. Want. To. Cross.”

The two painted elves considered this for a moment, and then the female looked at the male and nodded. The male slowly reached into a pocket and handed a potion to Aruunis. The stern-faced elf took the small vial and cast a detection spell on it.

“So,” the woman said. “Let’s start with the ship berths.”

Chapter 5- Part 3

2008-12-31T09:07:00.000-06:00

Pienna scrubbed the pots in the stream that ran past Ama’shay’s little cave. It was late in the morning, almost noon on the 25th of Aryth. They’d been up late, scouring the woods at Ama’shay’s urgings. The orc could not believe that a mere goblin had successfully stalked and killed a dolgaunt, and the elderly druid had insisted that what Bresbin had killed had been a mere decoy.

Eventually, Ama’shay had to give in. He did not say that he believed the goblin, but Pienna knew that he did from the begrudging way that the old orc had finally suggested that they get some sleep. Through it all Bresbin had been patient, oddly so. Pienna was used to the little goblin by now, and she was fairly certain that only Bresbin’s great respect for the Gatekeeper sect kept him from becoming angry with Ama’shay.

They’d slept, finally, and Pienna had arisen late. Ama’shay, being nocturnal, was still asleep (as was his companion), but Bresbin had been up, fishing in the stream. The goblin had caught a trout or two, and fed one to Missy. The great cat had gotten up when Bresbin did, keeping an eye on the goblin, and seemed most content with things. Pienna had made gruel for the both of them.

Now she was washing the pots, with the aid of a small, friendly water elemental, while Bresbin smoked a couple of deboned trout nearby.

“Lady Pienna,” Bresbin said, after a very long silence.

She turned to look at him. “Yes?” she asked.

He pursed his lips, then turned from the trout to stare at her. His eyes were big and mournful. “Something more is happening here, yes? Something bigger than Brezzy helping Pienna against the unthings?”

She thought for a moment, then nodded. “Are you sure you want to know?” she asked. “It’s big, Brezzy, very big. Big as the world.”

The goblin seemed to consider this for a moment, and nodded. Pienna could tell that the moment’s consideration was a front. The goblin was terribly, terribly curious. He wanted to know very badly, and was trying to hide it. He probably feels like he belongs to something for the first time in his life, she thought.

“Brezzy wants to know,” the goblin said. “Brezzy takes the risk on himself.”

“There is a prophecy at work,” she explained. “The world stands on edge, perhaps deeper into war, perhaps away from it towards peace. Forces on high are poised, forces that we don’t understand. We must follow a path.”

“What path?” Brezzy asked. “Which kingdoms will this help?”

“All of them,” she told him. “Eldeen and Aundair, Breland and Cyre, Darguun and Valenar, Thrane and Karrnath.” She saw something flicker in his eyes when she said Breland, but she didn’t understand it, so she pressed on. “I sent three individuals on a path, a path where they were supposed to find a fourth, then find a riddle, then become three again. If they don’t bring the riddle back, we have no hope of stopping chaos.”

“Where did they go?” he asked her. “Your three, where did they set to?”

“To Oalian,” she told him.

“Then why do we not go see the great tree?” the goblin asked, puzzled.

“I have,” she said. “He told me that they went to the Demon Wastes.”

Bresbin hissed and made a warding gesture. “They do not come back then, my Lady Pienna,” he said, shaking his head.

“Oalian thinks that they might,” she said. “He told me that if they would survive, they would return, and that I could not go looking for them, they would find me. He told me to tend to my tasks.”

The goblin stared at her. A long silence passed in the sunlight.

“And Pienna went to her tasks, fighting the Aundairians,” he noted. “Pienna’s task was Aundair, but not it is being a Gatekeeper? Brezzy does not understand.”

She chewed her lip for a moment, unsure of what to say. “A druid of my order noted that as well, and told me that my tasks were wrong,” she finally said. “Do you think my tasks were wrong?”

“What the Lady does is not Brezzy’s place to say right or wrong,” he shrugged. “Brezzy fought Aundair because they attacked the land in which he stayed. Brezzy fights the unthings because he was raised to believe against them. Are Brezzy’s tasks wrong?”

“You aren’t a sworn priest,” Pienna sighed. “And some think that my fighting Aundair is distracting from my Gatekeeper duties. Some think that it makes it seem as if I favor one nation over another.”

“Pienna fears what other nations think,” Bresbin noted.

“Pienna thinks that she should not ignore it,” the druidess responded. “I felt that I did what was right against the Aundairians, and certainly there is plenty of druid magic being brought against the proud wine-drinkers, but the bottom line is that the Gatekeeper sect is different than the other sects. We must be apart from this conflict, else we cannot do the work that we must do.” She sighed. “The seals against the daelkyr are mostly in Eldeen and the Marches, but some exist everywhere. Can you imagine trying to hold back the forces of Khyber in Breland if the Dark Lanterns thought the Gatekeepers were taking sides?”

Bresbin’s face was oddly blank. Finally he spoke.

“Bresbin believes in Pienna,” he said. “Bresbin thinks that Pienna is right, and he wants to help her in her quest.”

“Thank you,” she smiled.

He turned his head to the side and began rotating the fish over the smoke. “So, who is the one who thinks Pienna had her tasks wrong?”

“Don’t worry,” she smiled, finishing with the pot. “No one that you are likely to meet.”

Chapter 5 – Part 2

2008-12-29T11:06:00.001-06:00

The dolgrim squealed in pain as the byeshk-covered end of the club hit the misshapen thing across both of its mouths, knocking yellow teeth and black blood in a wide fan. The squat little aberration hoisted its two spears and stabbed blindly at its attacker, but got nowhere. The aged orc was already bringing the club around again on a backswing, and the dolgrim’s skull cracked mightily. The spears fell to the ground from numb hands. A second later the dolgrim itself hit the ground with a sound like a rotten apple falling.

“More stragglers that way!” Ama’shay roared in the druidic tongue to the hawk that was circling overhead. It was dark out, but there were enough moons showing to give the bird of prey some light with which to see where the orc pointed. The hawk squawked a response, and wiggled its talons with magic. Seconds later fire rained down on the smarter dolgrims, who had fled the massacre of the rest of the warband.

The orc grinned as the hawk landed and transformed in Pienna. “I think we got all of them,” she said. Her oak circlet glowed as she murmured a spell, giving her something more to see by. “I saw Missy and your companion corner the archers.”

“We haven’t seen the dolgaunt yet,” Ama’shay warned. “And you should find a form that gives you blessed orc nightsight.”

“The dolgaunt must not be around,” she said. “My detection of aberration spells did not show a presence for him, just the dolgrims.” She peered at the night sky. “It is well past midnight, it should have showed itself by now.”

“Two hundred dolgrims and more!” roared the orc, pumping a fist into the air. “So many over the last week that I have lost count! Not in years has my beloved club smashed in so many foul, twisted little skulls! If only you had been here to see my earlier victories!” He paused, letting his exultations settle into a frown. “But the main foe has not been found. A dolgaunt commands them, I tell you, why else would they come forward in so many waves?”

“Then we hunt,” Pienna said. “We cannot let our guard down. The dolgaunt, or some other who commands them –”

“Dolgaunt,” Ama’shay insisted.

“Cannot return to Khyber with any information to report,” she concluded. “But hwo do we find the thing if our spells do not register, if not one of our charmed animal servants have spotted it?”

“Excuse me,” a soft voice said in the Common Tongue.

Both Ama’shay and Pienna whirled around, startled. For all their woodslore, the speaker had snuck up behind them. A short figure with green skin, a bow on its back, stepped into Pienna’s light.

“The sneak,” Ama’shay grunted dismissively. The orc no longer spat when the goblin spoke, but he did not carry a civil tone with the goblin. Of course Ama’shay still spoke in Druidic, so theoretically the goblin did not understand the orc.

“Brezzy, where have you been?” Pienna asked. “I was so worried!” Her face showed real emotion, and it was obvious to Ama’shay that the human woman really liked the sneak for some reason.

“Hunting,” the goblin said, grinning a big, stupid grin. He held up his left hand and tossed something forward. It rolled on the ground and stopped near Ama’shay’s foot. Raw flesh of a head with no eyes and covered in fine cilla.

The dolgaunt’s head.

Ama’shay grunted in shock. “Pienna, how did your sneak do this?” The orc looked at the goblin with new eyes. For a moment he thought he saw cloaked rage, but only for a moment.

Pienna’s response was not an answer, but to kneel and hug the goblin forcefully. “Oh Brezzy, what would we do without you?” she whispered.

“Brezzy is happy to stop the daelkyr-made unthings,” the goblin said. He smiled now, staring at Ama’shay.

Oddly, the smile did not seem to touch the goblin’s eyes.

In Which They Celebrate The Holidays

2008-12-25T12:05:00.002-06:00

Delegado awoke, stretching and snorting. He felt a bit stiff, as he was used to sleeping otuside, not in a bed.

Stumbling out into the main room, the half-orc found the warforged staring at the decorated tree by the chimney.

"Did you stay up all night waiting to see if he would come down the chimney?" the half-orc asked, forcing a small grin.

"Maybe," Iron Orphan said, in a manner that betrayed a low Charisma modifier to untrained Bluff checks. The warforged reached into a pile of presents and handed one to the half-orc. Delegado could see Orphan's neat, precise handwriting on the card near the bow. "I got you something."

Delegado raised an eye and pulled on the ribbon to open it. He then lifted the box lid to find a pack of birdseed for Feather, and a gift certificate to Arrows R Us. "Aw, Orphan," the half-orc said, geuninely touched. "You shouldn't have."

The warforged affected a shrug, which was always an odd motion to see as he had no clavicles. "I wanted to."

Delegado then reached down and pulled his own box out of the pile. "I got this for you," he told the warforged.

"For me?" Orphan asked, surprised. He opened the ribbon (which wasn't tied well, Delegado spent his skill points on other things) and lifted the box lid to find a can of WD-40 and a stuffed red heart-shaped plushie from Dorothy's Shtick-o-rama. "Del, how did you know?"

"Happy Holidays, Orphan," the half-orc said, donning a red hat with a white tassel.

"Happy Holidays, Del," the warforged said. He paused. "So he's really not coming down the chimney then?"

Delegado shook his head in bemusement and went off to find some eggnog.

Brief Hiatus

2008-11-28T13:08:00.000-06:00

Hello everyone, I'm sorry to announce that I have to take a brief hiatus from posting. I'm happy to announce that it is due to my new baby boy.

I've got the plot lines sketched, but there's gaps in the intermediate bits, especially with the Pienna-Bresbin storyline. I'll get them flushed out, trust me.

The storyline will continue on December 29, with the usual Mon & Thurs updates, plus some bonus postings in early Jan.

Thanks for being such a great audience.

Chapter 5 – Part 1

2008-11-27T11:21:00.001-06:00

FALLING MASKS, BROKEN THOUGHTS

Deep within the Eldeen Reaches, shortly after midnight on the twenty-fifth of Aryth, 993 Y.K.

The dolgaunt moved with a grace was that beautiful and sickening at the same time. He felt full, good, and strong. A dolgrim had failed, and allowed the druids to catch a patrol unawares, so the dolgrim had become his food. It had twitched wonderfully as it died.

The dolgaunt stopped, peering about. It waved to the thirty dolgrims that still remained, sending them out in two flanking waves. It could feel, could sense quite far. The druids would no doubt be laying spells to catch his forces, expecting them to come down the middle of the valley that hid the device that the dolgaunt sought to control.

You will find its exact location, the mind flayer had told the dolgaunt, speaking directly to his mind. You will have your servants dig, and then place this Khyber dragonshard in the crook of the fork.

To destroy it then? The dolgaunt’s mental question was answered only with a psionic blast of pain, which had forced the dolgaunt to its knees.

You will follow instructions, or you will suffer beyond imagining, the mind flayer had told him coldly. We seek to make the device our own, not to destroy it!

The dolgaunt had promised feverishly to obey. He feared the mind flayers greatly. They were closest to the Great masters, and they brooked no failure.

Lights and sounds came from over three hundred feet away, ahead and to his right and ahead and to his left. The druids were attacking his two groups of dolgrims, their power spent on the unimportant, while he, the silent and dangerous monastic warrior, crept directly towards them.

The dolgaunt grinned with a toothless, red mouth. He knew everything around him, with perfect sight even in the dark. The scilla on his tentacles, the perfect biological devices grown by his masters, told him everything, let him know of everything.

Which is why the dolgaunt was quite shocked when a goblin that he’d neither seen, smelled, nor heard put three arrows into him. One penetrated the dolgaunt’s neck, one his groin, and one into his eye and then his brain.

The twisted creature fell, dead before it could think of attacking the goblin that had caught it so badly by surprise.

Chapter 4 - Part 14

2008-11-24T12:06:00.002-06:00

The young brass dragon was cleaning his pipe. He would have been smoking it, but the old copper who currently led them - which was not the right word, not with a group that was considered proud even for dragons - had expressed displeasure at it. The brass was not about to lessen the slightest impact that his words might have when debating.

"You did well, darling," the young green said, sliding his way to the angry gold female who had been concentrating on the crystal.

"I did nothing!" the gold snapped at him - literally, she swung her teeth near his neck and he barely flinched away in time. "I focused out power, true, but I merely held a window in the timestream. The Captain, or maybe the half-daelkyr, they found it."

The brass frowned, then tucked his pipe away. "So where are they, then?" eh asked patiently.

"More importantly," rumbled the old copper. "When are they?"

"I don't know," the gold said, the admission paining her.

"They're back, and they're within two hundred miles of their departure point," the brass said suddenly. They all turned to him. "The Crimson Ship moves the universe around itself. That means it came back not far from where it left, as it focuses itself as a central point. Giving drift for tides and Eberron's magnetic field, like so..." He summoned his innate powers, and a floating translucent graph of equations apepared above them. "So they would be within this circle."

"And the fiends may still get them," hissed the green, for once his mind off of his mating instinct.

"The Captain's price is conflict," the copper mused. "There is someone in the southeast corner of that circle. A hobgoblin mage who fused himself with certain elements, long ago."

They all were silent for a moment.

"Say it already!" the gold hissed. "It's not like we aren't in deep enough debt to the druid already!"

The copper sighed. "Contact the white druid," he ordered. "See his price for finding the Cold Mage."

Chapter 4 – Part 13

2008-11-20T10:02:00.001-06:00

The wood attacked the monk as he cleared the last step. He tumbled, rolling into a somersault, and easily escaped the curled planks that reached like fingers. As he left them, they fell flat again.

The deck was rippling as if it was water, not wood. There was sun, and sky. And plenty of sea. A quick look in all directions showed that they were nowhere near land.

A fined lay unconscious near a ship’s wheel. Delegado lay prone on the deck, gripping the hilt of his sword, which was embedded into the deck. The rippling was keeping the half-orc from getting to his feet. Orphan could see the great composite longbow further on down the deck, very close to the railing.

He wanted to call out to Delegado, but a loud explosion near the front of the ship distracted him. Seconds later the ship began to list.

“Delegado!” he called out. “What’s going on?”

“Damn you’re a sight for sore eyes!” the half-orc called out. “Cast me a rope, I have to get up!”

Instinct took over, as the Orphan felt a drop in pressure behind him. The warforged ducked, and something, a spinning ball of liquid so frozen he could not credit it, blew over him.

The freezing liquid ball hit the mast, and blew apart a yardarm. Ropes once taut now whipped about, and splinters mixed with tiny shards of ice. The Crimson Ship, already listing with damage near the waterline, began to spin lazily to starboard.

The warforged turned, ready to fight, his last two shiruken in his hands.

A figure sat atop a column of moving water, some twenty feet aaway fromt eh ship and fifteen feet above it. The top of the column had fashioned itself into a shimmering, throne-like chair. The figure sitting in the chair was humanoid. In fact it was the spitting image of a hobgoblin. Unlike a hobgoblin it had blue skin, a deep dark blue that seemed partially translucent. Orphan could also make out gills on the water-hobgoblin’s neck, and frills of fins. It seemed naked, but at the same time clothed in sheets of water.

“What a prize,” the water-hobgoblin burbled. It spoke in Aquan, and the warforged’s ring translated. “The Crimson Ship itself. And it was thought gone and disintegrated weeks agone.”

The warforged threw his shiruken, but the water-hobgoblin waved his hand lazily, not even stirring from his throne, and a wave of water rose up to knock the spinning blades aside.

Orphan jumped, grabbing a loose rope from the shattered yardarm, and swinging over to Delegado’s bow. “Can you stand?” he yelled to his half-orc companion.

“Trying!” the half-orc snarled. But his boots could not get purchase.

“Feed this ship to the Devourer I shall,” chortled the water-hobgoblin in Aquan. “And a pretty price for the corpses shall the rakshasa pay.”

The water-hobgoblin reached a hand into the column of water that held it aloft, and drew out another frozen ball of liquid. Still laughing, it threw the missile again, this time at the trapped half-orc.

Chapter 4 – Part 12

2008-11-17T09:20:00.001-06:00

Thomas staggered forward, his head swimming, visions of magical force floating in his eyes, his mind. He had to walk, to find food, to prevail in the hunt. His senses were overloaded now, and he relied on instinct.

With the vestiges of his rational mind he set up a pattern of movement on the deck. It would move in a series of concentric circles, to keep everyone off their feet, and certain spots were set like traps, ready to grab with great wooden fingers.

The ones above would therefore stay above, and he would peruse the below at his leisure. To find succor.

A door stood in his way. His door. They’re all my doors! The whole ship is mine!

He wanted to go. He would go. He willed it, so it would be.

The door exploded outwards, smoking splinters flying in all directions, peppering the hallway and open door across from him.

His stormstalk lay dead on the floor before him. A bloody shiruken still stuck in the thing’s body.

The stalk is dead. Orphan did it. Which betrayed me first?

He looked out, into the other room, Delegado’s room. He felt the boards wriggling from his neck and shoulder twitch.

The changeling was there, lying facedown, unmoving. Electrical burns were on her skin.

She was naked.

Mine.

She was paralyzed, her nerves damaged by the stormstalk.

Succor.

He’d seen it before. His loyal stormstalk.

Want.

He was barely cognizant of shedding the last of his clothes as he crouched behind her. Suddenly, viciously, enjoying the pure physicality of it, he flipped her over.

He was rewarded with awe in her eyes. Awe or terror.

“Thomas,” she gasped, barely able to speak. “You-your face.”

Mine.

He grabbed her, and she tried to scream, but he did not care.

Take what is mine.

Chapter 4 - Part 11

2008-11-13T08:17:00.001-06:00

Delegado grunted as the deck ceased movement. Through the blood running into his eyes he saw the captain slump over, and fall to the deck.

The half-orc pushed himself up on one arm, still gripping his sword handle. He smelled ozone. Trying to ignore what that might mean he wiped his forehead, gritting his teeth against the pain of his scalp wound.

Have to find a bandage, stop the flow so I can see, the half-orc thought. But he also wanted to get to his feet and find his bow. Whatever was attacking the ship, he didn’t want it to get to close. He said ‘he’ would take control of the ship again? Who is he? Delegado wondered. It was likely another fiend, a stowaway, a harpy that he had missed.

The ship boards started rippling again, and he fell on his stomach. Gripping the sword handle even more tightly, he saw that the entire deck was acting like the surface of the ocean.

At least it’s not attacking me, the half-orc thought. Still, he could not get to his feet. The rippling wood kept him from finding purchase.

Then he heard three things, each right after the other. Running feet – warforged feet, followed by ripping wood, which was then followed by a loud booming sound.

Following which the entire ship began to tilt.

Chapter 4 – Part 10

2008-11-10T09:16:00.001-06:00

Orphan woke up. It was a nearly novel experience, since he had only lost consciousness a handful of times. A warforged’s handful, as it had only been three times.

It was a warmth in his foot, a sensation of rocking, and then he opened his eyelids (technically semi-organic composite eyesight shaders). He’d been expecting a stone or metal room, a torture chamber back in Ashtakala. He was on a ship. He quickly jumped to his feet, taking in the ambient light – recognizing that it was late afternoon, and that the ship that was adrift in the ocean somewhere.

Ois was sprawled out on the floor, naked. This surprised Orphan, given the little he understood of gender relations. A moment later he took in the electrical burns on her skin – and the stormstalk, wriggling into the room, getting ready to discharge again.

Intuition and instinct flooded through Orphan. In less time than it took for a human’s heart to beat he realized that his senses were sharper than they had been before he passed out. The headband of the Balanced Palm was around his head, no doubt put there by Delegado from the shape of the knot that Orphan could feel. And its power – it boosted him somehow, in a similar way that the monk’s belt that he’d inherited from his sensei did.

His hands were already moving. The shiruken spun through the air. One, two, then three. None were byeshk, but they were sharp enough.

The stormstalk blasted the first shiruken with a bolt, spinning it aside. The next two slashed it to pieces, gouging its eye and slitting the length of its body, releasing a vile mess of orange pus and bright sinewy tubes.

Orphan was ignoring the stormstalk, knowing that it was dead. He crouched next to Ois, checking her breathing and the bloodbeat in her neck.

“Fine,” Ois croaked out. “Just – paralysis.” She coughed, barely able to form words. “Get Delegado.” A swallow. “Hurry.”

The monk nodded, and took off. Delegado could heal, he’d seen the half-orc hold Pienna from the edge of death and bring her back. In a flash he was in the corridor, looking around. To the left, the hallway went to a door that was open a crack, and the warforged made out pots. A galley. Ahead, a cabin door, firmly shut. He could hear Thomas muttering behind it. Thomas was speaking in another language, daelkyr, from the twisted edge to it.

Iron Orphan hesitated. If Thomas was in there, then the warforged should not have killed the stormstalk. The half-daelkyr would die without a symbiont.

Orphan looked back, Ois was lying face down, her back and the backs of her thighs showing blackened, burnt spots. She needed Delegado. What could be done about Thomas, and how the stormstalk had managed to get free, that had to wait.

To the right, a ways down, a cabin door. He was there in a second, door open, and it was empty. It had a knocked-over wash basin, little else.

Farther down the corridor, light, sea sounds.

The warforged bolted. It had been less than seconds since he’d killed the stormstalk. He heard Delegado topside, felt the wood moving strangely.

The deckboards tore upwards, grabbing at him, holding him like a giant wooden fist.

Chapter 4 – Part 9

2008-11-06T10:04:00.001-06:00

Thomas smirked. He had won. The Captain had attempted to renege, and now the fiend was taken out. The half-daelkyr detached himself from the Crimson Ship, but not completely. Two writhing strips of lumber stayed attached to him.

He focused, sliding and twisting more wood. Now the deck was shut off. Delegado would not get below, not quickly. It would have been better to hurl him over the side, but no matter. The ingrate swamp bully was doubtlessly congratulating himself at surviving, but at the same time the half-orc would dare not draw the blade free. The deck was quiet now, but for all Delegado knew it could erupt at any moment. The half-orc would have to hold on and whimper.

“How dare he attack me, call me names, threaten me,” muttered Thomas. “I plucked them all from oblivion. Me. Thomas.”

His daelkyr half was muttering mentally about rearranging the limbs of his friends. Another voice told him that they weren’t his friends. Another insisted that they were, and that he had damaged his mind with his mental interaction with the Crimson Ship.

He ignored this distraction. His mind was whole. He knew it because he knew. He knew that Delegado was an ingrate, that Ois was a hypocrite, and that the Captain was an enemy.

Thomas sneered, and caressed the Crimson Ship mentally. He slowly wound its magic down, letting it drift as a normal ship in the ocean. In return it seemed to caress his mind as well, or at least partly. There was a spot in his mind that he could not feel. Fatigue, that was it.

Unnoticed by him, a thin stream of blood was issuing from his nostrils, and another from his left eye.

Later, I will learn more of this ship’s secrets, he thought. He was not aware that the left side of his face was sagging, the muscles unresponsive. For now bring it gently down, then find out where and when I am. He knew they had leaped forward through time but he didn’t know by how much.

He was hungry, ravenous in fact.

He inhaled. Succor would be had. But prominence before nourishment. He meant to let everyone know. As soon as the ship was settled. He would make sure that they all knew.

The part of his brain that was filling with his own blood failed to register that his impulse control was fading.

If not gone.

Chapter 4 – Part 8

2008-11-03T09:11:00.002-06:00

Ois sat up, her stomach settling, perspiration covering her body and reality came back. The naked changeling staggered to her feet, trying to get her bearings.

She saw the stormstalk a split second before its beam hit her square on.

Electricity sizzled through her nerve endings, burning her skin. She felt staggered, slowed down. She recognized temporary nerve damage as her reflexes slowed.

When you are in a place that you cannot defend, you run, and you attack what evil you can reach, an instructor had told her once. The Silver Flame does not expect its paladins to defend the indefensible, when evil needs to be attacked elsewhere.

Before the start of the Great War, the attitude of the Silver Flame theocracy to paladins retreating had not always been so broad-minded. Necessity adjusted ecclesiastic thinking faster than debate could.

She ran, or more accurately lumbered, towards the creature. She didn’t have time to go hunting for her sword. It was free, which probably meant Thomas was dead, and she had to go next door to tell Delegado. Betting that it had no teeth or stinger to make an opportunistic attack on her as she ran by it, she trundled through the doorway and turned left.

She was right about the lack of physical defenses, but the tiny aberration was able to recharge before she could get into Del’s room. Again her flesh sizzled, and only clenched teeth kept her from howling in agony. Again her limbs gre leaden, the damage to her coordination slowing her tremendously.

Thomas’ cabin was to her right. The wood was buckled, and strange lights flashed from around it. Delegado’s door was ahead and to the left. She hoped he was there.

This is your sin, she told herself hysterically. You wanted him to be your lover, to find you nude, and initiate the love-making. You made yourself a harlot, and the Flame withdrew its protection from you.

She scrabbled at the door, finally getting it open. He wasn’t in. She saw a rumpled bed, some bags, rolled up, and the body of the warforged, lying as if at rest. She tried shutting the door behind her.

She was not fast enough. The next bolt of electricity hit her left leg, just under her buttock. She twisted, the leg giving out, her body no longer responding. Choking out pain, she fell, slamming into the deck, paralyzed with electrical damage to her nervous system.

And as she fell, her hand fell on the warforged’s foot.

Even unmoving, she could summon the Flame. She laid on hands through the merest touch. Though the construct side of Iron Orphan’s body cut her efficiency in half, she sent every scrap of healing that she could into the warforged’s body.

Chapter 4 – Part 7

2008-10-30T10:08:00.001-05:00

Boards unraveled from the deck, tearing and curling around the startled half-orc, even as a blue sky slammed into view. Gravity returned, and a salt spray crashed over the side of a ship that displaced a piece of ocean, midday.

Delegado hesitated for a moment, he senses reeling with the return of the world. A moment was all that was necessary.

The moving ship planks snared the half-orc like a fish in a net. He grappled with the mobile wood, but unsuccessfully. They beat at him, raising bruises, bringing a gash over one eye which nearly blinded him with his own blood. His bow was snatched from his hands. Furiously the half-orc fought, trying to free himself.

The Captain suddenly stood, staring into Delegado’s eyes. The swirling colors captivated the half-orc.

The fiend then reached in, and shoved the boards aside. They balked a moment at the fiend’s touch, they slid back into the deck with a slapping sound, and became inert.

The Captain pulled Delegado free. “Now do you believe me?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“What the galig just happened?” demanded the half-orc snatching up his bow and whirling about. The ship’s deck was quiet, still, as if it had never attacked him. Blood slid down his face from his scalp wound.

“We were, then we weren’t, now we are again,” the Captain told him, a hoarse urgency in his voice. “I need your help, before he takes control of this section again.”

Delegado didn’t get a chance to ask what the thing meant, because the deck suddenly came to life again. It didn’t peel itself into tentacle-like boards this time, instead it bucked and rolled as if it were the liquid waves that surrounded the ship. Delegado fell, as did the Captain, and the deck jumped and bulged, pushing them to the rails.

The Captain cursed, and managed to flip himself around the moving bulges. He was aided by the fact that the wood that he touched seemed to obey him briefly. He made it to the ship’s wheel, grabbing it with both hands. A nimbus of discordant light began to appear around him.

Delegado let his bow go, hoping he would not lose it. Half-prone on a deck that refused to be flat, he drew his sword and slammed it into the deck point-first, piercing the wood harshly. Desperately the half-orc held on to the hilt as the adamantine blade became his anchor.

Delegado thought for a moment he would be fine, hanging on. Then he heard a horrible sound. Looking up he saw that the light around was a dancing red and black, and that the vessel’s former master was screaming in pain.

Chapter 4 – Part 6

2008-10-27T07:08:00.000-05:00

Their minds met. It was a brief encounter, long enough to exchange ideas so clear and articulate that they were almost words.

The Captain showed Thomas that they would perish, unless they worked together.

Thomas showed that he did not care, if he, Thomas, was not to be the master. Thomas made it clear that he was tired of others dictating his fate to him.

The Captain reluctantly agreed to cede control of the Crimson Ship to the half-daelkyr, if only briefly, but Thomas would have to keep the half-orc from firing the great bow.

It was an instant. Technically it wasn’t even that, as there was no way to record the time. But it was all that was necessary for an agreement of necessity.

Their minds joined. The fiend submitted his control to Thomas, but led, like a tiny tugboat pulling a great barge.

The Crimson Ship seized, then rippled, and then became actual.

Chapter 4 – Part 5

2008-10-23T10:29:00.000-05:00

Delegado hesitated.

Half-orcs were instinctual creatures, but Bartemain had always taught his son to think ahead. Intelligence was a valued asset to Bartemain, and his children, wholly human or only partially, were taught to think.

Bartemain was dead, his body a bag of skin barely held together by dust, wrapped up tenderly in a saddlebag below decks. By Delegado carried his father’s wisdom with him.

There was a limit to the fiend’s hypnosis, and Delegado should be safely beyond it, at the other end of the ship, taking advantage of range. Further, the fiend had his eyes closed, and was looking down at the deck. Finally, he knew that he had hit the thing, and then right afterwards reality had dropped away.

He might need this thing to get back to – to get away from wherever they were.

“Keep your head down!” barked the half-orc, slowly walking towards the Captain. “You pick your head up or open your eyes then more arrows get into you!” Time was still dancing, for a moment he felt it run backwards, and listened to the reverse sounds go back into his mouth, but then it went normal again. Things were still bad, he could not look at the nothing outside the ship, but they were somewhat better.

“I’m not your enemy!” gasped the fiend. “I am trying to get the ship back!”

“Back to the Demon Wastes?” The half-orc was close now, the arrow sighted at the fiend’s head.

“Back to TIME,” the Captain insisted. “One of your friends below is trying to manipulate the ship’s magic, but it got away from him! We are close to ceasing existence completely!”

Delegado held his arrow tight, wondering if he could believe the fiend.

Chapter 4 – Part 4

2008-10-20T09:17:00.000-05:00

Ois fell, barking her shin. She could not describe what was happening, her mind rebelled. She rolled across the floor, stopping at the wall, feeling the wood rub against her bare skin.

What happened to the world?

She realized in an instant that something was wrong, and that she could not make sense of it. The thief turned holy warrior moaned. Naked and scared, she shut everything out and prayed to the Silver Flame.

Chapter 4 – Part 3

2008-10-16T10:00:00.000-05:00

What happened? What happened? You did this! I did not, I could not!

Thomas’ mind was being ripped in two. The daelkyr side gibbered, trying to understand where the flesh was, if only it could manipulate some flesh, it could find the fix. The other half of his mind saw things that even a daelkyr would find insane. Before was after, after was before, never was now, later could never come.

Thomas howled, and the strips of wood that plugged into him danced like a great spider. The half-daelkyr barbarian grabbed reality through the Crimson Ship, grabbed with every bit of strength in his self, his sheer force of personality, grabbed, and demanded reality to stay.

It failed. He was falling, his fingers grabbing for support on a slick wall that laughed at him.

A presence came, and the wall formed a ledge. The presence was above decks, where the loss of reality was worse. It was the Captain, and he was trying to show Thomas how to calm the ship down.

The half-daelkyr laughed, feeling sweat creep painfully into his shaving cuts. A moment ago, lifetimes ago, the Captain had been fighting the half-daelkyr. Now they were working together. Pain hit the Captain, and his mind faded, then came back, insisting that Thomas push the Crimson Ship like so, to calm it down.

Thomas began to understand. Time was gone. The Crimson Ship was outside of time. It carried a little time with it, but the reality was slipping. They had maybe seconds to act, or centuries, it was hard to tell right now. They had to bring the Crimson Ship back.

You can do it without him, Thomas thought to himself, coldly. Don’t trust him, he wants to retake the ship. That was his own mind speaking, he knew that. His daelkyr side seemed to have been reduced into gibbering fear.

“Too much madness even for you, eh?” laughed Thomas. He flexed his mind, and the ship wrenched itself, its material following his commands. Mentally, he forced the Captain’s mind back, and then tried to manipulate the Crimson Ship like so, but by himself, only him.

It didn’t work. The entire ship buckled, and Thomas screamed mentally, without a sound exiting his physical mouth.

Chapter 4 – Part 2

2008-10-13T08:12:00.000-05:00

The Captain winced, trying not to feel the arrows that hadn’t hit him yet, or the ones that already did. Time was unraveling, although no doubt worse for the hybrid archer. The passage of time was always relative to the viewer, and the ultraloth was more central to the Crimson Ship than any other.

Except for the intruder belowdecks, trying to take it over.

Another arrow hit, then didn’t, then did again. This one had no energy discharge at least, just an enchantment that allowed it to bypass the Captain’s damage reduction. He gritted his teeth against the pain. The punch from the hybrid’s bow was significant.

Control of the ship slipped, and another veneer of molecules was stripped away as the Captain’s concentration wavered.

He wasn’t sure what happened, even he did not know the Crimson Ship completely, but he knew it had gone awry. The Crimson Ship could function like a regular sailing vessel, but its main mode of locomotion was actually to move reality around it, to make space fold and end up where it was needed.

One of the drawbacks to being an immortal outsider was that you were a slave to your nature. Uncounted millennia ago, the Captain chose travel on the seas as his nature, rather than the domineering, pain-inflicting, evil ways of so many of his kind, or the stalwart, heroic-cause-bearing ways of the coutal and angels who opposed the fiends. He had never regretted his choice, and he had happily bonded with this artifact.

Only now, he had taken on passengers who had attacked him. This had happened before, and he had dealt with it easily. But these passengers had one of their number who could manipulate magical devices in an uncanny fashion. The Captain had had artificers on the Crimson Ship before, but none as skilled as this. And, in a juxtaposition that could only please the Traveler, these passengers had been picked up from the land of his birth.

So, he had been busy finessing the hag sent as an ambassador, and the passenger who manipulated magic had struck. Then, while he had been trying to re-establish control, the half-orc had made it on deck, and had begun shooting the captain with his own arrows.

Caught by surprise twice, the Captain had lost control of the Crimson Ship, and below, whoever was trying to manipulate the Crimson Ship’s magic, had generated an incredible mishap, a surge in the reality-adjuster.

“Please stop shooting,” gasped the Captain. He grasped the ship’s wheel in one hand, trying to calm the magical surge. The mishap below had thrown the Crimson Ship forward, and too hard. They were out of the timestream, riding above it almost, and if they did not fall back in correctly, they would be scattered to nothingness.

The fiend closed his eyes, and focused, feeling the pull of the magics. Below, the one who had caused all the trouble was now working with him, trying to save the ship from disintegration. The Captain reached out with his mind, trying to show the other how to calm the surge.

But if another arrow hit, he would not be able to guide the other, and they would all be lost.