Chapter 5- Part 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.