Occupational hazards
In what looked to be the beginning of the mine’s main drift, the companions came upon the scattered remnants of a small campsite that lay in a small alcove just above the water line. Rusted and pitting mining equipment lay scattered about, along with several mine carts and the desiccated remains of three mules. A rusted iron strong box could be seen peeking out from under one of the overturned carts. Gorak righted the cart, and Jack squatted down and was just beginning to examine the lock when a small splash echoed from deeper down the shaft. Nessalin whipped around and shined his lantern down the tunnel. From beneath a rickety bridge that spanned the shaft, two emaciated creatures emerged. They were barely recognizable as having once-been human, though the rotted remains of miners’ garb indentified them as such. Their flesh was twisted, and their eyes burned with hatred. Their teeth were beast-like, and though they superficially resembled zombies, they moved with supernatural speed as they charged forward.
Jack was on his feet in an instant, and rushed to meet the oncoming undead. Gorak was no more than a pace behind him, and as the first of the creatures reached them, the pair flanked right and left, striking simultaneously like a well-oiled machine. The undead corpse exploded in what looked like a cloud of salt.
“They’re wights!” Agnar shouted in warning as the second creature moved in to attack. “Don’t let them touch you!”
Jack and Gorak turned to look for the second wight, but it was already past them. Nessalin and Ishirou moved to intercept it, and as the magus lifted his blade, he imbued it with a cantrip that was anathema to undead. The creature hissed and lunged at Ishirou, but the old-man was more agile than his years, and he caught the monster with the edge of his katana. Salt poured from the wound, and then Nessalin struck, driving his scimitar into the wight’s back. It shrieked as it to dissolved into a mound of white crystals.
The mine shaft continued to wind deeper into the earth, and the Bastards walked cautiously, their eyes and ears attuned for any signs of more of the wights. They felt certain that there would be more, since the journal they’d found hinted that this was the fate that had befallen all of the miners. Gorak, in the lead as usual, abruptly came to a halt and cocked his head, listening. Soon, the others heard it as well: a banging sound, as if something metal were striking stone.
“There!” Jack shouted, pointing towards the ceiling several dozen yards down the tunnel.
The others followed his gaze, and to their horror, saw another pair of wights clinging to the ceiling, their long, filthy claws ripping at the loose rock there. Before the companions could move or react, that portion of the ceiling suddenly gave way, showering them with sharp shards of stone. Worse, the cave-in left a choking, blinding cloud of smoke and debris in its wake. As the group tried to get their bearings, the wights leaped out of the darkness. The melee was chaos, with blades and claws flashing out blindly, and at one point an explosion of fire as Zavasta lobbed one of his bombs blindly, catching most of his allies in the blast. Still, when the smoke finally cleared, Ishirou and Gorak stood over another pair of salt piles, and none of the companions were badly injured. The main shaft was choked with debris, but not impassable. With no choice but to keep going, the group continued on their way.
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“These wights are not like any I’m familiar with,” Agnar said as the Bastards stood over yet another pair of salt piles, having just defeated two more of the undead horrors. “And that’s saying something. Most of these creatures, when they touch you, they drain a little bit of your life energy away. These, however, almost seem to feed off of the moisture of the living…something akin to dehydration or desiccation. I’d love the chance to study an animate one more closely.”
“Keep dreaming!” Jack snapped. “One touch from one of those things felt like someone poured molten metal on my arm. I like them just fine as seasoning, thank you.”
The drift widened, and a small island rose out of the shallow water in the center. Part of a large, translucent blue orb protruded from the surrounding earth, pulsing with a pale blue glow. The globe was cracked in several places and shards of the strange, glass-like substance lay scattered across the islet’s surface. A sizable hole was smashed into one side, revealing a hollow interior.
“Didn’t that journal you found mention something about a blue orb?” Jack asked Zavasta.
“Yeah,” the alchemist sneered, “the miners found it just before they all disappeared.”
“Gorak not afraid,” the barbarian said.
He hoisted his blade and stepped onto the island, then moved cautiously towards the orb. When he stepped inside, an electrical strobe of sapphire light flashed around the structure, and Gorak roared in pain as it coursed through him. At the same moment, a pair of figures stepped from the shadows inside the orb. One had once been female, but was now just the shriveled husk of another salt wight. The other was no less undead, but its skin was the blue of a drowning victim, and it carried a heavy pick in its hands. The female wight grabbed Gorak and pulled him further inside the globe, while the blue warrior swung his pick in a wide arc and drove the tip into the barbarian’s back. Gorak collapsed to one knee, his strength leaving him, but then his eyes began to fill with a feral rage, and bone horns thrust through the skin of his forehead, their tips wreathed in fire. He lowered his head and drove it forward, plunging the horns into the belly of the blue warrior, and lifting the creature from its feet as he surged to his feet.
Back outside the dome, the rest of the Bastards watched the battle with trepidation. Nessalin and Jack wanted to rush to Gorak’s aid, but Agnar warned them against it.
“The globe is rife with negative energy,” he said. “You’d be dead within minutes.”
“Then we’d best send in someone expendable,” Arioch replied.
The summoner raised his hands above him, and two stubby elementals rose out of the soil. At his command, they lumbered forward into the globe. The black energy coruscated over them, but didn’t seem to slow them down. The pair began to batter at the wights, driving them away from Gorak. The enraged half-orc, however, wasn’t about to let his quarry escape so easily. As the elementals beat the female wight into paste, Gorak charged the blue warrior and impaled him with his blade while simultaneously tearing out his throat with his horns.
“What’s that?” Jask asked as Gorak came stalking out of the globe.
Something dangled from the end of one of the barbarian’s horns, and Jack reached up to retrieve it. It was a small locket of tarnished silver. The initials F.C. were engraved upon its back. Jack popped the clasp, and inside was a faded portrait of a kindly looking man holding a small child.
“Something about her looks familiar…,” the rogue said.
“It’s the girl you killed on the trail,” Nkechi said.
Jack stared at him, speechless, and then cast his eyes down.
“We can’t leave this thing here,” Arioch broke the silence, pointing to the globe. “The rest of the expedition is going to be coming through here in a few days. We can’t risk exposing them to this dark magic.”
“What do you suggest?” Nessalin asked.
The summoner’s reply was to command his elementals to smash the globe to pieces.
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The group finally emerged from the drift into a large cavern filled with immense piles of rock salt chunks, along with an assortment of mining equipment. A pair of iron double doors on the far side opened onto the outside world once more, and the companions found themselves on the edge of the Mneri Plains, a broad swath of savanna that stretched to the horizon. On Nkechi’s advice, they set out across the plains on the next leg of their journey. Two days out from the Fzumi mine, they came upon a camp that consisted of a number of traveling merchants. They had set up an impromptu arena for cockfighting, and dozens of them, as well as guards and porters, had gathered around to place bets on the match. As the Bastards approached, they were welcomed into the camp warmly, and immediately a trio of rough-looking Garundi men made their way over.
“Place your bets?” one of the men asked, implying that it was more of a rhetorical question.
“What are the odds?” Jack asked.
“We’ve got Cornugon,” he pointed to a speckled pea-comb, “and Muddy Lyza,” a brown single comb. “Odds are 2:1 in Lyza’s favor, but the betting’s 2:1 for Cornugon.”
“Put me down for 100 on Cornugon,” Jack said.
“I’ll take that action,” Zavasta chimed in.
One by one, the others, save Nkechi, anted up as well. When all bets were in, the match began. It was brief, violent, and extremely close, but in the end, Cornugon came out on top.
“Winner, winner, chicken dinner!” Jack crowed as he went to collect his winnings from the fight manager, a slender and sickly-looking fellow named Rickets Perga.
“You cheat!” he screamed as Jack approached. “You used magic to rig the fight! I saw you! I pay you nothing!”
Rickets’ three thugs drew cudgels from their belts as they moved to back up their employer. Jack’s weapons were in his hands in a flash, and he deflected a blow meant to crack his skull, then reversed his rapier and stabbed the ruffian in the belly. Then Gorak was at his side, and the barbarian lifted the bleeding man bodily into the air, then snapped his back across his knee. Suddenly, an animalistic roar erupted from behind Rickets, and the crowd of onlookers gasped in fear. The bookie turned and came face to face with an enormous crocodile that Arioch had seemingly plucked out of thin air. Before the man could even begin to scream, the beast seized him in its jaws and shook him like a rag doll. Nessalin and Agnar took out another of the thugs with a combination of fire and lightning, while Lyrissa shattered the club of the last man with her blade, before driving it through his neck. As the last man fell, Agnar leaned over the remains of Rickets and plucked the man’s purse from his belt.
“I trust no one else has anything else to say on this matter?” he asked to those assembled.
His only answer was silence.
“I thought not,” he said.
And with that, the Bastards continued on their way.
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As the trail skirted the northern border of the Laughing Jungle, the travelling companions spotted a wisp of smoke on the horizon, coming from a small Zenj village huddling under the jungle’s eaves. As they drew closer, the villagers gathered and hailed them warmly….until they saw the horrific visage of the skeletal velociraptor that stalked along behind Agnar. In panicked terror, the natives screamed and fled inside their homes…all except for an older woman with a painted face. She stood in the door way of her hoot and simply watched the strangers pass impassively.
“Savages,” Agnar chuckled.
Nkechi just shook his head.
That night, the group camped within a stone’s throw of the outlying trees of the Screaming Jungle, and Jack and Gorak stood first watch. Jack was uneasy. He’d felt all day as if he were being watched, and he found himself looking over his shoulder constantly at every snap of a twig in the darkness. It was shortly past midnight when that feeling became all but overwhelming, and the snapping twig suddenly became a crashing and tearing sound coming from within the trees. Jack turned, his hands going for his blades, just as something truly horrific erupted into the glow of the camp fire. The massive, shaggy beast used long and muscular forearms to raise itself onto its hind legs and beat its chest like a gorilla. Despite its ape-like stance, its frame was far heavier and its features more primitive, its powerful muzzle and gnashing canines bespoke terrible, bestial savagery. Before Jack could free his weapons from their sheaths, the creature was upon him, pouncing like a cat. It tore and ripped with tooth and claw, and before Gorak’s disbelieving eyes, Jack went down in a blood-soaked, gory heap. The barbarian gripped his own sword and took a step towards the creature. It was then that the second beast reared up behind the half-orc and fell upon him like a force of nature.
Nkechi woke first, for he too had felt uneasy as darkness had settled over the savannah. His dream had been dark, and filled with the image of the old woman at the village they’d passed. In them, she’d cursed him and his companions for ignoring the need of her people. When he saw the pair of horrors rampaging through the camp, his heart felt like it was going to hammer its way out of his chest. As a boy, he had been told chilling tales of the savage, child-eating chemosit. While most Mwangi believed these stories held little truth and served only to keep children from wandering too far from their villages, Nkechi had raised to know better. His grandmother had believed the creatures to be the living embodiment of wrathful gods or nature spirits, and villagers that were plagued by the beasts were believed to be cursed. Now not one, but two of the creatures were here before his very eyes, and the old priest felt that he may have the chance to meet Gozreh sooner rather than later.
Arioch awoke next, and though he had no idea what the beasts were, he was just as impressed by their ferocity as Nkechi was. Consequently, his first instinct was to put something large between himself and them. With a gesture, a huge crocodile appeared hissing and snapping in the center of camp. Agnar, who had been sleeping next to the summoner, liked the idea of having minions in front of him, and commanded the undead velociraptor into the fray. The crocodile swung its tail like a bludgeon into the legs of the chemosit that had killed Jack, and the skeletal raptor leaped at it as well. The chemosit caught the raptor in mid-air, smashing it to splinters with one massive paw. Then it turned its full fury on the crocodile, ripping the animal to shreds as easily as it had the rogue.
Gorak, battered and bleeding, held his ground. Rage took him and he turned on the beast behind him, slashing it deeply with his blade. The chemosit didn’t falter, but instead proceeded to maul the barbarian again, gathering him up into its vice-like embrace. Nearby, Zavasta got to his feet, but as he did so, the first chemosit swatted him back down. The alchemist, his vision blurred, still managed to bring one of his bombs into his hand, and hurled it at the beast attacking Gorak. At the same time, Nessalin charged towards the monster, his scimitar sizzling with living lightning. The beast released Gorak to meet the magus’s attack, but it was a moment too late. Nessalin slashed, releasing the electricity into the chemosit’s blood. The animal stiffened, every hair on end, and then collapsed into a smoldering heap. Meanwhile, Arioch replaced his dead crocodile with a quartet of earth elementals. They erupted out of the ground on all sides of the remaining chemosit. Though the beast whirled and fought like a dervish, the combined force of the elementals was overpowering, and they finally managed to bring the monster down.
Jack knew only darkness, until after what seemed like an eternity, he saw a small point of light some unfathomable distance away. Gradually it grew until it filled his vision, and it was then that he saw that the source of the light was an achingly beautiful angelic woman.
“It is not your time yet,” she said, her voice like the most haunting song Jack had ever heard. “Besmara still has great plans for you, young one.”
She reached out one finger and placed it gently upon his chest, and in that instant Jack felt a surge like ten lightning bolts explode through him. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself surrounded by his companions, all shouting his name.
“I hear you,” he moaned. “What’s all the fuss about?”
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The savannah continued to spread out before the Bastards as they continued to press east towards the Screaming Jungle. Though Agnar had lost his skeletal dinosaur as a minion, he had replaced it with the skeleton of one of the chemosits. The creature lumbered along behind him, its bones still weeping blood, giving the abomination a sickening smell and an even more horrific appearance. The group crested a small rise and saw before them a collection of low snaking mounds that spread out across the plains like an alien landscape. Some twisted and wound for several hundred yards, while others sank back into the soil after only a few yards.
“What are these?” Arioch asked Nkechi.
The old priest shrugged. “There are many wild beasts to be found on the savannah, both above the ground and under it. I would proceed with caution.”
“Remind me why we brought him along again?” Agnar snapped.
The companions began winding through the maze of mounds, walking quickly, but trying to pay attention to where they stepped. Suddenly, the ground gave way directly beneath the feet of Jack and Lyrissa. The pair fell tumbling into the sinkhole, landing hard some twenty feet below. Immediately the ground around the others began to rumble and shake, and then two great, centipede-like creatures, with compound eyes and large, serrated mandibles, erupted out of the earth. At the same time, a third creature tunneled out of the wall in the hole with Lyrissa and Jack. Gorak, Nessalin and Ishirou moved quickly to place themselves between the rampaging beasts and their allies, while in the pit below, Arioch sent a trio of earth elementals to the aid of the rogue and the bard. The creatures, ankhegs as Nkechi later called them, proved ferocious opponents, ansthey were able to spit streams of acid from their jaws, but the Bastards ultimately bested them with few injuries, and no loss of life.
“How much further until we find these ruins?” Zavasta breathed heavily after the battle.
Nkechi shrugged. “Assuming no problems on the road…45 more days?”
The alchemist rolled his eyes and groaned, and his companions felt his frustration acutely. With the way things were going, there were no assurances they were ever even going to reach Tazion.
