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Message: <blockquote data-quote="talien" data-source="post: 4790989" data-attributes="member: 3285">Chaugnar Faugn: Part 3a – The MonasteryHiking up the face of the Demon’s Horns was no simple task. While there was no technical climbing necessary, there were plenty of passages that required strength, balance, and care.Kham grunted, struggling up the side of the cliff. “Funny, I don’t see Tranco with us.”“We went over this.” Sebastian hovered, flapping his wings.  “They’re all in bad shape.  It’s best that we leave them with Baldric.  They told us that Livius and his men went to the top of the Demon’s Horns, so that’s where we’re going.”“I’m still not sure how Yolanda got there,” said Kham.  “She was in Carcosa when we last met.”Leaving Tranco meant leaving him with Yolanda, and Kham wasn’t sure how he felt about that.“We’ll deal with that later,” said Sebastian. “Right now we have to stop Livius before he summons the King in Yellow.”It took six hours of hard trek before they reached another dwelling. Two hours into the ascent, they had to negotiate a difficult cross-slope strewn with small rocks.  Then they saw the monastery.Built from the same stone as that on which it sat and augmented by red-painted clay, the monastery buildings clung to a steep cliff, a huge swathe of which was painted white.  As they toiled closer, it was clear the greater part of it lay in ruins.  Only the main temple seemed largely intact.  It had tiny windows and no signs of life—no people, animals, noise, or smoke.The main approach was across open ground, but on there were broken boulders scattered thickly all the way to one edge of the building.“Those boulders must have once tumbled from the cliff above,” said Beldin.When they were about three hundred yards away from the monastery, a figure appeared in the doorway.  The man paused.Vlad waved.  “Hel—“A shot echoed off the mountain above. Vlad spun in a spray of blood and collapsed.“Sniper!” shouted Kham.  He drew his pistols and ran towards the boulders.Beldin hunkered down behind his shield and stood over Vlad.  “I’m not leaving him.”The man calmly walked towards them, reloading his rifle.  A bat-winged shadow passed overhead.Kham fired a retort.  Dust exploded near the man’s feet.  There was a strange shuddering in the ground.  The man looked down, curious.  Little pirouettes of dirt plopped up and down out of the earth, as if something were burrowing to the surface.Then a forest of thick, ochre-colored tentacles exploded out of the ground, encircling the man’s arms, legs, and even his throat.  One tentacle yanked the rifle from his grasp.He struggled, helpless.  Then he saw the flying ochre jaws.  They flew straight for his head…Kham winced as the man’s headless body was released from the tentacles and sunk back into the ground.  “Is it just me,” he asked Skiz, who peeked out of Kham’s pouch, “or is Sebastian’s magic getting…yellower?”</blockquote>

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