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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4873602" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 64“Did you hear something?” Jaron asked. Mara shook her head as she tightened the belt around her waist.  The armor she’d taken off the dead gnoll had been oversized, damaged, and soiled with blood to boot, but with it around her body she felt far better.  She tested the heft of the spear she’d found lying on the floor not far from the body, and nodded to herself; it would do.  She had the sword Rendil had given to her, but even with the rejuvenating effects of the halfling’s potion, she wanted to be able to inflict damage at a distance if another fight was forced upon them. Jaron waited for her.  She couldn’t see Beetle, but Mara suspected he was somewhere nearby.  It was he who’d found the intact corpse whose armor now protected Mara.  It had been immediately clear on entering the room that a desperate battle had been fought here, and not too long ago.  The stink of blood filled the room, and streaks of it covered the floor.  The room itself looked to have sustained some recent damage; they had found floor tiles scattered about, as if ruptured by some momentous tremor of the earth, or poked up by something below.  Neither scenario much appealed to any of them, so as soon as Mara was ready they moved on once again.  There were two exits on the far side of the room.  After a brief pause, Jaron led them into the passage on the right.  Up ahead, the passage forked, with one branch jutting left and the other continuing straight ahead for a short distance before turning right.  Before they could evaluate their options, Beetle suddenly appeared from the left passage, all but jumping with excitement.  He burst out something so fast that Mara couldn’t decipher the words, something that sounded like “bippug,” and was running back before either she or Jaron could ask him to repeat himself.  Sharing a look with the ranger, Mara hurried after him.  The left passage ended after only about thirty feet in a set of double doors that were just slightly open, clearly indicating that Beetle had already explored in this direction.  The halfling ignored Jaron’s hissed warning and darted again through the opening, leaving the others little choice but to follow.  As they neared the doors, Mara could hear noises coming from beyond them, a harsh grunting noise accompanied by the clink of metal, a sound that made Mara’s grip on her spear tighten.Then she pushed through the doors, and her eyes widened in surprise. Beyond the doors, the passage opened onto a fairly large rectangular room.  To her left, a crude pen maybe ten paces across had been erected, the wooden braces rising nearly to her waist.  That barrier was completely overshadowed by the massive boar that was imprisoned within the pen, held in place by a thick chain secured around its neck and bolted to an eyelet embedded in the floor.  Even restricted by the chain, the boar’s motions were powerful, shaking the ground with the ferocity of its movements.  Its tusks were as long as her arm from shoulder to fingertips, and she knew that they would poke through her armor just as effectively as a steel sword, backed by the sheer mass and strength of the creature. She could see that the creature had been mistreated; bloody scars were visible around its neck where the chain had dug into its flesh, and for all its size it looked as though it had not been fed for some time.  The boar shook its head, agitated by their arrival, grunting ferociously but ineffectively as it struggled uselessly against the chain.  Beetle had gone right up next to it, stepping under the barrier.  The boar spun menacingly toward him, but the halfling had judged the distance perfectly, and its tusks missed him by scant inches.  “Big pig!” Beetle said, and Mara finally understood what he’d been trying to tell them before.  She looked around the rest of the room; on the far side opposite the chained boar a low wall fashioned out of bales of odd purplish hay had been constructed, stretching across the width of the room.  “Leave the thing alone,” Jaron said.  “It can’t hurt anyone, and it’s cruel to torment it.”Mara came over toward him, slowly; the boar shifted and grunted, but the energy that had animated it was clearly already fading.  “I know this boar,” Mara said after a moment.  “Well, not personally, but I believe it is the pet of a friend of mine, back in the Hall.”“Who makes friends with a dire boar?” Jaron asked.  Beetle ran past them, heading for the bales of hay. “He’s a dwarf miner, the priest of Moradin I mentioned to you, when I was looking for information about Vhael and the others.  He said it was tame… well, mostly tame.”“It doesn’t seem so… Beetle!  What are you doing?”His cousin had picked up a bale of hay and ran it back across the room, despite the fact that it was larger than he was.  The boar watched him suspiciously as he tore at the twine holding the bale together with his knife.  “Pig hungry,” he said. “Do boars even eat hay?” Mara asked.  “They eat just about anything,” Jaron said, frowning.  “Including careless halflings.”  Beetle ignored him and started feeding the boar, which accepted the fat bites of hay he offered.  He obviously had been listening to the others talking, for he talked to it in Dwarvish, and the boar grunted in response, fixing Beetle with an odd stare, as if trying to reconcile the halfling with what its small brain knew of dwarves.  He picked up another double-handful of hay, entering the boar’s reach to jam it into its mouth.  Jaron froze, but the boar only accepted the offering, slurping every last bit of straw into its maw.  The halfling laughed and made a face as the boar’s slobber got on his hands, but he wiped them on his coat and grabbed more hay.  Within just a few seconds, the bale was gone, and Beetle ran back for another one.  “What the heck are we supposed to do with it?” Jaron asked. “Pig pet!  Pet pig!” Beetle said, with an enthusiasm that made Jaron cringe.  “Maybe once we find the others, we can figure out a way to get it back to the Hall,” Mara began, but before she could finish the thought, a roar sounded through the room, coming from the open doors behind them.  It was answered by a much fainter cry, but one that both of them instantly recognized as belonging to Vhael.  “Come on!” Mara yelled, dashing back toward the doors.</blockquote>

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