Paralyzed!
6/17/369 O.L.G., 1 a.m., in the shadow of the mountains, Dyshim
”TURKEY!!!!”
The cry in the night wakes our heroes, except for Beau, who was on watch and is under furious assault by two giant insects that look remarkably like great wasps or hornets of some kind. As the other struggle to their feet, he dashes away from one to slash at the other.
“Where is the turkey?” Timothy cries naively. “The bugs have taken it! Bad bugs!” He casts slow at them, but to his surprise they both resist it. One of the wasp things stabs at Beau with its wicked stinger, but again he flips adroitly away from it. The other one flies over to Naomi, who has managed to open her eyes and sit up, but she’s still entangled in her bedroll. The wasp-thing’s stinger jabs into her belly. She gasps in pain as she feels venom pump into her. She wrenches herself back and away, feeling nauseated. The bug stings her again, jamming its stinger into her chubby thigh. She tries to manifest a power defensively, but she’s in too much pain; and it just looks like it’s going to get worse. “Help!!” she screams.
Beau glances her way but he’s too busy dodging the stinger of his antagonist at the moment. With a grimace, he casts a spell. He can fight back, at least. He touches the mad insect that’s trying to prick him with its stinger and there is a smell of ozone and a crackle of electricity. It jerks as the shocking grasp jolts through it. Then he steps back and casts an enfeebling ray at the one predating on Naomi. It writhes as it loses some of the strength in its limbs. Then he has to focus fully on his opponent again as it buzzes in at him.
Jawbreaker, meanwhile, has thrown off his blanket and rushed in to prevent Beau’s bug from a move towards Naomi as well. He stabs at it with his longspear, wounding it badly, just as a fireball detonates on the one attacking Naomi. It gives another wild jab at her with its stinger, but thanks to the ray of enfeeblement it misses!
“Don’t worry, Naomi! I’ll protect you!” Timothy strides forward boldly, his lips already beginning to mutter the words to another spell. A flaming sphere, then another fireball, as the hornet-like monster tries to flee; but then it turns and swoops back towards the party!
Beau and Jawbreaker are now flanking the other wasp, however, and with a sneaky blow to the eye with a shocking grasp Beau manages to kill it. Gasping for breath, he turns to aid Timothy and Naomi with a magic missile.
One of them is down, thinks Naomi grimly as she fails to manifest power after power.* Finally, as it closes in (now burning from Timothy’s mighty fireballs), she manages to focus enough to get one right. A recall agony forces it to relive the fireball it just experienced, and it spasms and dies.
“Ow, that sucked really bad,” Naomi groans. She drags herself to her knees. Her vision is swimming. “I can’t feel my legs. I think I’m poisoned. Can anyone...” She gasps- and collapses, unmoving.
“Naomi!” exclaims Timothy. “Oh no! Is she okay?”
Jawbreaker examines her. Her finds no signs of life. “She dead,” he says sadly, and begins to dig a grave for her. It is only when Timothy realizes that she still has an aura with his magic spectacles that they check again. She still looks good and dead; but then she mindlinks with Jawbreaker to tell them she’s only paralyzed. At first he thinks that spirit voices are talking to him, and he pokes himself in the head with a stick. Then, once she explains, he relaxes. In the end, he builds a sling for her and ties her to his back to try it out.
“Fat girl,” he comments as he hefts her. She beams inwardly.**
The party ends up resting a full day, but unfortunately she remains paralyzed. “I wonder how long this is going to last,” wonders Timothy.
Me too, Naomi thinks.
The time passes uneventfully, except for a few hairy moments when Jawbreaker nearly chokes Naomi to death trying to feed her.
***
6/20/369 O.L.G., 5 p.m., on Split Peak
Our heroes have moved into the mountains. Though they don’t know it, the mountain chain is called Dhali’s Fists.
In the sky, exchanging glimpses of each other with the party, is some sort of large winged creature.
“Whatever it is, if it come close enough, Jawbreaker eat it.” The Chief guffaws.
Naomi, alas, can still not move. She can communicate with the others via mindlink but she’s snarky, bored and irritated. I hope this wears off! she tells Beau telepathically. I hope I’m not paralyzed forever!
***
6/21/369 O.L.G., noon, the foot of the mountains
Our heroes have broken through the mountains, and now, ahead and below, a jungle spreads before them. It looks wet, hot, thick, steaming. The vegetation seems almost stepped into layers, from near the ground to high above. Even at this distance they can smell the strange perfumes produced by the alien flowers within. Here and there the party can make out a flash of movement: birds, monkeys, something hooved.
Another hour and they enter under the canopy. The air grows thicker, more humid. The temperature rises. Moisture is everywhere. Flowers, too. Little streams cut the ground everywhere, and some places the ground is nearly soft enough to be a marsh.
Jawbreaker leads the way, probing cautiously with his stick. However, it is from above that a voice hails.
”Who goes there?” it cries, in Strogassian.
Our heroes look up. Dressed in mottled greens and browns, an elf is covering them with a bow.
“What are you?” the elf asks. “You look like humans, but you’re too small to be any human I’ve ever seen.”
“Hello, sir elf!” Timothy declares, “We’re a band of halflings!”
“Halflings?” The elf frowns. “What is a halfling?”
“Well,” says Beau, “a halfling is like a human should be, just as a half-elf is what an elf should be.”
The elf’s face turns as red as a tomato, contorting angrily. He vanishes back into the woods.
“Wait, I don’t think that came out right,” mutters Beau.
***
Things get ugly after that. The jungle is a hotbed of disease. In a few days, Timothy, Naomi and Beau all get the dreaded disease known as the buzzing bowels. “Oh, crap,” moans Beau. Jawbreaker continues to care for Naomi, feeding and cleaning her, but he tries to rig her up so that she doesn’t need such constant maintenance. (Once it becomes clear that the party is ill, they camp out to try to get past the disease.)
Boy, isn’t it funny how, just when you think things couldn’t get any worse- they do?
Next Time: Things get worse!
*Over the course of a six round fight, Naomi failed, for one reason or another, to manifest three powers. She was asleep for two rounds at the start.
**To a halfling, of course, ‘skinny’ is a strong insult, while ‘fat’ is praise.
