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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sagiro" data-source="post: 922530" data-attributes="member: 726">Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 181Kibi, of course, wants to descend for a closer look.  The wind-walkers get together for a conference while Aravis spirals high above.“I don’t see what we get out of stopping,” says Morningstar.“A break?” suggests Flicker.  “A meal with the good guys for a change?”“We don’t know they’re the good guys in this reality,” points out Grey Wolf.“It’s a moot point,” says Dranko.  “Unless you want to have Aravis just plop down on one of those battlements.  Remember, the Eyes said we shouldn’t separate by more than a few hundred feet.  Those dwarves would probably start shooting at a dragon.”There’s a bit more debate, but the group decision is to avoid the dwarven empire if possible.   The Company settles into a rocky valley, hidden from sight from the dwarvish habitations.   A quick search reveals some small holes in the ground, and tracks made by (Kay thinks) lizards the size of dogs.  Late at night, while most of the party sleeps, Kay hears a strange sound out in the darkness.  It sounds like…electricity?  It’s followed by the sound of a mountain cat scampering away up a rocky slope.When she investigates in the morning, her conclusion is that a few lizards must have scared off a large lynx-like animal.  “Lightning lizards, I think,” says Kay.  “We’re near to where we encountered them in our own reality.”She unconsciously rubs her sternum, where a bevy of such lizards had blasted her.“We don’t bother them, they don’t bother us,” says Aravis.  “You’re about to turn into a dragon,” says Pewter.  “You could just eat them.”* *By mid-day the Company has left the mountains behind and is flying north-east over the green flood plains east of Kivia’s Eternal River.  The air is cool – probably thirty degrees cooler than in the hot climate of the jungle a thousand miles south.  Aravis has just about reached his point of exhaustion, so wanting to make good speed they land for Kibi to take his first turn as dragon.  “Scree, I’ll be sure to…” says Kibi.“I don’t want to know about it,” interrupts Scree. “Just let me know when you’re back on land, in proper dwarvish form.”Aravis climbs onto Kibi’s back and the others help rig a light rope harness to give the him something to hold on to.   A few hours later, having passed over miles of unihabited wilderness,  Kibi glides down for a landing.  He’s gotten some instruction from Aravis and is full of confidence.“Boss?”“Yes Pewter?”“I don’t mean to sound alarmist, but he’s making the same mistake that you did the first time.  We’re coming in too fast.”“Nonsense,” says Aravis.  “Kibi is an intelligent wizard.  We’ll be fine.”“We should be ready to bail,” says Pewter.“I have complete faith in my fellow mage,” Aravis sniffs.“Suit yourself,” says Pewter.  “I have complete faith that I’m going to land on my feet when I… ABANDON DRAGON!”Pewter leaps off and tumbles through the grass.  Aravis has just enough time to tighten his grip on the ropes when Kibi crash-lands, rolling over several times before coming to a skidding halt.  Fortunately for Aravis, he looses his hold and is thrown free of the out-of-control dragon before getting squashed.   Pewter runs over to make sure his master is ok.“Yes, Pewter, I’m fine.  Ow.  Mostly.”“Boss, I told…”“Yes, you did.”“Next time…”“Yes, I will.”* *It is two days later, and below the Company the desolation of north-eastern Kivia rushes by.   It’s cold enough that the Company is flying lower than they have been; Kibi (taking his turn as the dragon) flies a couple hundred feet higher than the rest to avoid alerting anything on the ground..  It’s been hundreds of miles since the last sign of intelligent life, and those were some ancient ruins discovered the previous day.   But now, up ahead, there is something interesting: a farmhouse on the tundra. As they draw near to it, they see that it’s huge.   Not huge in a multiple-barns or a dozen-rooms kind of way, but huge in a scaled-up, giants-live-here kind of way.  The stone wall pen adjacent to the house holds a half-dozen giant-sized cows.Over the next couple of hours the Company realizes that the entire region is populated with giants.  There are more isolated farmhouses, but most of the giants live in small walled villages.  Well, ok, they’re enormous walled villages, but from a giant’s point of view they must be quite modest.  The giants themselves are about 15 feet tall and dressed in warm furs.  Most of them carry enormous clubs.There’s a strange pattern to the settlements.  There will be a few giantish villages connected by crude footpaths, and then several miles of uninhabited wilderness.   Beyond that, more connected settlements.  The uninhabited parts don’t seem any different from the populated areas – flat, dusted with snow, with occasional patches of scrubby growth.   Clusters of un-owned cows roam the fields looking for bits of grass to eat.  In one of these unsettled areas the wind-walkers note a gruesome sight – several bloody cow carcasses lying at the foot of a small low hill.  “I want to check that out,” says Kay.  “It might give us a clue about why this area doesn’t have any giants in it.”The group lands a few dozen feet away from the dead cows.  Kay and Dranko go solid.  Kibi lands (gracefully, even!) and Aravis dismounts.  Kay cautiously approaches the carcasses. The nearest one quivers.  Kay stops.  From a dozen feet away it looks like something has bored holes through the body of the cow.  Dark blood is splattered around the nearby rocks.  Something pokes its head up out of the animal’s remains.  It’s a red animal, looking like a cross between a weasel and a fox.  The local giants would call it a blood fox, but Kay has never seen anything quite like it before.  She casts speak with animals.“Hello.  What are…”“Hungry!  Fresh food!” chatters the creature.  Kay has just enough to time to wonder how a creature that small, that seems to have recently devoured most of a cow half the size of an elephant, could still be hungry.   Then the blood fox springs on her.  It’s the fastest living thing she has ever seen.  There is a blur of red, and in less than a second the creature has latched its jaws onto the flesh below her left shoulder.  Four claws grip her body while razor-sharp teeth tear into her flesh.   She cries out in pain and shock, but has enough presence of mind to draw her dagger and stab at its body.It seems like it should be an easy enough target to hit, given that it’s mostly stationary and attached to the side of her torso.  But just as the point of the dagger grazes its red fur, the sinuous body bends and snakes to the side, and it’s all Kay can do not to follow through and stab herself.  The claws never move, and the creature continues to chew.Horrified, Aravis decides to take no chances.  He fires off a chain lightning (albeit with only the one target) at the strange weaselly creature.  Crack!  Boom!  And the animal is unharmed, having unlatched its rear claws just long enough to swing its body out of harms way.  A half-second later it has fully latched on again.The others realize that Kay’s life is in real danger from this creature, and start to de-mist.  To Kay’s horror the beast is now burrowing its way down the side of her body; already its head and shoulder have disappeared inside the hole it’s carving for itself.   The left side of her body has gone numb, and she feels faint.  Desperately she stabs again with her dagger, but the animal effortlessly twists out of the way.Dranko watches in shock, wondering what he can do to help.  He could cast healing spells on Kay but that would just serve as a delaying action; he can’t possible heal her faster than this… thing… is eating her alive.   Not knowing what else to do he takes out his decanter of endless water, takes aim, and shouts “geyser!” The stream of water knocks Kay back a few feet but does not deter the creature in the slightest.  Kibi is also not sure what to do, but there’s surely no help he can offer as a dragon.  He changes back into his natural dwarven shape.Kay feels her consciousness starting to slip away.  The creature has now burrowed from her shoulder to her waist; her skin bulges grotesquely, splitting open in places.  In another few seconds she will be dead, just like the cows.  With nothing else to do she steadies the dagger as best as she can, and stabs through her own body, into the body of the beast where Kay’s own torso prevents it from twisting out of the way.  With pain and satisfaction she feels the dagger sink into the creature. At least I’ll take you with me, you son of a…In a split second it has leapt fully out Kay's body, landing several feet away and chattering angrily.   The pain is too much; Kay falls over in a faint, blood pouring out of her.   The red furry beast flees across the tundra, and Aravis sends a parting fireball after it, which it smoothly dodges.  Dranko rushes over to apply healing to Kay.  A few seconds later the rest of the party solidifies and crowds around.“What in Delioch’s name was that?” wonders Dranko out loud.“Fast,” says Grey Wolf.“Supernaturally fast,” says Aravis. “Nothing would just evolve that way, out here,” says Kay weakly.  “But now we know why certain areas are uninhabited,” says Kibi.The party opts to sleep in rope tricks that night.* *Dranko wakes up the next morning on the floor of the rope trick looking idly at his hand.  Specifically, the hand with the ring of djinni summoning on it.  He slaps his forehead.“You know,” he says to the others waking up beside him, “we’ve had the ability to wind walk everyone this whole time.  The Djinni can do it!”“That will be useful today,” says Morningstar.  “I’m thinking that it’s time we started working on the problem of just where Het Branoi is.  That means find the path spells, and no wind walks for me.”From prior experience the Company knows that Het Branoi is shielded from direct divinations – not surprising, given the Black Circle’s affinity for Divination as a school.   The morning and early afternoon are spent thinking of ways to fool the tower’s protections.    Dranko hits upon the idea that if there’s a tower in the wilderness full of Black Circle mages and priests, they’ve got to have somewhere outside the tower to dispose of their wastes.  Eventually they settle on two wordings to try. Morningstar casts find the path, seeking ”The waste dump nearest to Het Branoi.”She feels a stirring in her mind as the magic reaches out… and is abruptly cut off, by… something.“Nope,” she reports, shaking her head.  “It could be that the mention of Het Branoi by name triggers the defense, even though I wasn’t targeting it directly.”She tries again.  She seeks ”The waste dump nearest to the closest invisible tower”.  Again the divinatory magic is pinched off near the source.“Damn.”Kibi casts non detection on Morningstar right away to foil any possible counter-scrying the Black Circle might attempt.The party members look at each other gloomily.“We can still make some distance today,” says Aravis.  “If nothing else, we might as well keep heading toward where “Branoi” is marked on our map.”“I don’t think the genie can wind walk all of us, but it will save us some fly spells,” says Dranko.  He concentrates on his ring and blue smoke starts to billow out from it.  A few seconds later the impressive Al Tarqoz floats before them.He’s eating a chicken leg.He looks around and his expression curdles.“Ah,” he says to Dranko, his voice booming and yet aggrieved.   “Your timing is exquisite.   With your permission, oh most generous master, may I finish my meal?  It will only be a moment.”“Er… yeah,” says Dranko.They watch Al Tarqoz finish his meat and drop the bone to the tundra.  “Now how may I serve my benevolent master?”“You can cast wind walk, right?” asks Dranko.“Of course!  Many have been the times that previous masters of the ring have requested this service.  I would be most pleased to cast the spell for you.  I’m sure that I would have no need of it myself, after all.”“Thanks,” says Dranko, diligently ignoring the sarcasm.  “How many of us can you get?”“Six of you.  Will that suffice?”A moment later over half the Company is vaporous.  “Will that be all, my master?” asks Al Tarqoz.“Yes, that will be…”The genie vanishes.  Dranko shouts after him:  “Take the chicken bone!  No littering!”Grey Wolf looks down at the discarded bone.“Ah, the circle of life,” he comments dryly.* *The next day the party wakes to find it snowing outside the rope tricks.   Ernie prepares breakfast shivering in the blustery morning air.  A breeze blows across the tundra, kicking up little whorls of powder.  While people huddle around a small fire and eat, Aravis speaks up.“I’ve been thinking.  We may have already seen Het Branoi.   Remember, in the Crosser’s Maze, when Solomea tried to trick us into thinking we had succeeded?  And we asked to be teleported to Het Branoi, and we saw that tower in the distance?  The Maze’s interior is fashioned partly out of reality.  I’m going to try going into the Maze and see if I can find it again.  That might help us find the real version, out here.”It’s an interesting idea that unfortunately has no chance of working, as Aravis finds that he still cannot access the Maze.  He slumps over with a pounding headache just for having tried.  Dranko pokes him with a finger, administering a cure minor wounds.They eat the rest of their breakfast in silence, all of them thinking of what to do next.  Here they are, camped on the cold plains of northeastern Kivia.  The only intelligent life for hundreds of miles are giants.   And they’re looking for an invisible tower shielded from conventional divination magic.  “Couldn’t we have looked for a needle in a haystack instead?” complains Flicker.  “This is stupid.  We might as well fly around in pairs with string, waiting to find the damned tower that way.   That should only take us a couple of decades.”More silence.“Wait a minute,” says Aravis, sitting up straighter.  "I can’t use the Maze, but maybe Morningstar can…”He shares his new idea with the rest.  Eyebrows shoot up all over the place.“Could work,” says Morningstar.  “Let’s work on the phrasing, and then I’ll give it a try.”A few minutes later she casts find the path, seeking ”The place that Solomea showed us a representation of, when we believed we were being shown the next step in our quest.”Aravis feels a dull twinge in his head. And Morningstar knows the direction.  She points to the south-east.“That way,” she says, smiling.  “Let’s go.”…to be continued…</blockquote>

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