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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rolzup" data-source="post: 2901696" data-attributes="member: 10105">Fishers of MenFirst thing we noticed, it was cold.  Damned cold.  Could see my breath hangin' in the air.  Even the Pretty Man shivered a bit, although the Bloody Archer didn't turn a hair.  We were standin' in a cavern, natural lookin'.  It was dark, and there was a nasty sort of smell in the air.We were ready for anythin', and expectin' Fancy to come jumpin' out of the shadows at any time.  But what did we find, when we made our way to the mouth of the cave?  Snow, first thing, with Fancy's tracks showin' plain as plain.  And sunlight, nice and bright.  We'd obviously come a good long way from the sewers of Narayan.The monkey, he recognized it as Mt. Parvishta.  If you looked real hard, you could just see the Yeti, mining ice from its slopes.  Tallest mountain in the world, my friends, and I seen it with my own two eyes.  Ah, it wasn't so great as all that.It was the fishin' lines, danglin' from a ledge up above our heads, that were the oddest thing.  Who goes fishin' in the mountains, and who uses a big ol' haunch of meat for bait?You want my advice, you don't go askin' question like that.  I can guarantee that you won't like the answer.I'm not sure what those things were.  They were small, but they looked pretty damned unpleasant.  Ugly little men with red little eyes, and nasty little grins with lots of sharp little teeth.  All blurry, like...my eyes just couldn't quite focus on 'em.  And they were holdin' fishin' poles.Even knowin' what I do now, that still don't make much sense.Didn't take a genius to guess that the little bastards meant us no good, but we were willin' to walk away from 'em without spillin' any blood.  We were hot on Fancy's trail, and didn't have any time for this sort of thing.  And then the little f-----s went and didsomethin' to Duchess.Hypnotized 'er, they did.  Put 'er in a trance, like.  She just started walkin' towards those hooks, a blank sort of look in 'er eyes, and I wasn't about to let that happen.The Bloody Archer fired first, I think.  He usually does, and last too -- if you catch my meanin'.  Turned into a nice little scrap real quick after that, with the little bastards droppin' down from their ledge.  Things got a bit chancey for a moment there, as the Pretty Man nearly got himself shoved off a cliff, but....Well.  I never seen anything like it, friends, and I wouldn't have believed it if I'd been told it.  One of the little guys charged the Pretty Man, see, and he didn't even twitch.  Just before he makes contact, the Pretty Man draws his sword and --swear to XXX -- cuts the ugly bastard in half.  From top to bottom, I mean.  Bisected him, like.One half fell to the left, the other to the right, and both halves went right off the damned cliff.  Hell of a thing, hell of a thing.We dealt with the other two readily enough.  The Archer filled one with arrows, and I beat the other's skull nice and flat.  With all of 'em dead, Duchess snapped out of the spell, and glad I was to see it!There was a fourth one of 'em, though.  Not as short as the others, and we couldn't see 'im clean 'cause he was standing so far off, but he didn't seem all the upset with what we'd done.  He tossed a leather bag down to us, all festooned with teeth and fringes and stuff.  The Pretty Man took it, like it was his due or somethin'.And hell, maybe it was.We moved on, followin' Fancy's tracks in the snow, but I don't mind admitting that I kept lookin' over my shoulder.  Just in case.  They led to another Gate, of course, sittin' in the middle of a damned cold pond.  There was a little statue there, carved outta white stone, and I doffed my hat to it as we went on through....</blockquote>

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