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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bob Aberton" data-source="post: 268271" data-attributes="member: 1518">will do, Spider...*           *                  *                      *                     *               *      "You did what?" Nystyra half-shouted, feeling quite exasperated."I...er...voluteered our services to th' dwarf lady down in the inn.," Eliad said.  Never before had Nysytra found his beatific grin quite so annoying."And she's waitin' for us right now," finished the Gnome."Why did you volunteer our services?" Nysytra asked, with forced calm."Well, she seemed like a nice sort, and well, she did mention she needed 'elp findin' someone she knew, and I thought   that, well, ye know, its...its somethin' to do," he explained patiently.  "An' she did say that we would get rewarded..." his voice trailed off, and he looked at Nystyra as though he was a fisherman dangling a lure in front of a recalcitrant fish.  Why not? thought Nystyra, and swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker."Very well," she said.  "But how do you know we'll get rewarded?  And what is she looking for?""Well, y'see," Eliad said, pulling a glittering gem out of his pocket and juggling it deftly.  "I think, where she's got some o' these, there'll be more forthcoming.""You picked her pocket?" Nystyra said, her voice rising incredulously.  "One moment, you're saying we should help her, and the next moment, you're picking her pocket?""Ah, don't worry about it, I'm only borrowing it," he said soothingly.Nysytra could only follow him, shaking her head incredulously.Outside the inn, it was a grey, misty dawn, altogether an inauspicious time, Nystyra thought, to go cheerfully marching off, perhaps into oblivion, following the lead of a mysterious dwarf.  Once they got outside the town limits, the view was no less encouraging.  The sun had just barely risen, and clammy whisps of fog still clung to the rock-strewn, grey hills.  Math, who Nystyra had heard was a tracker of some renown, was conversing with Diesa, who produced, with some hesitation, a short, gold chain, and Math let Silvercoat smell it to his heart's content.  Then, they waited, while the wolf sniffed around among lichen-blotched boulders.  And they waited.  Then, they waited some more.Finally, Silvercoat sat up on his haunches and gave a long, ululating howl that sent a chill through Nystyra's bones, and darted off, bounding away toward a distant, grey hill.  The Elfblood Wanderers ran after, lead by Diesa. Half an hour later, they came upon Silvercoat.  She was sitting in front of a boulder cave, howling at the sky.  Try as they might, Math could not get her to go inside the grotto."Looks like your dwarf stopped here," he said, examining a scuffled stone which bore recent scratchmarks, seemingly from iron shod boots.  "But...there's something unnatural in there.  I can smell it, and its blotting out the dwarf's scent - Silvercoat can't track him anymore."The Elfblood Wanderers looked at each other.  None of them wanted to be first into the cave.  Tiring of their timidity, however, Diesa walked in."Cowards," the dwarf woman said.  They could hear her voice echoing in the depths of the cave.  "There is noth - aah!"Hearing her shout, the Wanderers looked at each other, looked at the cave, then looked at each other again.  Then they charged.Inside, they could see what appeared to be a wizard's or an alchemist's laboratory.  Flasks of strangely colored liquids and odd-looking powders rubbed shoulder with massively thick grimoires with such subjects as diabolism and Goetic magic.  Slumped against the wall  was the body of a man, clad in robes that were covered with strange, allegorical symbols.  He had obviously not died a pleasant death, for his face was grotesquely swollen and tinted purple.  His eyes bulged out of his head, and his hands were clenched into fists.  His lips were peeled back to make for a macabre death-grin.  Diesa and Mathonwy, both healers, examined the body."Poison?" they both exclaimed at once."But who would want to poison a hermit, even one who practiced Black Magic?" Mathonwy mused."He bears all the signs of poisoning - some sort of poison that strangled him with his own throat muscles," Diesa countered.  "On the other hand...there is something...unnatural - or rather, supernatural..."All of the Wanderers grasped what she meant by this, all turning to stare at the complicated design on the floor.  Nystyra remembered this from Adrin's lessons on summoning.  It was called a Tetragrammaton, and it was used to summon..."Demon!" Eliad screamed, as a...something appeared out of thin air and stabbed at him with a wicked-looking stinger, fortunately just barely missing.  It was like a tiny little person, with a twisted expression on his face.  It looked cruel beyond human comprehension.  It had a tail, with a vicious little stinger on it, and it hovered in the air by means of bat wings.Nystyra whipped out the shortbow that she had never had the occassion to use, sighted along the shaft, and fired, missing by a mile and nearly skewering Math.  In response, the Imp turned its attention on her and flew toward her.  Nystyra dropped her bow and called to mind a spell that would daze the vicious little thing for a moment or two.  Grasping her Coal, she fumbled through the incantation as best she remembered it, and concentrated.  Something, however, went wrong.  A wave of magic rolled out of the Coal, striking...Eliad.  Eliad had been raising his crossbow at the thing, when Nystyra's failed spell hit him.  His eyes went blank, and gazed at the crossbow vaguely, wondering if he had been planning to do something with it.Haste Makes Waste, Nystyra thought inanely, ducking as the Imp skittered by her head, striking out with his stinger.However, Math unlimbered a heavy, spiked oaken club from his back.  With a wolf-like howl, his raised the club above his head and charged, striking the Imp a truly nasty blow.The Imp, however, seemed unfazed.  The only damage to it that Nystyra could see was a single hole in one of it wings.  With a grating cackle, it drove its stinger into Math's shoulder.  Math staggered backwards, face purpling, eyes bulging, as the supernatural poison was pumped into his veins."Ceridwen help me!" cried Mathonwy, loosing a sling-stone at the little devil.  Apparently, his Goddess wasn't feeling very attentive that day, because the sling stone tore through the Imp's chest with a sickening crunch, but as soon as the wound was made, it healed itself.Meanwhile, Diesa was trying to heal Math, who was retching and making choking sounds as the poison continued to burn in his veins.  "Magic!" cried Mathonwy.  "We need weapons of magic!"  And with that, he emptied his pouch of slingstones into his hand, holding them high in the air, and intoning a prayer, a chant to Ceridwen.  Green Lady, Great Mother,In travail and deadly dangerprotect us this day.From your great Cauldronannoint our bladesWith the magic of wind, of wavesOf trees and forest gladesTo Nystyra's sorcery-trained vision, she could see that there was a faint green aura now surrounding Mathonwy's slingstones.  Loading one into his sling, he hurled one at the Imp, which was harrying Diesa as she helped Math to his feet.  The stone took the Imp on its shoulder, cracking the bone and throwing the wing out of joint.  The Imp spun around with terrible fury on its face, but Math had got to his feet, and, laying his hand on Silvercoat's snout, he intoned a chant.Herne the Horned,Lord of Beasts,Keep well your own.Strengthen her heart,Her teeth with magic hone.Now the wolf, too, bore a faint green aura on her teeth.  His spell done, Math collapsed to the ground as the poison overwhelmed him again.  But Silvercoat sprang forward, and seized the Imp in her teeth with a sickening crunch, and wrestled it to the ground.  Mathonwy ran forward, and, while Quickfeather, his golden eagle, and Silvercoat held the little devil pinned to the ground, Mathonwy loaded his sling with one of the magic stones and proceeded to brain the imp.  Again and again he struck, spattering himself and Silvercoat with black, evil smelling devil blood, until the imp, with its head smashed in, finally expired in a puff of greasy black smoke.Later, outside the cave, Nystyra surveyed the butcher's bill.  Eliad, hit with her failed spell, was still in a slight daze, and Math lay on the ground, stiff and unmoving, with poison beating in his heart.  Both Diesa and Mathonwy were ministering to him, attempting to revive him.  Meanwhile, imp blood proved to be a devilishly staining substance, and not even spells would remove it from her clothing.By nightfall, Math had recovered conscious and had apparently fought off the poison, but remained weak -he could walk no more than a few steps and all the Wanderer's combined strength could barely shift his massive frame.  So, as much as they would rather not have, the Elfblood Wanderers made camp right outside the cave. By morning, Math was feeling much better, although he was still weak, and Eliad had finally remebered his  name.  So,      after breaking camp, they continued on, walking toward the large, rocky knoll distant on the horizon.  The foot marks on the ground were heading toward the knoll, which Nystyra, in a fit of boredom, had creatively dubbed "Greytop," with steady purpose.  From the way they were sunk deeply into the ground, Math decided that the dwarf must have been wearing heavy armor, which, to Nystyra, implied that he feared an ambush, or he would not walk so far with a hundred-odd pounds of steel weighing him down.By that afternoon, the Elfblood Wanderers had reached the foot of Greytop Knoll.  Silvercoat bend her snout to the ground, and, giving a short bark, bounded off, up the rocky path, toward a glint of steel halfway up the knoll.By the time the two-legged members of the party had reached the spot, Silvercoat was already there, prowling around  what looked like a stiff, cold statue.  It was a dwarf man, and he was dead as stone.  The glint of steel they had seen from the foot of the hill came from the evening sun, glinting off the hilt of a sword embedded in the dwarf's chest, keeping several red-feathered arrows company.  The rocks scattered around, and the grass, were thickly smeared with dried blood.Upon seeing the dead dwarf, Diesa let her war-pick drop from her hands, and rushed forward, falling on her knees beside the body.  "No...no...this...this cannot..." she whispered in a stunned, grief stricken voice.  She took one of the dead hands, and searched frantically for a pulse.  After a few seconds, she drew back, realizing that this dwarf was beyond her help, and had been for days.  She sat there, a tear running down her cheek, blinking and staring numbly at the body.  Then she screamed."Ulfgar, NOOOOO!"****************************************************That took me some time...Next Installment, coming soonOh, and too any who found my constant pleading for replies annoying, I sincerely apologize.  It's in my nature<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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