The Heroes of Icemist (SmallBeginnings 2)- Interlude update 2/21/2008!
Bubbalicious
First Post
Abciximab said:
Yeah, those nine month gaps in the installments do wonders for catching up!
Enk&D'Shai
First Post
"On the run? Again?" or "Enough with the stalling - just update already!"
I can’t believe it’s taken this long for us to get this post up.
I told you we should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque. I don’t know why you’re blaming me anyway, It would have been a lot faster if you hadn’t insisted on getting that Orange Julius.
You mean juice. Orange juice.
Same thing.
No they’re not. One is a tasty, refreshing beverage, and the other is Orange Julius.
Blasphemy! Orange Julius is like the nectar of Orangey gods!
What? You just said that Orange juice and orange Julius were the same thing! Now it’s taken on an ambrosian stature?
I have no idea what you just said.
That makes two of us.
What were we talking about again?
How its all fett’s fault that its been 8 months since the last post.
Good answer. Tip of the day: Never work with an Enkhidu when a deadline is on the line.
Just push the button.
I can't. It's stuck.
Must be from lack of use. Luckily, I got an Easy Button.
You mean, I've got an Easy Button.
No you don't, I stole this fair and square from...
*Punch*
Hey look! I've got an Easy Button!
*Push!*
*****
Run!
The command had never been given voice: that had not stopped feloine from obeying it immediately, driving Pack before him down the still open sewer while yanking the halfling’s older brother’s arm. His obedience had been rewarded immediately as the portcullis-like sewer grate crashed to the floor, set free by some hidden latch, trapping Ashrem, Pack, and Worm on one side of the steel grill and the red tabards of the Iron Wolves on the other. Whatever the grate’s original purpose, it had provided the trio a welcome method of escape.
To say that the time since that escape was unpleasant, however, would have been an understatement. It was not the smell – Ashrem had grown accustomed to the stench. It was not the flight from the Iron Wolves – no shame existed in fleeing a numerically superior force. It was not even the distasteful fact that he had been forced to leave Ander and Theobald to the Torians – the scout was not yet ready to disobey the woodsman’s orders, at least not quite yet. It was, instead, the brothers.
“No,” repeated Pack, “We have to go back for them.”
“Squash it, Pack,” said Worm, for the fourth time since Ashrem had led the companions into their latest corridor. “It’s time to worry about our own skins now.”
“No! I’m not taking another step until we turn around and…” The halfling never finished his statement, and ended up slung over his brother’s shoulder, wriggling like a fish.
The scene had played out nearly verbatim once before: Ashrem let slip a frustrated sigh. “Roscoe,” said the scout, “we cannot go back. I imagine that the Iron Wolves have already discovered our trail; even a one-eared bandit would have no trouble following your tirades.”
“But Ashrem, we can’t just leave…”
“We can, we have, and we will. Ander and I discussed this possibility after Aurora’s trail had grown cold. The Iron Wolves were too numerous and too well trained for us to avoid them forever.” The scout paused a moment to sniff the air, lifting a single finger at the bard in order to keep him hushed – through the stink he had detected a whiff of something vaguely familiar and dangerously unsettling. The scent was gone as quickly as it arrived. “Leaving him to be captured was, in fact, his idea,” he continued in a more hushed tone. “Come, we move while we talk.”
The scout led the way down yet another sewer in what he thought was the direction of the river, speaking softly to his companions in tow. “He thought that if the Iron Wolves succeeded in finding us that allowing himself to be caught would grant us the time we needed to get away.”
“That’s the first sensible order he’s given,” said Worm. Ashrem bared his teeth over his shoulder in response but bit back his retort, instead continuing down the slimy stone pathway. The scout heard Worm chuckle behind him, “Hells, there were a lot of them. Even I can’t take that many out if they know what they’re doing, and these are the troops that took Grogger, right? If we’d have stayed, all of us would have been in the hangman’s noose. At least this way, the only one getting his neck stretched is the one that got us into this mess.” The feloine couldn’t help but suppose that the last barb was meant specifically for him, but refused to take the tainted bait.
“I can’t believe you two are talking about leaving Ander to those men!” said Pack in an entirely overloud voice. “What about the fact that he’s our friend? Doesn’t that mean anything to you? And what about Theo, am I just supposed to forget that he’s back there too? Put me down, Worm!”
Ashrem slowed and turned to see the halfling struggling in his brother’s grip. “Pack,” he began in as soothing a voice as he could, in the circumstances, muster.
“I said put me down!” The halfling’s voice seemed different to the scout: more commanding and sure. Ashrem watched as the bigger brother set the elder down gingerly on the wet ground. “I don’t believe for one instant that you two think I’m going to stand for this! We’re going back, and we’re going back now!”
Ashrem felt suddenly tired. “Pack,” he said, “I never said I intended to leave him, I said that he ordered us to leave him.” The scout rubbed at his temple. “As it turns out, there are limits to the Ander’s authority. They coincide with requiring his friends to leave him to a horrible death. We will find him and make good an escape.” He paused to let Pack absorb the idea, “Now, the Iron Wolves looked more concerned with capture than with killing. They’ll likely take Ander to their dungeons, which I imagine are either in or near the palace. If we hurry, and if we are not foolish enough to give away our position, we will arrive in plenty of time for what your more ribald tales would call “a jailbreak.””
Pack did not look convinced. “What about Theo?” he asked, crossing his arms.
“I must believe that Theo will be either taken along with Ander, or will be sheltered by his father-in law. In either case, both are in far safer hands than the three of us; I imagine that with our escape and Ander’s capture, the Iron Wolves orders no longer include taking us alive and intact.
“So now we’re in deeper than before,” grunted Worm dully. “Then it’s past time for us to get up to the streets and out of this forsaken city. And you can forget about getting any more help out of me and Pack. We’re on the road out of here as soon as I see a way.”
“No Worm, I’m not leaving Ander and…”
Perhaps it was the noisome odor of the sewers, perhaps it was the pervasive noise from Pack, or perhaps it was the distraction of being hounded by the Iron Wolves; whatever the reason, by the time that Ashrem saw the dark silhouette round the corner – glinting steel in hand – it was too late, and the scout tumbled end over end in a jumble of twisted limbs.
***
Theo looked on helplessly as the Iron Wolves dragged their bound and chained prisoner down the rough stonework of the Temple’s underpassage. The Ionain groaned, and Theo winced in sympathy. At least your still alive, lad. May the Storm Lord see you stay that way until I find a way to get you out of this squall. He watched silently as his young friend‘s feet disappeared past two pair of burly guards and around the corner. Then he turned his attention back to the Bishop, who had yet to meet the more rustic priest’s accusing gaze.
Theo broke the silence first. “What did you get out of this? No taxes? A new Temple?”
“My son,” said the Bishop, lifting his haggard heard for the first time since Iron Wolves had made their entrance.
“What did you get out of this?” Theo stepped navel to navel with the older man, raising his fists in impotent rage. Tiny bolts of miniature lightning played around the cleric’s fingertips, arcing to the intricate pattern on his father-in-law’s robes.
“You, my son.”
“You lie!” A slightly longer arc of energy sprang from Theo’s nose, shocking the older priest. The Bishop retreated, rubbing the appendage.
“They knew!” barked the older man. “They knew, and when they came to me they gave me no choice: deliver the Ionian and his friends to them and you would be free. Don’t, and you would hang with the rest of them. I did what was right, my son.”
“Stop calling me that!” boomed Theo.
“She would have wanted it, my son.”
“I am not your son!” Theo’s glow bathed the room in pale blue light as bits of lightning sparked from his limbs. The cleric’s voice boomed, “You lost the right to call me that by marriage when your orders were the ones that cost me Eleanor. You lost the right to call me that by the will of the Storm Lord when he chose to strike me with his blessings instead of you. And you lost the right to call me that by tradition today, when you betrayed me.”
Theo walked purposefully out of the room, turning to see the Bishop still leaning heavily upon the wall. “One day Zuras will call you to tend the clouds, Bishop. I hope for your sake that you no longer envy those who tend the curls of the Storm Lord’s beard.
***
Ashrem rolled as he hit the flagstone, pulling himself clear of his assailant as a pair of blades appeared instinctively in his hands. The other figure didn’t seem to notice, deftly matching the scout’s movements as it slipped free of the impromptu grapple in which neither party seemed overly interested. Then the dark figure tumbled around yet another corner and out of sight, trailing a mane of ebony hair that smelled of jasmine. It was a scent at one time common among his people, and in less tumultuous times he might have been tempted to simply let it linger, but a flash of color in the dim light caught his attention.
The scout immediately stepped into the path of another quickly approaching figure – a yellow haired woman dressed in bright motley – and extended his blades in warning. “Stop and explain yourself,” he said simply.
The woman did not stop, instead ducking underneath the feloine’s swords and rolling over her shoulder. [/i]So that is what it feels like; little wonder the enemy curses when I do the same to them.[/i] “I wouldn’t wait here if I were you!” said the fleeing woman.
“Or what?” snorted Worm. Ashrem could sense the half-orc sidling up behind him, only to freeze at the sound of a long and unnatural howl.
“Or that,” answered the woman, turning on her heel as she coaxed the scout and his companions behind her. Her long strides set a blistering pace as the trio hurtled along the corridors after the dark figure – a figure that Ashrem was now sure was not only a woman, but related to the brightly clad girl ahead. The scout heard the howl again. This time the baying sounded as if it were closer.
“That’s not Iron Wolves,” said Pack in a small voice as Worm scooped up his littler brother and deposited him back on the half-orc’s broad shoulders.
“Gods no!” said the woman, “much worse. Bloodwraiths.!” Ashrem thought he detected the hint of panic in the woman’s voice. “And they’re getting closer.” The howls answered as if in agreement, echoing throughout the corridors.
“Karmen,” said the ebony haired woman from ahead, “we have to move.” She dipped out of sight, around a corner. The other girl moved quickly behind, leaving Ashrem and the brothers to follow along passage after passage in the darkness.
“Did she just say Karmen? said Pack from atop his perch. “But that would make her…” Pack began kicking his brother’s chest with the back of his heels in excitement. “Worm! Worm! Guess who that is! No, wait, you’ll never guess. I’ll just tell you to save time, because I think any moment now we’re going to get attacked by some horrible sewer monster.”
“Like a bloodwraith?” Worm grunted. Sarcasm dripped from the words.
“Exactly!” Pack continued, seemingly without missing a beat. The scout couldn’t help but notice that the bard had somehow found a way to use his brother’s long and loping strides as a cadence for his neverending speech. “How’d you know that’s what I was thinking of, anyway? Is it that we’ve been spending too much time together again? I bet it’s…”
Worm grunted again: “Karmen.”
“What?”
“That’s my guess. Karmen.” Ashrem shook his head as he rushed around yet another corner.
“Well I guess that’s right enough, but not what I was looking for. Maybe you don’t actually know what I’m thinking of after all.”
Ashrem wheeled around another corner. Worm’s voice boomed from behind. “Hold on, Pack!” said the half-orc. The scout could hear him splash and slide in the muck. A glance over his shoulder showed the warrior still on his feet and moving again, this time down the new passageway.
The near fall didn’t faze the halfling. “Worm, that’s Karmen Freeport!”
“Who?”
“Karmen Freeport! Freeeeeeee-port! Cain Freeport’s daughter!”
“Who?”
“What do you mean who? Cain Freeport? The most famous bard that ever lived! The man who brought peace to Ion and Tor? The…”
“Quiet, you fools!” Ashrem hissed as he saw the human girl in front of him slow. “I do not yet know what form a bloodwraith takes, and have no wish to!”
She finally came to a stop, straddling the threshold of a broken doorway. It was lined with a heavy powder that smelled faintly of death. “Don’t disturb the powder,” she said as the feloine neared the archway. Ashrem eyed it warily until she continued, “It won’t hurt us, but it’ll give those undead hounds a taste they won’t soon forget.” Then, with a look over the scout’s shoulder, she said, “You’d all better come in.”
Ashrem stepped gingerly over the powder and looked around while the girl repeated her warning about the dust to the brothers. He stood in another high ceilinged chamber: plain walls, four exits, a sliver of what might be dawn’s light filtering in from a tiny crack far overhead, and the dark figure of what could only be the sister – more precisely, now that he could concentrate on the scent, the twin – of the girl Pack claimed was Karmen Freeport.
The inky cloth that had once covered her face had been removed, exposing a face that the feloine supposed a human male would find aesthetically pleasing. In one hand, she held a long, thin blade: in the other, a half empty vial of bone white dust. He was suddenly aware of the shorter blades in his own hands, and of the discerning eyes of Karmen’s nameless twin, which flicked back and forth between the scout and the brothers, taking in details as the moved.
Karmen moved into the chamber with a pair of glowing vials in hand. As she handed one to her black clad sister, the darker of the two spoke, “I heard the name Iron Wolves, and these three don’t have the look for the Pack. They’re on the run.” Perceptive and quick. This one is dangerous.
Pack started speaking before Ashrem could even open his mouth. “Not so much on the run that we couldn’t lend assistance to two beautiful damsels in,” the bard, once again on his feet rather than his brotherly perch, stopped in the middle of a bow and furrowed his brow, “what did you say you were doing again?”
“We,” said the ebony twin, with a stare toward the halfling, “are leading what’s left of a pack of bloodwraiths back toward their mad creator. You,” she continued, emphasizing as before, “will keep running from the Iron Wolves, or whatever other trouble you’ve got on your tails.” Her tone was final.
“What my sister means is that we’re down to our last two protection draughts,” said Karmen, dangling the remaining vial. Ashrem saw the fairer of the twins nod to the other: he doubted that his companions saw it. “Otherwise we would not turn away the aid of the Heroes of Icemist.”
Pack squealed, “You’ve heard of us? See,” he said, turning to the scout and the warrior, “we’re famous!”
“Probably from all the placards with that Ionian’s face on them,” grunted Worm.
“My apologies,” interrupted the raven haired twin. “I did not recognize you. Still, my sister speaks truth. We haven’t enough draughts to guarantee your safety if you’re caught by those undead beasts. Still…” she paused a moment, looking to her twin, “we might be of some help.
Karmen reached into her yellow locks and produced a small hairpin. Its head was a delicate crystal butterfly. She raised the crystal to her lips and breathed on it, mouthing a word the feloine could not quite hear.
Ashrem watched, fascinated, as the crystal glowed softly. Then delicate wings began to flutter. “Stay close to it,” said Karmen. “It will take you to someplace the Iron Wolves won’t touch as long as you stay out of public.”
The scout wrenched his gaze away from the crystal butterfly back to the Freeport twins. “Why are you doing this?” he said.
“Let’s just say that there is no love lost between the Pack and our…” the baying had begun again, closer than it had been before.
Moments later, Ashrem, Pack, and Worm raced after the streaking and erratic path of the glowing butterfly.
*****
Next time! Who knows when that'll be! Our track-record isn't the greatest here! Seriously!
I can’t believe it’s taken this long for us to get this post up.
I told you we should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque. I don’t know why you’re blaming me anyway, It would have been a lot faster if you hadn’t insisted on getting that Orange Julius.
You mean juice. Orange juice.
Same thing.
No they’re not. One is a tasty, refreshing beverage, and the other is Orange Julius.
Blasphemy! Orange Julius is like the nectar of Orangey gods!
What? You just said that Orange juice and orange Julius were the same thing! Now it’s taken on an ambrosian stature?
I have no idea what you just said.
That makes two of us.
What were we talking about again?
How its all fett’s fault that its been 8 months since the last post.
Good answer. Tip of the day: Never work with an Enkhidu when a deadline is on the line.
Just push the button.
I can't. It's stuck.
Must be from lack of use. Luckily, I got an Easy Button.
You mean, I've got an Easy Button.
No you don't, I stole this fair and square from...
*Punch*
Hey look! I've got an Easy Button!
*Push!*
*****
Run!
The command had never been given voice: that had not stopped feloine from obeying it immediately, driving Pack before him down the still open sewer while yanking the halfling’s older brother’s arm. His obedience had been rewarded immediately as the portcullis-like sewer grate crashed to the floor, set free by some hidden latch, trapping Ashrem, Pack, and Worm on one side of the steel grill and the red tabards of the Iron Wolves on the other. Whatever the grate’s original purpose, it had provided the trio a welcome method of escape.
To say that the time since that escape was unpleasant, however, would have been an understatement. It was not the smell – Ashrem had grown accustomed to the stench. It was not the flight from the Iron Wolves – no shame existed in fleeing a numerically superior force. It was not even the distasteful fact that he had been forced to leave Ander and Theobald to the Torians – the scout was not yet ready to disobey the woodsman’s orders, at least not quite yet. It was, instead, the brothers.
“No,” repeated Pack, “We have to go back for them.”
“Squash it, Pack,” said Worm, for the fourth time since Ashrem had led the companions into their latest corridor. “It’s time to worry about our own skins now.”
“No! I’m not taking another step until we turn around and…” The halfling never finished his statement, and ended up slung over his brother’s shoulder, wriggling like a fish.
The scene had played out nearly verbatim once before: Ashrem let slip a frustrated sigh. “Roscoe,” said the scout, “we cannot go back. I imagine that the Iron Wolves have already discovered our trail; even a one-eared bandit would have no trouble following your tirades.”
“But Ashrem, we can’t just leave…”
“We can, we have, and we will. Ander and I discussed this possibility after Aurora’s trail had grown cold. The Iron Wolves were too numerous and too well trained for us to avoid them forever.” The scout paused a moment to sniff the air, lifting a single finger at the bard in order to keep him hushed – through the stink he had detected a whiff of something vaguely familiar and dangerously unsettling. The scent was gone as quickly as it arrived. “Leaving him to be captured was, in fact, his idea,” he continued in a more hushed tone. “Come, we move while we talk.”
The scout led the way down yet another sewer in what he thought was the direction of the river, speaking softly to his companions in tow. “He thought that if the Iron Wolves succeeded in finding us that allowing himself to be caught would grant us the time we needed to get away.”
“That’s the first sensible order he’s given,” said Worm. Ashrem bared his teeth over his shoulder in response but bit back his retort, instead continuing down the slimy stone pathway. The scout heard Worm chuckle behind him, “Hells, there were a lot of them. Even I can’t take that many out if they know what they’re doing, and these are the troops that took Grogger, right? If we’d have stayed, all of us would have been in the hangman’s noose. At least this way, the only one getting his neck stretched is the one that got us into this mess.” The feloine couldn’t help but suppose that the last barb was meant specifically for him, but refused to take the tainted bait.
“I can’t believe you two are talking about leaving Ander to those men!” said Pack in an entirely overloud voice. “What about the fact that he’s our friend? Doesn’t that mean anything to you? And what about Theo, am I just supposed to forget that he’s back there too? Put me down, Worm!”
Ashrem slowed and turned to see the halfling struggling in his brother’s grip. “Pack,” he began in as soothing a voice as he could, in the circumstances, muster.
“I said put me down!” The halfling’s voice seemed different to the scout: more commanding and sure. Ashrem watched as the bigger brother set the elder down gingerly on the wet ground. “I don’t believe for one instant that you two think I’m going to stand for this! We’re going back, and we’re going back now!”
Ashrem felt suddenly tired. “Pack,” he said, “I never said I intended to leave him, I said that he ordered us to leave him.” The scout rubbed at his temple. “As it turns out, there are limits to the Ander’s authority. They coincide with requiring his friends to leave him to a horrible death. We will find him and make good an escape.” He paused to let Pack absorb the idea, “Now, the Iron Wolves looked more concerned with capture than with killing. They’ll likely take Ander to their dungeons, which I imagine are either in or near the palace. If we hurry, and if we are not foolish enough to give away our position, we will arrive in plenty of time for what your more ribald tales would call “a jailbreak.””
Pack did not look convinced. “What about Theo?” he asked, crossing his arms.
“I must believe that Theo will be either taken along with Ander, or will be sheltered by his father-in law. In either case, both are in far safer hands than the three of us; I imagine that with our escape and Ander’s capture, the Iron Wolves orders no longer include taking us alive and intact.
“So now we’re in deeper than before,” grunted Worm dully. “Then it’s past time for us to get up to the streets and out of this forsaken city. And you can forget about getting any more help out of me and Pack. We’re on the road out of here as soon as I see a way.”
“No Worm, I’m not leaving Ander and…”
Perhaps it was the noisome odor of the sewers, perhaps it was the pervasive noise from Pack, or perhaps it was the distraction of being hounded by the Iron Wolves; whatever the reason, by the time that Ashrem saw the dark silhouette round the corner – glinting steel in hand – it was too late, and the scout tumbled end over end in a jumble of twisted limbs.
***
Theo looked on helplessly as the Iron Wolves dragged their bound and chained prisoner down the rough stonework of the Temple’s underpassage. The Ionain groaned, and Theo winced in sympathy. At least your still alive, lad. May the Storm Lord see you stay that way until I find a way to get you out of this squall. He watched silently as his young friend‘s feet disappeared past two pair of burly guards and around the corner. Then he turned his attention back to the Bishop, who had yet to meet the more rustic priest’s accusing gaze.
Theo broke the silence first. “What did you get out of this? No taxes? A new Temple?”
“My son,” said the Bishop, lifting his haggard heard for the first time since Iron Wolves had made their entrance.
“What did you get out of this?” Theo stepped navel to navel with the older man, raising his fists in impotent rage. Tiny bolts of miniature lightning played around the cleric’s fingertips, arcing to the intricate pattern on his father-in-law’s robes.
“You, my son.”
“You lie!” A slightly longer arc of energy sprang from Theo’s nose, shocking the older priest. The Bishop retreated, rubbing the appendage.
“They knew!” barked the older man. “They knew, and when they came to me they gave me no choice: deliver the Ionian and his friends to them and you would be free. Don’t, and you would hang with the rest of them. I did what was right, my son.”
“Stop calling me that!” boomed Theo.
“She would have wanted it, my son.”
“I am not your son!” Theo’s glow bathed the room in pale blue light as bits of lightning sparked from his limbs. The cleric’s voice boomed, “You lost the right to call me that by marriage when your orders were the ones that cost me Eleanor. You lost the right to call me that by the will of the Storm Lord when he chose to strike me with his blessings instead of you. And you lost the right to call me that by tradition today, when you betrayed me.”
Theo walked purposefully out of the room, turning to see the Bishop still leaning heavily upon the wall. “One day Zuras will call you to tend the clouds, Bishop. I hope for your sake that you no longer envy those who tend the curls of the Storm Lord’s beard.
***
Ashrem rolled as he hit the flagstone, pulling himself clear of his assailant as a pair of blades appeared instinctively in his hands. The other figure didn’t seem to notice, deftly matching the scout’s movements as it slipped free of the impromptu grapple in which neither party seemed overly interested. Then the dark figure tumbled around yet another corner and out of sight, trailing a mane of ebony hair that smelled of jasmine. It was a scent at one time common among his people, and in less tumultuous times he might have been tempted to simply let it linger, but a flash of color in the dim light caught his attention.
The scout immediately stepped into the path of another quickly approaching figure – a yellow haired woman dressed in bright motley – and extended his blades in warning. “Stop and explain yourself,” he said simply.
The woman did not stop, instead ducking underneath the feloine’s swords and rolling over her shoulder. [/i]So that is what it feels like; little wonder the enemy curses when I do the same to them.[/i] “I wouldn’t wait here if I were you!” said the fleeing woman.
“Or what?” snorted Worm. Ashrem could sense the half-orc sidling up behind him, only to freeze at the sound of a long and unnatural howl.
“Or that,” answered the woman, turning on her heel as she coaxed the scout and his companions behind her. Her long strides set a blistering pace as the trio hurtled along the corridors after the dark figure – a figure that Ashrem was now sure was not only a woman, but related to the brightly clad girl ahead. The scout heard the howl again. This time the baying sounded as if it were closer.
“That’s not Iron Wolves,” said Pack in a small voice as Worm scooped up his littler brother and deposited him back on the half-orc’s broad shoulders.
“Gods no!” said the woman, “much worse. Bloodwraiths.!” Ashrem thought he detected the hint of panic in the woman’s voice. “And they’re getting closer.” The howls answered as if in agreement, echoing throughout the corridors.
“Karmen,” said the ebony haired woman from ahead, “we have to move.” She dipped out of sight, around a corner. The other girl moved quickly behind, leaving Ashrem and the brothers to follow along passage after passage in the darkness.
“Did she just say Karmen? said Pack from atop his perch. “But that would make her…” Pack began kicking his brother’s chest with the back of his heels in excitement. “Worm! Worm! Guess who that is! No, wait, you’ll never guess. I’ll just tell you to save time, because I think any moment now we’re going to get attacked by some horrible sewer monster.”
“Like a bloodwraith?” Worm grunted. Sarcasm dripped from the words.
“Exactly!” Pack continued, seemingly without missing a beat. The scout couldn’t help but notice that the bard had somehow found a way to use his brother’s long and loping strides as a cadence for his neverending speech. “How’d you know that’s what I was thinking of, anyway? Is it that we’ve been spending too much time together again? I bet it’s…”
Worm grunted again: “Karmen.”
“What?”
“That’s my guess. Karmen.” Ashrem shook his head as he rushed around yet another corner.
“Well I guess that’s right enough, but not what I was looking for. Maybe you don’t actually know what I’m thinking of after all.”
Ashrem wheeled around another corner. Worm’s voice boomed from behind. “Hold on, Pack!” said the half-orc. The scout could hear him splash and slide in the muck. A glance over his shoulder showed the warrior still on his feet and moving again, this time down the new passageway.
The near fall didn’t faze the halfling. “Worm, that’s Karmen Freeport!”
“Who?”
“Karmen Freeport! Freeeeeeee-port! Cain Freeport’s daughter!”
“Who?”
“What do you mean who? Cain Freeport? The most famous bard that ever lived! The man who brought peace to Ion and Tor? The…”
“Quiet, you fools!” Ashrem hissed as he saw the human girl in front of him slow. “I do not yet know what form a bloodwraith takes, and have no wish to!”
She finally came to a stop, straddling the threshold of a broken doorway. It was lined with a heavy powder that smelled faintly of death. “Don’t disturb the powder,” she said as the feloine neared the archway. Ashrem eyed it warily until she continued, “It won’t hurt us, but it’ll give those undead hounds a taste they won’t soon forget.” Then, with a look over the scout’s shoulder, she said, “You’d all better come in.”
Ashrem stepped gingerly over the powder and looked around while the girl repeated her warning about the dust to the brothers. He stood in another high ceilinged chamber: plain walls, four exits, a sliver of what might be dawn’s light filtering in from a tiny crack far overhead, and the dark figure of what could only be the sister – more precisely, now that he could concentrate on the scent, the twin – of the girl Pack claimed was Karmen Freeport.
The inky cloth that had once covered her face had been removed, exposing a face that the feloine supposed a human male would find aesthetically pleasing. In one hand, she held a long, thin blade: in the other, a half empty vial of bone white dust. He was suddenly aware of the shorter blades in his own hands, and of the discerning eyes of Karmen’s nameless twin, which flicked back and forth between the scout and the brothers, taking in details as the moved.
Karmen moved into the chamber with a pair of glowing vials in hand. As she handed one to her black clad sister, the darker of the two spoke, “I heard the name Iron Wolves, and these three don’t have the look for the Pack. They’re on the run.” Perceptive and quick. This one is dangerous.
Pack started speaking before Ashrem could even open his mouth. “Not so much on the run that we couldn’t lend assistance to two beautiful damsels in,” the bard, once again on his feet rather than his brotherly perch, stopped in the middle of a bow and furrowed his brow, “what did you say you were doing again?”
“We,” said the ebony twin, with a stare toward the halfling, “are leading what’s left of a pack of bloodwraiths back toward their mad creator. You,” she continued, emphasizing as before, “will keep running from the Iron Wolves, or whatever other trouble you’ve got on your tails.” Her tone was final.
“What my sister means is that we’re down to our last two protection draughts,” said Karmen, dangling the remaining vial. Ashrem saw the fairer of the twins nod to the other: he doubted that his companions saw it. “Otherwise we would not turn away the aid of the Heroes of Icemist.”
Pack squealed, “You’ve heard of us? See,” he said, turning to the scout and the warrior, “we’re famous!”
“Probably from all the placards with that Ionian’s face on them,” grunted Worm.
“My apologies,” interrupted the raven haired twin. “I did not recognize you. Still, my sister speaks truth. We haven’t enough draughts to guarantee your safety if you’re caught by those undead beasts. Still…” she paused a moment, looking to her twin, “we might be of some help.
Karmen reached into her yellow locks and produced a small hairpin. Its head was a delicate crystal butterfly. She raised the crystal to her lips and breathed on it, mouthing a word the feloine could not quite hear.
Ashrem watched, fascinated, as the crystal glowed softly. Then delicate wings began to flutter. “Stay close to it,” said Karmen. “It will take you to someplace the Iron Wolves won’t touch as long as you stay out of public.”
The scout wrenched his gaze away from the crystal butterfly back to the Freeport twins. “Why are you doing this?” he said.
“Let’s just say that there is no love lost between the Pack and our…” the baying had begun again, closer than it had been before.
Moments later, Ashrem, Pack, and Worm raced after the streaking and erratic path of the glowing butterfly.
*****
Next time! Who knows when that'll be! Our track-record isn't the greatest here! Seriously!
