Cat on a hot tin roof
Due to popular request...
Or maybe just because we couldn't come up with something better...
We've decided to answer Tamlyn's question about what happened to Aurora. But, since we're already hip deep working on the next post, we really don't have the time to do it ourselves.
So this week we're handing off the intro duties to Enkhito and Lil' "Two Bibs"* Aurora. Since Two Bibs doesn't yet have the motor control necessary to type, Enkhito will do the honors. Thank you.
Cheese!
Mahmawahmahpbbth
Ball. Circle!
Geeweeweerlgh!
Nemo, Nemo, Nemo, Nemo, Nemo, Nemo, Nemo, Nemo, Nemo, Nemo, Nemo, Nemo, Nemo, Nemo, Nemo, Nemo!
Fascinating. I had never thought about it like that before.
Thanks, kids. And now for the Tip O' the Day: Softballs are not soft.
*****
Ashrem slid through the shadows, silhouetted briefly in the moonlight as he leapt from one rooftop to the next. He landed with a soft thud on the slightly sloped surface, pausing momentarily to check his bearings one last time. As long as Brother Theo’s tales of a youth spent carousing proved accurate, all that was left was a quick drop to the ground and a short walk to the Golden Gander.
Entering Tor’s Old City had been absurdly easy. While the scout’s abilities were formidable, patrols along the Old City walls had proven almost non-existent. For a while he had thought it simply a fluke, a mismanagement of scheduling and resources. Yet as he moved above the ramshackle buildings and crime-ridden streets devoid of any semblance of order, it had become increasingly difficult to dismiss the troubling notion that Tor simply did not care for this parasitic portion of the city.
He peered over the side to see a harlot proposition a passerby and shook his head. A quick scan of the alleys on either side showed them empty, and he breathed a silent sigh of relief. He watched for a moment and then, satisfied that the only danger nearby was the pox, he crept along the alley-side rooftop toward a pile of debris.
It was then that he saw the silhouette – a figure limned in moonlight.
The feloine immediately let himself melt back into the shadows. He watched as the figure stood and then bent, working its arms as if it were cranking some unseen apparatus. Ashrem hesitated a moment, listening to the faintly familiar, rhythmic click of gears, and slipped from his shadowy perch. He timed his jump perfectly, and the muted thud he made as he leapt to the next rooftop never seemed to make it to the figure’s ears.
The scout crept closer, wondering how best to stay downwind of the figure, when the breeze shifted and his nose was assaulted by the stench of cinder and ash. He stifled a cough, and made yet another leap to the figure’s rooftop, once again enveloped by welcoming shadow in the lee of a dead chimney. There he waited: watching, listening, and sniffing.
In moments, Ashrem began picking out specific scents. Moments later he had constructed a mental map of his as yet unseen surroundings – the oppressive odor of old cinder, an active bonfire, a large and abandoned nest of rodents, the smell of unwashed men, Ander…
He sniffed again confirming the woodsman’s scent coming up from below; a few heartbeats later, the feloine identified Pack’s and Theo’s. Then he heard a high pitched voice from the street over which the figure – at this point Ashrem was sure he was one of the unwashed men – hunched.
“Look wot I found, gents!”
“Ooo’s that Binny? Eee’s a biggun!”
“What does a pershun have to do to get a drink around here?” bellowed a familiar half-orcish voice. “And why haven’t I done it yet?” Worm sounded drunk.
Ashrem paused as he digested the sudden onslaught of information, and then looked over at the man. He was standing now, and had taken a step back. In his hands he cradled a very large, windlassed, and cocked crossbow, and he watched intently the goings on below.
The scout sat like that for a while, listening to Worm’s speech growing ever more slurred as the half-orc’s scent mingled with the unwashed thugs’ gathered around the fire pit below. He frowned as he listened to the indistinct chatter,
You should have known better than to let the half-orc drink so soon into the mission, Ander. Let us hope the drunken lout does not bring us any more trouble than…
The chatter stopped suddenly as the bowman on the roof shouldered his crossbow, aiming exactly where Ashrem imagined Worm sat. He heard a voice from below, “What are you doing, Binny?” The voice sounded far more sober than it had when it had greeted Binny the first time.
Too late.
Binny’s voice likewise had no hint of its earlier insobriety, “I thought I saw something over in the ware… It’s them! It’s…”
The thunderous crack of two skulls meeting violently echoed briefly through the streets. “It’s an ambush!” roared Worm, accompanied by the crash of wood on hard packed dirt as his companions rushed from the building below him.
“Move!” cried Ander from below. “Worm! Two on your left!”
“I know!” shouted the half-orc. “Watch your own back!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Ashrem saw the crossbowman shift his aim and begin tracking an unseen target.
Not today, I think. He slipped soundlessly from the shadow, creeping across the rooftop as he drew Razor and its inferior cousin, a simple short sword bought as a match for the more exquisite blade last Festival.
The scout’s new blade entered his target’s back just below the ribs, angling up toward the lungs, while Razor cut short the bowman’s scream in a shower of crimson. With a jerk, Ashrem spun the archer, slamming Razor home in its scabbard and using the other sword as a handle to complete the would-be assassin’s rotation. A heartbeat later the dead man spiraled off the edge, and the rooftop had a new sniper.
Ashrem peered over the edge to see a dozen men on the wrong end of their prospective ambush. Two already lay motionless at Worm’s feet, and three more surrounded him. The scout took aim at the nearest, seeking to even the odds, when Worm wheeled on his attacker, grabbing him with one powerful arm as he was tackled by the other two. The feloine growled at the lost shot, and shifted targets as the sickly crunch of bone carried up from the pile.
A quick shift of his shoulder brought another target in his sights. His fingers caressed the trigger bar as he tracked his prey, waiting for a clean shot at the man’s neck. Just as the caress became pressure, the thug crumpled, bent in half by Ander’s quarterstaff. Ashrem then watched as his friend robbed him of another victim with a quick follow-up that left the woodsman’s second foe with a shattered nose.
A fourth target presented himself: a thin wiry man moved toward the grappling half-orc, holding a shortsword with familiar skill. Ashrem took aim at his chest, but before the scout could loose his bolt, a halfling sized knife sprouted from his target’s eye.
He scanned the chaotic battle for target five, only to see him fly through the air like a catapult stone, landing atop target six. Number seven fell to a crudely made cudgel wielded by Theo. It was only when Ashrem saw the last thug turn tail that he was able to take aim and fire without interference, sinking a bolt deep into the man’s torso with a satisfactory thud.
Below, the scout heard the sound of his companions diving for cover. “Ander,” he called. “I have taken care of the sniper.”
The woodsman peered upward, “Ash?”
“Yes?”
“You’d better get down here. We’ve got problems.”
*****
*
Have you ever seen the amount of drool that comes out of a 6 month old? I mean, really!
I love the line about Gea's Grasp! 
