Travels through the Wild West: Books V-VIII (Epilogue)
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Lazybones
Adventurer
Dungannon said:
Thanks a lot! I appreciate the kind words. While I am getting a real kick out of writing this story, it feels good to know that others are reading it and enjoying it.
It's been a slow week, with a lot of people out of the office due to the holiday. Thus I've gotten a fair bit ahead in the story, so I think I'll post again this afternoon, an update that returns our eye to what the bad guys have been up to while our heroes trapaise through the Reaching Woods...
Lazybones
Adventurer
Book VII, Part 25
Guthan groaned as he stirred. He was cold, and his body cried out in several places as he looked around. It was dark; they must no longer be in the Portal Chamber. No, not ‘they’; he was alone. There was no way he would have mistaken her presence. He suspected he’d know even she was on the same plane, after what she’d done to him last night.
Now, now, a voice in his head chided him. But as he stood, his groan deepening as his body resisted his commands, he couldn’t help but grin. Despite the pain. When he was standing he belatedly checked himself, to make sure he was still... intact. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find certain components missing. Normally he would have been more concerned about what was inside, his life essence, but he already knew that she would have left that undamaged. He would not have been able to complete the charge she’d given him, the command of his Master, if she had drained him.
He shuffled a few steps blindly through the darkness before he remembered his spells. He called upon a minor magic through the Link and summoned a light spell that cast a bright glow from his hand. Normally he would have cast the spell upon a small disposable object, but he was naked, and he had no idea where his clothes and items of power were located. Hopefully she hadn’t taken too many of them when she returned to the Abyss; he would have given her anything she asked for freely, last night.
The room was barren, empty, with a single open doorway for an exit. He trudged slowly into the adjacent corridor. It didn’t take long for him to recognize his surroundings; he was still in the shrine, at least, in one of the empty wings that he’d only briefly scouted before finding the Portal. He felt a chill as he walked through the dark tunnels, and it wasn’t from the cold. Although it was cold. He hastened his pace slightly, turning down another passage toward the entry hall. He’d left some gear there, and some spare garments in his saddlebags. And food; it felt as though he hadn’t eaten in a week.
Once he’d donned a clean robe and eaten, he walked up to the entrance and looked out over the valley. The sun was still lost in an unbroken expanse of gray clouds that hung low over the mountains, and a steady drizzle was falling. At least it wasn’t snow, he thought grimly. He felt solemn standing there, alone in the world. It was a feeling he was well familiar with, in those times that he allowed himself to touch the dark, empty core that lay deep inside of him. That small part of him that still felt normal desires wanted a woman, and he laughed. He was glad that he was so far from civilization; he suspected that G’hael had ruined normal women for him. Even remembering it made him shudder.
Even before his original patron, the shadowy god Mask, had turned from him, he had been a creature of sensual needs that made the carnal desires of the roughest mercenary raider seem tame by comparison. Not that the sensations he sought—he craved—were merely sexual; he hunted pain as well as pleasure, savored the stabbing hurt of personal loss as much as the fulfillment of freely given love. He was intelligent enough to recognize that the experiences he clamored for were just a way of filling, albeit temporarily, that cavernous emotional chasm inside of him; in fact, he sometimes forced himself to remember his own history as a way of tormenting himself, sucking the emotions from his own battered past. Although strangely, his memories did not penetrate farther back than his early teens; beyond that point they vanished suddenly without even a faint hint of recollection to provide clues to what came before.
Given who and what he was, though, it was perhaps inevitable that he had gravitated toward his current patron. Even among his kind, that one was known for his sensuality, a blessing that extended to his servants. Guthan suspected that he would be able to fill his need for many days just sorting through all of the things that G’hael had done to him, and she had been constrained by the need to avoid... damaging... him. Not that he would have minded that, in other circumstances...
With a shake of his head, he cleared his head of such thoughts. He had no time for such retrospections now. The words of the succubus were burned into his memory as indelibly as the rest of his experiences at her hands. Her mandate, passed on from his new Master. The succubus had commented on the irony of the situation, and he could not help but laugh at it, even though it was at his own expense. Her words grated in his memory like a knife drawn across slate.
A delicious paradox, my kitten, wouldn’t you agree? The final key needed to bridge the gap and open the Portal, and you once held it in your very hands... for a time. And now you will get a chance to revenge yourself upon that one, who began your downward spiral not so long ago...
Without thinking, his hands tightened into fists. Yes, that would be a sweet opportunity indeed.
But you will not be able to handle him alone, my pet. No, don’t bristle; I do not impugn your precious powers. Even with your newfound allies, you will find the tiefling and his friends a potent challenge. But our Master will not leave you to struggle alone against this adversary. I will instruct you on a new summoning you are to use, a calling to bring a new ally to your side, to recover the key.
Another demon? He had asked her. Even with the power that... our Master has granted me, I could not draw anything more potent than that vrock, and they can only remain a short...
She cut him off with a sudden movement that sent tendrils of delicious pain flowing through his body, followed by an equally powerful warmth that suffused his bones and seemed to melt him from within.
No, thrall, the aid that you will be sent will be more than that. The Great Lord has something... special in mind. And with those words, she did something else to him, something that dragged a scream from deep down inside of him, down from that chasm where he had thought nothing lurked but the emptiness.
The memory jerked him back roughly into the present. Guthan realized that tears were running down his cheeks, and he was laughing—that new, unsteady, uncontrolled laugh—as he rushed heedlessly back into the darkness, back toward the Portal Chamber.
There was much to do.
Guthan groaned as he stirred. He was cold, and his body cried out in several places as he looked around. It was dark; they must no longer be in the Portal Chamber. No, not ‘they’; he was alone. There was no way he would have mistaken her presence. He suspected he’d know even she was on the same plane, after what she’d done to him last night.
Now, now, a voice in his head chided him. But as he stood, his groan deepening as his body resisted his commands, he couldn’t help but grin. Despite the pain. When he was standing he belatedly checked himself, to make sure he was still... intact. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find certain components missing. Normally he would have been more concerned about what was inside, his life essence, but he already knew that she would have left that undamaged. He would not have been able to complete the charge she’d given him, the command of his Master, if she had drained him.
He shuffled a few steps blindly through the darkness before he remembered his spells. He called upon a minor magic through the Link and summoned a light spell that cast a bright glow from his hand. Normally he would have cast the spell upon a small disposable object, but he was naked, and he had no idea where his clothes and items of power were located. Hopefully she hadn’t taken too many of them when she returned to the Abyss; he would have given her anything she asked for freely, last night.
The room was barren, empty, with a single open doorway for an exit. He trudged slowly into the adjacent corridor. It didn’t take long for him to recognize his surroundings; he was still in the shrine, at least, in one of the empty wings that he’d only briefly scouted before finding the Portal. He felt a chill as he walked through the dark tunnels, and it wasn’t from the cold. Although it was cold. He hastened his pace slightly, turning down another passage toward the entry hall. He’d left some gear there, and some spare garments in his saddlebags. And food; it felt as though he hadn’t eaten in a week.
Once he’d donned a clean robe and eaten, he walked up to the entrance and looked out over the valley. The sun was still lost in an unbroken expanse of gray clouds that hung low over the mountains, and a steady drizzle was falling. At least it wasn’t snow, he thought grimly. He felt solemn standing there, alone in the world. It was a feeling he was well familiar with, in those times that he allowed himself to touch the dark, empty core that lay deep inside of him. That small part of him that still felt normal desires wanted a woman, and he laughed. He was glad that he was so far from civilization; he suspected that G’hael had ruined normal women for him. Even remembering it made him shudder.
Even before his original patron, the shadowy god Mask, had turned from him, he had been a creature of sensual needs that made the carnal desires of the roughest mercenary raider seem tame by comparison. Not that the sensations he sought—he craved—were merely sexual; he hunted pain as well as pleasure, savored the stabbing hurt of personal loss as much as the fulfillment of freely given love. He was intelligent enough to recognize that the experiences he clamored for were just a way of filling, albeit temporarily, that cavernous emotional chasm inside of him; in fact, he sometimes forced himself to remember his own history as a way of tormenting himself, sucking the emotions from his own battered past. Although strangely, his memories did not penetrate farther back than his early teens; beyond that point they vanished suddenly without even a faint hint of recollection to provide clues to what came before.
Given who and what he was, though, it was perhaps inevitable that he had gravitated toward his current patron. Even among his kind, that one was known for his sensuality, a blessing that extended to his servants. Guthan suspected that he would be able to fill his need for many days just sorting through all of the things that G’hael had done to him, and she had been constrained by the need to avoid... damaging... him. Not that he would have minded that, in other circumstances...
With a shake of his head, he cleared his head of such thoughts. He had no time for such retrospections now. The words of the succubus were burned into his memory as indelibly as the rest of his experiences at her hands. Her mandate, passed on from his new Master. The succubus had commented on the irony of the situation, and he could not help but laugh at it, even though it was at his own expense. Her words grated in his memory like a knife drawn across slate.
A delicious paradox, my kitten, wouldn’t you agree? The final key needed to bridge the gap and open the Portal, and you once held it in your very hands... for a time. And now you will get a chance to revenge yourself upon that one, who began your downward spiral not so long ago...
Without thinking, his hands tightened into fists. Yes, that would be a sweet opportunity indeed.
But you will not be able to handle him alone, my pet. No, don’t bristle; I do not impugn your precious powers. Even with your newfound allies, you will find the tiefling and his friends a potent challenge. But our Master will not leave you to struggle alone against this adversary. I will instruct you on a new summoning you are to use, a calling to bring a new ally to your side, to recover the key.
Another demon? He had asked her. Even with the power that... our Master has granted me, I could not draw anything more potent than that vrock, and they can only remain a short...
She cut him off with a sudden movement that sent tendrils of delicious pain flowing through his body, followed by an equally powerful warmth that suffused his bones and seemed to melt him from within.
No, thrall, the aid that you will be sent will be more than that. The Great Lord has something... special in mind. And with those words, she did something else to him, something that dragged a scream from deep down inside of him, down from that chasm where he had thought nothing lurked but the emptiness.
The memory jerked him back roughly into the present. Guthan realized that tears were running down his cheeks, and he was laughing—that new, unsteady, uncontrolled laugh—as he rushed heedlessly back into the darkness, back toward the Portal Chamber.
There was much to do.
Black Bard
First Post
Back from holidays and full of a good stuff to read...What blessed beginning for a new year!! By the way, I hope you all have a wonderful year, full of accomplishments and, of course, Travels ...
And, Lazy, as always- great story!!
Time to remember that little black statuette now lost in Benzan~s backpack,don`t you think??
And, Lazy, as always- great story!!
Time to remember that little black statuette now lost in Benzan~s backpack,don`t you think??
Lazybones
Adventurer
Black Bard said:Time to remember that little black statuette now lost in Benzan~s backpack,don`t you think??
Why, whatever do you mean? *whistles innocently*
One thing I love to do when I write is to connect threads in the story that are hundreds of pages and years of story-time apart. With Guthan and the black statuette, and the hobgoblin archer character, we now have two major links to Book 1, and I have an idea for another that might come up in Book 8. I traditionally keep a list of "loose ends" that I can bring back into later plotlines; this makes it much easier for me to develop plots.
But for now, the companions have reached the center of the Reaching Woods, and all hell is about to break loose.
This Special Edition Monday Cliffhanger is dedicated to Maldur, for his many bumps to the story.
* * * * *
Book VII, Part 26
The companions moved warily forward through a blasted landscape of dead and dying trees, strangled twists of blackened brush, and sodden pools of fetid muck. They’d left the twisted pathways of the Mire behind them, and the land continued to rise as they made their way ahead, but this place made even that desolate marsh seem verdant and alive by comparison. An acrid smell hung in the air, growing stronger with each step forward, until it burned at their lungs with each breath.
Gorath paused to bend at one of the pools, testing the water therein with a gloved finger, bringing it slowly to his flared nostrils.
“Poisoned,” he reported to them, as if they could not smell it in the air. “Bleaching-gas, what the southlanders call chloros. It can blast the lungs if you take too deep a breath, will damage clothes too long exposed, and can burn the skin as well. Be careful where you step.”
“What caused this?” Benzan asked. Both Dana and Cal grimaced, suspecting the answer even before the ranger confirmed it.
“Green dragons can belch out a cloud of this sort of gas,” Gorath explained. The druid nodded, his eyes dark.
“The Greens are evil things, not uncommon in the forests of the West, but I have never heard of one unleashing such systematic destruction of a forest before. I can give myself and one other some measure of protection against its breath,” Zev said.
“Dana,” Benzan said, even as she said, “Protect Cal.” She met the tiefling’s gaze squarely, and said, “His magic will be critical, Benzan. I have my own defenses, and am far more mobile to boot.” She grinned suddenly, realizing the pun, as she lifted one leg and tapped the magical footwear.
Reluctantly, Benzan nodded, and the druid cast his enchantments, laying his protections. Gorath had a spell of elemental resistance of his own, which he placed upon Lariel. The elf did not protest; apparently the two had been in these sorts of situations before and had worked out the best distribution of their talents. Dana and Cal added a few various ability-boosting spells that would last nearly the entire day, if it came to that, and thus prepared they set out again, wary of any threat. At least with the devastation to the surrounding forest, it would be difficult for anything to come upon them unawares. Not that it would necessarily help them, should a dragon appear out of the skies above. As they delved deeper into the ruined wood, a light fog sprang up around them, limiting visibility and further interfering with both their movement and their breathing.
Gorath and Zev moved out ahead, each moving like a shadow through the blasted landscape. After a time, Benzan joined them, the power of his ring of shadows covering him like a black cloak, making him all but invisible in the murky half-light. The three spread out like a fan, working together without speaking, each covering an arc of the wood ahead, peering into the growing mists. Behind came the others, moving as carefully as they could, the dull clank of Lok’s plate armor sounding overly loud in the hush.
The morning moved fully into day, or at least the dark murk of the predawn brightened slightly into a gloomy gray that left the forest deep in shadows. At least Dana could now see enough to make her way without following at Lok’s shoulder. She still had the branch that burned with her continual flame, which she had cast almost a year prior in the mountains of the North, but she kept the brand carefully hidden within her pouch. None of them wanted even a flickering candle to reveal them to whatever lurked within the fog.
Time lost all meaning in that ghostly half-reality, but they were steadily covering ground despite the increasingly difficult terrain. They sometimes found tracks, muddled signs now recognizable as belonging to the dragonkin and their lizard pets, and a few other larger prints that even Guthan could not make out clearly.
Finally, Zev called a halt. “We are nearing Nar’dek’alok,” he told them, and anger barely controlled underlay his words. “Not so long ago, this was among the most beautiful places within the Wood. Many gave their lives to keep it so.”
“Hsst,” Benzan’s voice came from nearby, a shadow deeper than the rest. “Something’s coming, from the right.”
They all looked in that direction, alert, but could see nothing but a barren field of cracked and ruined trees and knotted undergrowth that showed no living green among the tangled branches.
“I’ll go check it out,” Benzan said. “Stay alert.”
“Wait!” Cal hissed, but they could already hear the faint patter of Benzan’s departing feet.
“Come, but stay far enough behind so that they do not see you,” Zev said. The druid nodded to the half-orc, and the two headed off in the direction that the tiefling had gone, both moving like ghosts through the wood. The others came behind, a muffled cough or a squish of muddy earth occasionally announcing their presence as they pulled their cloaks up around themselves against the chill that pressed down on them like the morning mist.
They didn’t go very far when they heard it too, the sound of something coming through the wood toward them. Gorath and Zev had taken cover behind two trees a good forty paces apart, and between them they could see a trio of approaching creatures, recognizable even at a distance as dragonkin warriors. They had their weapons raised and were alert, scanning the forest as they moved swiftly closer.
“Scouts,” Cal said. “Conducting a perimeter search, looks like.”
“Even if we take them quickly, it will make a considerable din,” Lok noted.
“Perhaps not,” Dana said. “I can drop a globe of silence upon them... but we’d have to make sure we kill them quickly, because it is not very large. I can try to fix it to one of them, but they might be able to resist the magic.”
“Cast it on one of my arrows,” Lariel said. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t miss.”
“Do it, quickly,” Cal said. “They’ll spot us any moment, or one of the others will attack.”
Dana nodded, and cast her spell, at the same time that Lariel summoned a quick enchantment of his own. The arcane archer twisted a small wooden object between his fingers, a tiny replica of an archery target. The quiet of the wood suddenly deepened into an absolute silence as Dana’s spell took effect, then Lariel drew and fired.
The arrow knifed through the woods in a silver streak, catching the first warrior unawares as it sank without sound into the dragonkin’s chest. The creature stared down in surprise, its jaws moving silently. The other two didn’t even realize at first that something was wrong, then they noticed the sudden quiet and turned, their own jaws asking unheard questions.
The others were already attacking. Dana fired her crossbow, and as soon as the silenced arrow left Lariel’s bow, Cal shot an acid arrow from his wand that struck one of the dragonkin warriors in the shoulder. Zev cast a spell that had the dead brush twisting and wrapping around the legs of the dragonkin warriors, while Gorath was already charging, his dark cloak wrapped around his form as he glided toward his foes, his axes ready.
The dragonkin, finally realizing they were under attack, were belatedly responding. The one that Lariel had shot was still trying shout orders, and it finally grabbed one of its fellows and shoved it to its right, in the direction that the companions had originally been traveling, toward the Weeping Stones. It didn’t get to follow up on its command, however, as the second arrow from Lariel’s bow slammed through its eye and into its brain, only the feathered end jutting from its ruined socket as the creature crumpled. The second, its shoulder smarting from Cal’s acid arrow, turned to face the charging Gorath, not even bothering to shake off the dead briars tangled around its legs. It staggered as an arrow from Lok’s longbow slammed into its thigh, but it held its ground, awaiting its foe.
The final warrior tore through the entangling growth. The fact that the brush was dead or dying weakened its grasp, and the powerful dragonkin quickly pushed out of the area of silence, moving toward the wider circle of Zev’s spell. It staggered, however, as a flaming arrow flashed out of nowhere to sink deeply into its side. It twisted toward that direction, snarling, and made out the indistinct form a bare ten paces away, a pinpoint of light erupted from it as Benzan fitted another arrow to his bowstring.
The dragonkin tore free of the lashing brambles that had wrapped its ankles in its hesitation, and came charging forward, its axe coming up. But a silver lance of light slammed hard into its back, digging deep, and a moment later another fiery missile caught it in the chest from ahead. The dragonkin lurched, the axe falling to the ground, and a moment later it joined the weapon on the ground.
Gorath, meanwhile, met his adversary with silence, their clash of weapons muffled by the aura of Dana’s spell. The dragonkin managed a cut from his sword that crushed the mail links warding the half-orc’s shoulder, but it barely slowed the ranger as he tore into the dragonkin’s torso with powerful strokes of his own blades. The creature’s jaws twisted in a final soundless cry, and then it fell backward into the waiting embrace of the still-grasping brush.
The companions gathered at the edge of the entangle spell. All three of their foes had fallen quickly, and the soft quiet of the mist-shrouded forest returned.
“Let us go, swiftly,” Zev told them, and they continued on their original course.
Ahead of them the uneven ground leveled out, and they emerged on the flat edge of a rocky tor. Dark shapes rose out of the murk, resolving as they drew nearer into huge slabs of stone, each standing a good ten feet high, and nearly fifteen paces around. The stones seemed like undressed granite, but their surfaces were uneven with thick runnels that made the stones look like wax candles that had been lit for a goodly time. The companions could see that additional stones stood to either side, stretching off in a ring with the each stone about fifty paces off from its neighbor to each side. Inside the ring, ahead of them, the fog was denser, gathering together into a thick bank into which they could see nothing.
“Who’s that?” Benzan hissed, his bow coming up, an arrowhead bursting into ready flame.
Their eyes shifted at his gesture, but they caught only a glimpse of whom Benzan had seen, a man standing at the edge of the mists. He was tall, dark-haired, clad in a fur cloak that concealed the lines of his form, but even as they saw him his outline wavered and he vanished from view.
“He didn’t look happy to see us,” Benzan noted.
“Something... there is a potent presence in this place,” Dana said. “Waiting...”
“I feel it too,” Gorath said, hefting his blades.
Softly, so that his voice would not carry, Cal said, “Perhaps we should...”
He was cut off as a single loud sound broke through the quiet, emanating from somewhere within the fog. It was a thump, as if something heavy had slammed down into the ground with force enough to shake it under their feet.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Benzan said.
“Selûne, shelter us with your blessing,” Dana said, calling upon a spell to fortify them.
“YOUR PUNY GODDESS WILL NOT SAVE YOU,” came a voice from the cloud. It was deep, powerful, a voice that dripped with power.
A form materialized from the cloud, coming forward, each step an echo of the loud thump they had heard before. As it took on a solid form out of the mists it was revealed as a dragon, huge, looming over all of them.
A dragon. Except that this dragon was unlike any they had ever seen. For no powerful muscles graced its form, no rippled scales covered its body. It was a skeleton, an undead thing, with bright red orbs of light shining within the depths of a cavernous skull.
“By the gods. A dracolich.” Lariel’s voice was a skein stretched tightly over a barely contained self-control. For the first time in many years, his arrow trembled against his bowstring, and none of the companions could fault him the fear that washed over them like a pounding wave, threatening to swallow them completely.
The dragon reared up to its full height, its skeletal jaws opening wide.
“Scatter!” Cal screamed.
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