Author: Bryan Fazekas

This scene took place on the walls of Vigerfast, where the Company helped defend the city against the pashehah, creatures of Elemental Chaos. As with the Chaos Gargoyle this version is edited down from the original campaign journal that describes the event.

 

---

 

David of Kerr took a deep breath and grounded his sword. The extended bout of heavy spell casting intermixed with swordplay had taxed him to his limits. All the bugs near him were slain and he took the opportunity to catch his breath and suck at his water skin, wetting his parched throat.

Looking over the wall he saw thousands of crushed, hacked, and burned bug bodies. The dwarves held the walls, along with their elven and human allies. Casualties were high, but they held. By the skin of their teeth.

“How different things are from thirty minutes ago,” he muttered to the air, thinking back …

Thousands of the bugs had died trying to surmount the tall dwarven walls, but the dwarves and their allies beat back the first two waves. Casualties among the defenders were not high, but every defender who fell made them more vulnerable. Unlike in the epics where the defenders win with ninety percent of their manpower dead, in real life a loss of five percent was tragically significant.

The first wave was beaten back easily, like the bugs were throwing their puniest forces at the walls to determine strengths and weaknesses. After twenty minutes of battle the surviving bugs simply retreated, leaving their dead and wounded. There was no signal; they just all retreated at once.

An hour later another surge hit the wall. This one was more determined and focused, but still didn’t seem serious, at least not in retrospect – at the time it was bloody serious. The attackers were still the smaller bugs, which were certainly large enough to kill a dwarf, elf, human, or even ogre-mage. Their claws could snip a wrist like scissors a flower stem. But this time there were flying bugs, cylindrical bodies with biting mandibles and stingers, supported in hard, iridescent wings. These bit and stung, and a few managed to grab a defender, lift them up, and drop them into the mass below the wall. The lucky ones died from the fall; the unlucky ones were shredded into tiny pieces and eaten.

Again, after twenty minutes the bugs retreated. Some dwarves jeered at them, but David knew something was wrong. The bugs didn’t do things like normal creatures, but even by that standard this seemed wrong.

An hour after that retreat the bugs massed for the third assault. The previous numbers seemed overwhelming, but those assaults looked tiny in comparison. Larger bugs, ones with stingers, were visible for the first time, including three that were larger, slower, and more cumbersome. These three turned around and pointed their backsides toward the wall. Their rigid carapaces seemed to expand more and more, but at the distance beyond bow shot it was hard to be sure.

One rippled like the hard shell was cloth, and a ball of green energy spat from an orifice on its hindquarters. The energy flashed across the distance and hit the wall a hundred feet to David’s right.

The burst of energy struck the wall, carving a seven foot diameter hole through the hard stone like it was soft butter. The burst continued on, hitting the inner wall with identical result. It punched holes through several buildings in the external city and continued on into the mountain and presumably into the internal city. Anything in its path was simply gone. Two buildings clipped by the energy collapsed. Screams echoed through the city.

As he turned his attention back, the other two energy bugs spat their energy blasts, punching two more holes in separate places. Following the discharge the bugs looked deflated, and slowly trundled away, while the masses around them charged. Flying bugs not previously seen filled the air.

The defenders held the outer wall while engineers frantically improvised patches in the breaches in the inner wall. The retreat was painful and expensive, and the battle for the inner wall was going badly for the defenders, individual feats of heroism too numerous to count.

David saw another wave of flying bugs coming at them from out of the sun. “Damnation! We’ve got to hold long enough for the women and children to flee!” He girded himself to sell his life as expensively as possible. He had expended most of his spells and his stamina for a long fight against clawing, stinging bugs was not good.

Blinded by the sun he couldn’t see the new attackers clearly, but he saw the packed wave of javelins that whispered down at the defending forces. “We’re dead!” someone screamed.

The javelins twinkled in front of the wall, the force of the throws coupled with gravity, driving them through the rigid carapaces of the bugs, wounding or slaying hundreds, blunting their attack. A second salvo of javelins slammed through the bugs, driving climbers off the wall. The wounded dragged their compatriots with them, the fall wounding more than the javelins had.

“Hippogriffs!” David wondered aloud.

Wheeling by, the attackers – revealed to be hippogriffs with dwarven riders, slashed their way through the mass of flying bugs – beaks and hooves and spears fouling glistening wings, sending the bugs crashing to their deaths on the backs of their land bound brethren.

The bugs were faster and more maneuverable, but up close the hippogriffs inflicted far worse damage, and their riders were equally skilled with light spears that stabbed the bugs, fouling and destroying their wings before they could close. Some few of the hippogriffs and their riders fell to their deaths, though far fewer than the bugs that crashed down on their own.

The flying bugs killed or driven off, the air cavalry launched several more salvos of javelins into the mass of bugs beneath the walls, while the defenders dropped oil and torches, burning the dead and living alike. The assault broke, the stench of burning bodies a price willingly paid by the defenders in exchange for their lives.

“The Gilderlo Air Corps,” breathed a voice next to David. Turning he saw his companion Gilden, the dwarf’s axe gory with bug guts, his armor coated with it.

“It can’t be – home is worlds away from here.”

“Yet it’s them, there’s nothing else like them.”

Down in the valley thousands of the gods damned things milled around. They were forming up for another assault on the walls.

The mage had heard stories of the Gilderlo Air Corps since he was a child, he’d seen them fly in formation, but he’d not seen them in battle. He watched as the squadrons formed and dove in waves toward the bugs. This was different from their last attack; they were far more spread out. More energy bugs turned their tails up into the air and fired the energy bursts they normally used to tunnel through stone. A hippogriff was hit, one of its wings disintegrated so it plummeted with its rider into the mass, but the wide-spread, fast-moving animals were hard to hit.

Puzzled, the mage watched the first salvo of javelins flashing downward as the hippogriffs pulled out of their dives. The first dozen hit large, widely separated bugs. Each javelin exploded into a fireball, but not like the spell. Each ball of fire was a torus, rolling out from the point of impact in an expanding donut more than man-high, burning everything in a huge circle. All the lesser bugs were burnt husks, but a few of the larger ones survived the magical fire. The next wave of javelins hit different groups of unburned bugs, scorching thousands more.

The third salvo of javelins was different – David watched in amazement and then glee as a javelin hit a depleted energy bug with a crackle of electricity, and a bolt of lightning leaped to a nearby bug, then to another and another, hitting seven in addition to the first struck. The last energy bug had not fired its internal payload – it was still fat with the energy. It exploded in a sphere of green energy, scalloping out a 100′ hemisphere in the ground, disintegrating everything near it.

David howled his appreciation, jumping up and down in circles. The nearby dwarves watched in stunned amazement as the bugs died. After long seconds they joined in the gleeful howling. The fight was long from being over, but the dwarves and their allies had turned the tide.

The Company from Kerr is the name the Eric and Patrick’s AD&D characters was called in the land of Shahrivar. Originally the group was Jake, David, Bisonbit, and the dwarven cleric Gilden. Later they were joined by David’s henchman Sam.

After being killed one time too many, Sam retired before death became permanent. In his place David hired the druid Faraz, and Jake hired the monk Trilla. In the Giant Temple of Tharizdun they were joined by the oni noble Renki, and in the Hall of the Clerics of Tharizdun they were temporarily joined by the halfling wizard Orcanus.

This line up was immortalized by goblinoid mothers, who for the next dozen centuries threatened their children that The Reavers, as the Company was known among the goblinoids, would come and take them.

Later the Company was expanded by the addition of the dwarven rangers Lennart, Fredrick, Hakan, Mikkel, and Rolf. The cleric Racine joined them for a few adventures, as did Jake’s wife, the oni noble Ayazuna, and her father Junichi (who is Renki’s elder brother and eventually clan chief).

This is a MUCH-abbreviated telling of the Company’s initial encounter with the Chaos Gargoyle and its destruction. This took place in The Giant Temple of Tharizdun.

 

---

 

The group of seven moved slowly and carefully through the rough-hewn tunnel. Deep beneath the Hall of the Clerics of Tharizdun, they had defeated frost giant and human clerics, not easily but without casualties. They had an air of earned confidence that gave them strength. But the air here was different. Something felt wrong.

Ahead bright light appeared, as the tunnel opened into some type of cavern. Moving cautiously forward they saw the huge cavern’s floor was dished so the center was about ten feet below the entrance, while the ceiling above that center was a whopping seventy feet above. Niches lined the walls, probably forty of them – each containing a statue identical to the ones that lined the ledges in the above levels. The hall above contained hundreds of these statues, winged humanoid figures about four feet tall. They looked benign but everyone was suspicious.

Near the center of the room crouched a humanoid statue about six feet tall, vaguely human looking, wearing a sweeping cloak. Surrounding the statue were three frost giants and a dozen men. One of the giants chanted from a scroll in harsh tones, a language unknown to the party. The figures around the statue focused intently on it and did not notice the party. David and Renki, the ogre mage, quietly invoked spells. David’s Fireball hit the figures, instantly burning the scroll to ashes, and a few seconds later Renki’s Lightning Bolt followed.

Several of the evil clerics slapped the stone floor in a roll of death. The druid Faraz’s sling stone missed its target, but Jake’s crossbow bolt struck the giant who had been holding the scroll, piercing his arm in a spray of blood that splashed across the statue. For a few seconds nothing happened, then the statue glowed with an inner, greenish light. Inexplicably the surviving clerics ignored their attackers, ignored their dead brethren, turning their attention totally to the statue. It visibly changed, converting from stone to some type of pseudo-flesh.

Straightening from its crouch, its cloak divided and became wings. The bland humanoid face morphed beyond anyone’s worst nightmare and the hands became clawed caricatures.

It launched itself at the frost giant who had been reading the scroll, biting and tearing. As the stunned onlookers stood frozen, it tore the giant to bloody chunks. Standing erect it glowed again. In response each of the statues in the amphitheater glowed and animated into smaller versions of the chaos gargoyle.

Creatures of Elemental Chaos that had not been seen since before the beginning of known history again strode into the world.

---

The lesser chaos gargoyles took flight, coalescing into four arrow-shaped groups, swirling around the huge room. Faster and faster they flew, tightening the circle with each revolution. Striking like lightning they poured over the remaining frost giants and humans in the room. The screams were shrill but thankfully brief.

The party watched the carnage in shocked silence. David snapped out of it first, commanding, “Time to leave!” The party moved quickly back to where the passages to the northeast and southwest met the main tunnel.

They heard a strange creaking coming quickly from behind them. Bisonbit the cleric stopped, pulled a wand from his belt, and spoke a short phrase from a long dead language. A “V” of lesser gargoyles was nearly upon them when a violent ice storm coalesced into being, filling the tunnel in front of him. The bitter cold and particles killed some or slammed them into the wall or floor. As each died it burst into powdered rock.

But the survivors came through the storm as if it weren’t there. The gargoyles swarmed over the party, eager for mortal blood. The first chose Trilla and dove at her with razor-sharp claws and teeth. She warded off its first attack, then Jake hacked the chaos gargoyle in half with a single blow. It exploded into dust which momentarily blinded everyone.

Ugly and vicious, these monsters of Chaos would easily butcher and shred unarmed, weakened, or surprised victims like the frost giant and human clerics. Against prepared, experienced soldiers their danger was lessened but still quite real. The party killed the last of the gargoyles while, thankfully, suffering only minor injuries. Dust from destroyed gargoyles hung in the air, limiting vision, although the humans, dwarf, and ogre mage were harder to see as they were coated head to toe in dust.

As the last burst into powder Faraz turned to look down the tunnel and yelled out a warning. More were coming.

Fourteen more gargoyles arrowed out of the corridor, much bigger ones than the party had already faced, but smaller than the great one – which had not shown itself during this battle. Faraz cringed mentally. He had thought the other gargoyles were dangerous enough, but these new ones? Without consciously thinking about it he tagged them medium, large, and extra-large.

The two extra-large probably stood taller than Faraz, topping six and a half feet. These did not attack with the mindless ferocity of the small ones who went for the nearest target – these appeared to understand the level of danger and targeted David and Jake. The druid gave a mental sigh of relief that neither of these monstrosities considered him a great enough danger to warrant their attention.

Two mediums followed their larger brethren in attacking David and Jake. A large and two mediums slashed at Renki’s wooden armor but the enchanted wood was up to the task. The remainder divided themselves amongst the other mortals. Faraz found himself frantically defending against two of the mediums. He had displayed courage during years of fighting goblinoids, but these creations from Before Time were too much. He felt his control slipping into the grip of fear.

Mastering himself, the druid fought on, claws raking his armor and sometimes his flesh. Ignoring the pain he fought, knowing that when he stopped fighting he would die. As each gargoyle was destroyed it exploded in a burst of rock dust, obscuring the area and making the fight even deadlier.

As the battle wound down the great one flashed overhead, flying hard beyond the fight. David yelled, “After it!” and all tiredly pounded after it. Running up stair after stair to the surface, the party struggled with exhaustion, blood dripping from wounds. After an eternity they reached the first level below the main temple. They knew they were running towards an inferno – all of the hundreds of statues on the shelves high above the floor were gone, most probably animated by the beast of Elemental Chaos.

Partway up the stairway to the next level everyone could hear the sounds of combat, including strangled screams of agony from mortal throats. It didn’t sound as if things were going well for the clerics of Tharizdun.

At the top they peered around a corner. Across a forty-foot-wide hallway was the huge main temple room, filled with humans, giants, and gargoyles all locked in combat.

The scene in the worship room was a sight to fill the heart of a god of Chaos with joy. Pandemonium filled the room, masses of gargoyles attacking the human and frost giant clerics of the Chaos God. Rock dust filled the air, making vision to the other side of the huge worship room unclear. At least half of the mortals had fallen and things looked grim for the survivors. A giant smashed an extra-large gargoyle to dust.

The Chaos Gargoyle, off to the side watching the battle with obvious glee, immediately snatched a small one from the air. The great creature glowed again like it had when it first animated, and its captive started glowing as well, and after a few seconds expanded and grew. Within thirty seconds it had grown to the size of an extra-large gargoyle, and wriggled free to attack a nearby human, messily shredding the hapless victim.

Bisonbit exclaimed, “We must get the Big Bad Ugly One! It must be the key!” Renki agreed, “I have a Fireball remaining,” and she invoked the spell, the red bead flashing across the distance from her fingertips to the gargoyle, exploding just in front of it. Humans and frost giants shrieked in agony, and many of the small gargoyles burned to dust. The Chaos Gargoyle shrugged off the fire.

David invoked Magic Missiles which flashed into the creature. Bisonbit and Gilden completed their spells within seconds of each other, one Flame Strike flashing down to immolate the area followed by the second. Within that area stood only the greater gargoyle, the unnatural beast burned by the second strike.

“CIELDREN!!!” Jake screamed as he threw his sword, which transformed into the Hammer of Cieldren. As his spirit flew instantly across the distance with the hammer, Jake girded himself for the strike. The greater gargoyle turned to him – it perceived him. But that perception gained it nothing as he swung the hammer into its chest, the best and most powerful strike he had ever made.

Jake blinked and was back in his body, just in time to catch the sword as it flew back to his ready grasp. The greater chaos gargoyle transformed back into a statue and fell to the floor with a crash. All the lesser gargoyles turned back into statues and fell. Those that fell from any height shattered on the floor, rock powder filling the air. Everyone was unable to see for several minutes.

“What are we going to do with THAT,” Faraz asked, pointing to the statue of the greater gargoyle. The others nodded, they would not leave it for others to find and animate again.

Jake drew his sword and hacked at it, breaking off a tiny chip. A moment later the hole filled miraculously and the statue was whole again. Circling the statue, the party discovered that non-magical weapons had no effect upon it, and only powerful ones would damage the statue. But the effects healed quickly. Strikes upon the lesser gargoyle statues were different – they shattered like the stone they were. But there were many dozens of them strewn across this level; destroying them all might take days.

“I wonder what would happen if we dropped the statue into the ravine that surrounds this temple?” Jake wondered.

“I don’t know, but it can’t hurt US,” David quipped.

“Might not be enough to damage it,” Bisonbit ventured.

“OK.” Dropping his pack Jake rummaged through it and extracted a potion bottle. Removing the top he downed it. After a minute he smiled and picked up the statue, which was almost too much even for his great strength and flew down the hallway and up the stairway to the top level of the temple.

Trilla looked at David, who shrugged his shoulders and said, “Flight Potion.” He wrinkled his nose and added, “Let’s follow him.”

Jake did not fly fast, so the others caught up to him as he reached the surface.

“Get out of the way!,” he called as he flew straight up.

The others crossed the bridge over the ravine as Jake flew upward. Flying with the heavy statue was slow and minutes passed as Jake and the statue shrank to a pinpoint in the sky. Then the pinpoint started growing larger and after a few seconds the watchers perceived the statue falling. It struck the roof of the temple with a tremendous crash, collapsing the roof. The greater gargoyle exploded into a cloud of rock dust forty feet high.

For a few moments the cloud formed the outline of the gargoyle and then scattered with the light breeze that blew across the remains of the temple. Checking the ruins, the party discovered the top level was flattened, but the stairway down was mostly clear and the collapse had been limited to the top structure. Venturing down the party discovered that things had been shaken but not badly damaged.

However, each lesser gargoyle statue had shattered at the moment the greater one did, filling the level with rock dust. They had to wait hours before the dust settled enough to venture down.

I included a female oni as a prisoner in an adventure, held by evil giants. The idea was to see what Eric and Patrick would do with her.

To my surprise they freed her and invited her to join them, and to my bigger surprise I rolled extremely well in the reaction roll. So Renki ended up joining the party as an NPC.

At some point I dreamed up noble oni and wrote this very long pastiche for publishing. I also used it to define more of the end story for Marissa and Trajan.

Note: I prefer the name “oni” taken from Japanese folklore, than “ogre mage” as the AD&D version is called.

 

---

 

Jake was sweating hard, salt stinging his eyes as he practiced. He knew better than to complain as he knew what his grandfather would say: “Does an enemy care if your eyes sting? Fight or die!”

Even in his eighties the old man was tough, at least on the training grounds. Elsewhere he was a kind man, but on the training ground he was a tyrant.

But Jake was worried about him. Marissa, Trajan’s wife, had been sick often lately and the clerics of Demeter could offer little help. Healing magic could cure wounds and diseases, but old age was neither. Her sickness was taking its toll on Trajan as he watched his wife of more than fifty years get weaker and weaker with each successive bout.

Practice started with a double-weight wooden sword, sparring with both Trajan and David, Jake’s best friend. Sometimes Trajan brought in others for sparring, giving both young men wider experience in terms of styles and weapons they might face. David favored spatha and shield, while Jake loved his grandfather’s weapon, a hand-and-a-half bastard sword.

Trajan always ended practice with strengthening and endurance exercises, often chopping posts. “Your enemy doesn’t care that you’re tired, except that it makes it easier to kill you.” The steel practice sword was also double weight, although after an hour’s practice it felt like quadruple weight. “He who tires first, loses.” About the time Jake’s arms were falling off Trajan called a halt to the practice.

Surveying the two young men whom he had trained for six years, since both were eleven … Trajan realized both were fine swordsmen in their own ways. Better than he and Etjar had been at seventeen. Maybe better than they had been at twenty-one. “All for the best,” he thought. “They’re not going to get much more training from me.” Days like this he felt every minute of his eighty-nine years.

“I have presents for you.” He motioned to Bisonbit, who must have arrived a short while before.

Walking over to a long bundle he had brought with him today, he unfolded the bundle to display two swords in ornate sheaths. The sheaths were breath taking, fine leather filigreed with platinum, dotted with red and black gemstones. In contrast the pommels were plain excepting a silver ball at the end of each. He presented the bastard sword to his grandson, and the spatha to the other young man he thought of as a grandson. From a smaller parcel he withdrew a similarly detailed dagger, which he handed to the young cleric.

“Go ahead, look at them,” he commanded.

Each young man drew his respective sword from its sheath, the “ahhs” singing in harmony. Both swords were of exceptionally fine manufacture, different from anything either had previously seen. Fancy scroll work was etched into each blade, an alien pattern they had not seen before.

“Who made these?” David asked.

“These were presented to Etjar, Marissa, and me by a clan of oni. We,” meaning Trajan, Etjar, and Marissa, “had saved one of their people from giants and we received these swords as a token of their thanks.”

Both men’s eyes opened wide. The goblinoids – from kobolds to giants – were generally the enemies of humans. While the oni were not numerous nor frequently encountered, they had a fierce reputation due to their magical abilities as much as their combat abilities. The idea of saving one from anything was as beyond comprehension as being rewarded for it.

Jake gulped, “You never told us about this!”

The old man laughed. “There are a lot of stories I have never told you.” Shrugging his shoulders he continued, “but I will tell you this one now.”

---

Trajan ran well behind the others, acting as rear guard. Hobgoblins had caught up with him twice, and twice the young soldier had shown the hobgoblins the danger of running too fast.

Etjar led the fleeing group. By rights the elven scout Adelf should be in front, but he was too afraid he would run into something. Trajan would have made him lead at sword point if necessary, but Etjar, always smoother with people, took the lead instead. This saved the scout for later tasks, hopefully not at Etjar’s cost.

Trajan knew he was tiring. He could run a paced tread all day, but the two short fights had sapped his strength. Each had taken less than a minute and left three or four dead or maimed hobgoblins in his wake, but the drain on his reserve strength was heavy.

“A short life but a merry one!” he thought.

Trajan’s consciousness was divided. Part of him concentrated on the trail in front of him, making sure he on the same trail as the others. If they moved slower, they could mask their trail, but the need for speed negated that possibility. Their trackers would surely follow.

The remainder of his consciousness listened behind him, straining to catch the sounds of the pursuers getting closer. He heard the heavy tramp of something big behind him. Make that somethings. Definitely not hobgoblins or any of the man-sized goblinoids. Probably ogres.

Well rested he could take on two ogres, maybe three. They reacted predictably and had difficulty with opponents who changed tactics quickly and randomly. But now? One he could defeat, two would be a problem, three would be fatal. His next battle would be the last. Trajan planned to give the others a better lead and hope they could escape.

Trajan, Etjar, Marissa, and Adelf had met a pair of dwarves, twin brothers, who were seeking the ruined tower of a mad wizard. Well, all wizards were mad, but this one was rumored to be balmier than most. His ending was typical of the stories, his tower in ruins, his dead enemies scattered around him. And of course, an unnamed treasure in the catacombs below the ruined tower.

The brothers had a map to the tower and instructions for getting into the catacombs. Having more greed than good sense the group linked with the brothers and started off on yet another adventure.

Things went fine until they ran into a small army, mostly hobgoblins with a leavening of ogres, led by frost giants. Whatever they were doing and wherever they were going, the army wanted no witnesses so they detailed a detachment of hobgoblins and ogres to remove witnesses. An hours long chase began.

Which was ending now, at least for Trajan. He could hear the lumbering ogres catching up. There were at least three, probably more. Things were not going to end happily for the human side of this engagement.

Trajan dodged left behind a tree, hearing the thunk of a thrown spear embedding itself in the hard wood. Reversing course the soldier stepped out and slashed blindly across the space in which he expected the ogre.

His instincts were right. He caught the ogre completely off guard, slashing across its belly. The magically sharp sword cut through the heavy furs it wore for armor along with the ropy muscles of its belly. Grey twining intestines burst forth, distracting the ogre from its prey.

Stepping away from the preoccupied ogre, Trajan saw five more ogres charging him. “Damnation!” he scream out as his final battle cry.

A greenish vapor puffed into existence around and in front of the charging ogres. Their lungs heaving with the exertion of running, they inhaled deeply of the vapor and instantly coughed and puked.

Trajan stepped back to stay out of the vapor. This was nasty stuff, he knew. Being quite familiar with it the young soldier circled the mist, waiting for each ogre to stumble out of its grasp. As each did, he dispatched it. The last one was so busy puking up the contents of his toes he never knew that his compatriots had died under the human’s blade.

“I expected you’d get yourself killed playing at rear guard all by yourself.”

“GAWD that woman irritates me!” Trajan thought. “I thought you would be glad for the chance to see me get myself killed?”

No love was lost between the pair. From the first moment they met the two irritated each other, at first unintentionally and later by conscious choice. It irked Trajan to no end that he owed his life to the exiled wizard. It occurred to him that she shouldn’t be there. “What are you doing here?”

Looking at him like he was an idiot she retorted, “Keeping you from dying stupidly.”

He raised an eyebrow. “But that would fulfill your prophesy.” She repeatedly told him he would die stupidly.

She smirked at him. “Yah. But I’d have to listen to Etjar whining about his dead friend, the hero, for the next ten years. Better you alive than him whining. Maybe you’ll get yourself killed later when you’re not the rear guard.”

Marissa typically got along well with Etjar, enough that Trajan was surprised the two didn’t have a “closer” relationship. She didn’t normally say anything negative about him, although she rarely passed up an opportunity to pick at Trajan.

“Enough chatter. I’ll see if I can delay the pursuit.” She turned and walked back the way she had come. After a hundred yards she turned back and gestured to the soldier to get behind her. She started a low chanting and after a few seconds a gust of wind quartered across the battle ground, whipping leaves and branches up in a mini whirlwind, depositing them haphazardly back down in its wake. The bodies were unidentifiable leaf-covered lumps on the ground.

Breathing heavily, she turned to catch up with the others. “It should take the next group some time to figure out what happened here and more time to figure out where our trail is. Maybe a bit of fear to slow them down,” gesturing at the lumps.

Trajan hated to admit that at times like this she scared him. Her facility with magic was, well, magical and honestly frightening. Maybe that was why he went out of his way to irritate her as much as he did.

That and because she deserved it.

Walking at a fast pace they caught up with the others in less than thirty minutes. Etjar smiled his pleasure at the sight of his best friend and the wizard. “I was getting worried about you two, sneaking off together like that.” His forced smile and bluff manner unsuccessfully hid his very real concern.

Marissa snorted with horror and disgust. “Sneak off with HIM?” She spit quite pointedly. “More likely a couple of ogres than him.”

Trajan felt his face heat up. He retorted, “Thank Demeter I saved that ogres from THAT fate.”

The battle between the two flared in earnest. Etjar stepped up to them and simultaneously slapped both on the backs of their heads, pushing their faces together. “Are you going to argue or run?” This shut them up as their black looks were directed at him instead of each other.

Trajan looked at the others. Adelf ignored the whole thing. He didn’t understand human behavior and as much as he was part of the group, he maintained his distance, mentally and emotionally. Of course, if the elf understood human behavior Trajan didn’t think he’d act any differently. The young soldier was cautious of the elf, never fully trusting him.

The dwarves looked scandalized. They had very little experience with humans and their society was a matriarchy, so the concept of a male treating a female in that fashion horrified them. They didn’t much like the way Marissa treated Trajan, either. The idea of two beings treating each other so rudely and coarsely visibly bothered them.

Etjar? Etjar looked amused, like he knew something Trajan didn’t. That irritated Trajan the most.

“Ok, let’s keep moving. We have some breathing room, let’s use it.” Trajan issued the command to help him push the unhappy thoughts from his head. He glared at the elf, who realized arguing with the powerful human was not a life extending move. He could push Etjar, but Trajan brooked no argument when in certain moods.

The tall elf led the way without a word.

Moving at a fast walk with Adelf in the lead, the party started making a large circle, looking to get out of the area. All thoughts of continuing to the ruined tower were gone. They needed to escape the goblinoid army and there was no value in leading them to the tower.

Adelf stopped abruptly, holding his left hand up at shoulder level, signaling to the others. Instead of asking questions they all scanned around them, looking for whatever caught the elf’s attention.

The elf pointed up a ridge to their right, made circling motions with his hands. Holding up ten fingers to the dwarves he pointed straight up the hill. This meant they should count slowly to one hundred then head straight up the hill. Meanwhile he and Etjar would circle to the left while Trajan and Marissa circled to the right. The idea was a pincer move with the dwarves as bait, er, distraction.

The three groups took their time and converged on the top of the ridge from three directions, finding … nothing. An easily followed trail led down the ridge. Something big had shambled down the ridge, dragging feet and making it impossible to tell what it was, other than “big”.

A half mile farther on they found what looked like an ogre, but bigger. Ogres ranged seven to eight feet tall – this one was nearly nine feet, stretched out on the leaves. He wore an unfamiliar type of well-crafted wooden armor, carried a well-crafted, steel tipped spear, and lacked the stupid brutishness that characterized every ogre Trajan had ever seen. He was unconscious and had a variety of wounds, all of which were closed and not bleeding, although there was fresh blood on his armor and skin.

“What is it?”

With some hesitation Marissa spoke. “I think it’s an oni. They’re somewhat related to ogres, but a lot smarter and with magical abilities. Much smarter. Much more dangerous.”

“He’s definitely bigger. His wounds are partially healed, but he’s covered in fresh blood. Can’t be his.”

“Kill him?” one of the dwarves asked, hefting his axe.

The oni groaned and rolled onto his side. Weapons raised to strike him down. Trajan stepped between the dwarves and the downed creature, sword ready but blocking them. “Let’s not be hasty. He’s not hurting anyone right now and those ragged wounds look like the scars left by ogre spears.” Ogres often used stone tipped spears, painstakingly chipped into shape. Trajan had an ugly scar on his left calf that looked like most of the wounds on the oni.

Etjar looked at him with an unspoken question. Trajan replied, “We can always kill him later if need be. If we kill first the questioning won’t work as well.” Etjar shrugged, leaving the decision in Trajan’s hands.

One of the brothers vehemently said, “NO! Kill it now before it kills us!” Trajan couldn’t tell them apart. But he probably couldn’t tell them apart if they weren’t twins. Dwarves mostly looked alike.

“Why do you spare me?” a voice like rocks rolling down a mountain asked. Looking down they could see the oni had opened his pain-filled eyes.

“Right now I’ve got enough enemies after me. Looks like you have the same ones, so we might have something to talk about.”

“I did not know humans have a sense of humor.” His pain-filled chuckle was like rocks grating together. Trajan had no idea what was funny about what he said, but if it got the conversation going, so be it. “You flee the frost giant army?”

“Yah. Well, hobgoblins and ogres they sent after us.”

“The giants move against a human community. They want no foreshadowing of the attack. It makes much sense that they kill you.”

Trajan was well read, but he was guessing the oni to be better read, speaking clearly with a large vocabulary in what for him is a foreign tongue. “Why did they try to kill you?”

“I chose not to ally with them. My people have no love for humans, none at all, but neither do we hate them. There is no value to my clan should I help in their endeavor.” He paused a moment before continuing. “Frost giants are not known for sufferance, nor politely accepting no as an answer.” He chuckled again as did the humans.

Leaving his spear on the ground the oni slowly stood up. He towered over Etjar, Trajan, and Adelf who all stood over six feet tall. Marissa was just over five feet tall and the dwarves just under, so he nearly doubled their height. Trajan guessed he weighed at least six hundred pounds. “This could be an ugly fight,” he thought.

Trajan realized the wounds looked better than they had. Marissa realized it at the same time and spoke for the first time, “You regenerate?”

Trajan and Etjar both looked perplexed. “Regen -what?”

“Magical rapid healing ability. That blood is mostly his, but his wounds heal very rapidly.”

“I must eat.” His hands slowly moved toward a bag that had been slung over his shoulder. All weapons raised to attack position.

“No, let him eat,” Marissa explained to the others. “Magical healing such as his uses the body’s resources. That’s why he was asleep, his body needed the rest to heal quickly.”

The oni slowly withdrew a block wrapped in leaves. Unwrapping it revealed a white-ish, semi-translucent block that weighed probably five pounds. He bit a chunk off the end, quickly chewed and swallowed, and in another few bites consumed the remainder. “Thank you for your kindness.” He rolled the leaves up and put them back in his bag. “How shall we proceed? Do we talk or do we fight?”

“You want fight?” one of the dwarves asked belligerently.

“No. But relations between our peoples are rarely cordial. I have some hope that this situation will not devolve into fighting between us.” His gravelly chuckled sounded again. “I suspect we have enough enemies that we do not need each other to satisfy urges in that direction.”

Marissa spoke again, “We probably do. Unless the group chasing you is the same as the one chasing us, we probably just doubled our list of enemies.”

“True. But if we work together we can crush one group before they combine, and then the other.” He held a hand in front of his throat. “Truce and alliance?”

Marissa took charge. Both Trajan and Etjar realized she was a lot smarter than either of them, and the demi-humans didn’t interfere. “On what terms?”

“Mutual defense, none allows harm to come to others by action or inaction. The alliance will initially hold for one day and we will agree to not fight, harass, track, or betray each other for one day following the end of the truce. The agreement is renewable on the agreement of both parties.”

The babble of arguing took a few minutes to quell. The dwarves were hard against allying themselves with a goblinoid of any sort. The elf, not normally one to agree with the dwarves on any topic, sided with them. Marissa and Etjar were for the alliance, while Trajan was undecided.

The oni looked unimpressed by the arguing of the Little People.

Trajan realized they needed a decision, and they needed it quickly. He made his.

Etjar cajoled people into agreement while Trajan generally bashed people until they agreed. “Ok, bashing time,” he thought. “This is too much for either side to deal with alone. We have a better chance of survival if we work together.”

The dwarves and the elf protested against this.

“I can’t force you to do this against your will. Good luck, maybe the larger group will chase us instead of you. May we meet again in this world, and if not, in the next.”

Turning his back on the trio he addressed the oni. “What form of swearing upon our allegiance will satisfy you?”

This brought forth another round of protests from the demi-humans. “This doesn’t concern you,” he responded.

As he turned back to the oni one of the dwarves spun him back around. “You going to side with that against us??” his face red with outrage.

“NO! I’m siding with survival. You made your choice and I’m making mine.” He peered intently down at the dwarf. “Unless you’d like to change your mind?”

The dwarf, although older than the humans, was far too young and naïve by his race’s standards. His feelings were obvious on his face. He didn’t want to separate from the three humans who were far more experienced – and deadly – then either of the dwarves. But neither did he want to ally with a traditional enemy of his people.

“Decide now.”

The two dwarves gabbled back and forth in Dwarvish, with passion. Finally the first said, “We agree.” Turning to the oni he asked, “How do you swear?”

Before the oni could answer, Trajan turned to Adelf. “What about you?”

The elf didn’t hesitate a second. “I’m staying.”

“Trust that one to always decide in favor of personal survival at the expense of all else,” Trajan thought. To the oni, “How may we swear upon this alliance?”

“I will swear to my war god, Orochi, that I will faithfully obey my word as long as you all do.” Looking at the dwarves he continued, “Will you swear the same by Avaya?” He named the chief dwarven god, their god of battle.

Both dwarves nodded sullenly, not liking the chief dwarven god named by the oni. “What will you swear by?”

Trajan thought a moment and said, “Etjar and I both follow Demeter.”

The oni nodded, “That one is trustworthy.” Looking at Marissa he added, “And her?”

“I can speak for myself!” Marissa bristled. “I, too, will swear by Demeter.”

The oni nodded again. “Elves are poor at keeping their word with my people. Will you all swear to protect me against your companion as well as our enemies?”

Trajan expected the elf to be outraged. Instead, his eyes narrowed. “If Adelf violates our agreement I’ll kill him myself.” Trajan didn’t bother to look at the elf, having a good idea about the stare he was receiving.

“My name is Mamoru of the Clan Raiden. I do so swear as we have agreed by the spirit of Orochi.”

The others named themselves and swore by their gods as well, even the elf, who did so with poor grace.

As soon as they were done Mamoru pulled another block from his bag and ate it, and the others nibbled trail rations as well, plus drinking water. Retrieving his spear Mamoru led off to the northwest, continuing the circle the others had been following.

Quickly he realized he had to slow his pace so the dwarves and Marissa could keep up. Pacing alongside him Etjar asked, “Where are you leading us?”

“We must circle around them. Their tactics are not extensive, but they are hunters and we are prey. We must escape their lines. If we get far enough ahead they will stop chasing us.” He paused a moment before continuing, “More likely we will ambush them.”

The group walked another hour in silence with no signs of pursuit. As they passed in the shadow of a ridge the elven scout hissed. All stopped as he peered around, his sense flaring. “Incoming!” he rasped, putting a tree between him and the top of the ridge.

As the others moved a hail of large rocks, spears, and arrows flew among them. One rock hit a sapling, passing through it to leave a ragged stump. Another rock whistled by Trajan’s head, missing him by a hand’s breadth. Spears and arrows whistled by and some thunked into trees. One arrow skidded off a dwarf’s chain mail, ripping through his cloak.

“Where are they?” rasped Etjar. He risked a look, which produced another hail of missiles. His tree took a solid blow and a glancing one from rocks, blows that shook it from roots to crown but didn’t break it. “Top of the ridge!”

Marissa pulled items from a belt pouch and started chanting. At the conclusion she stepped out from behind her tree with her hands held out an arc of lightning flashed from the outstretched hands and impacted a frost giant, sparking on metal armor and burning him. Several ogres near him dropped to the ground, twitching into permanent silence. She slid back behind her tree as missiles from other locations passed through the space where she had been. “That was my best spell, almost my last.”

Mamoru did the same, chanting a different song. He stepped to the far side of his tree, a veritable giant, also with hands outstretched. A gout of black liquid coalesced into existence and spouted at another giant, hitting her squarely in the chest. She screamed as the burning began, mimicked by ogres and hobgoblins around her who were splashed by the acid.

“Susafras’ Acid Blast!” Marissa marveled. Invented by an arch mage of the Council of Rendelshod some eight hundred years before, she marveled at the power of the spell, one far beyond her meager skills.

Missiles targeted Mamoru, but less than before.

While the spell casters began their side of the battle, the others strung their bows. Etjar spotted a couple of hobgoblins circling to his right. The first took an arrow in the ribs, the second dodged and avoided a similar fate.

Trajan, the dwarves, and the elf found similar targets. Trajan and Adelf hit their marks, the dwarves missed but broke the attempt to encircle them.

“We need to move back, get them to chase us,” Mamoru hissed.

“Provide him with cover!” To the oni he commanded, “You go first, we will dodge easier.” To the others, “On three. One, two, three!” The bowmen stepped out of cover enough to fire. As the arrows flew the oni ran, surprisingly fast.

Quickly the big one was out of sight among the trees. “Marissa, you and the dwarves are next! On three. One, two, three!” Etjar and Trajan fired, two arrows each. The elf outdistanced the female mage and the two dwarves.

Etjar’s anger was hot. “I’m going to pull that elf’s eyeballs out through his butt!”

“Kill him later, goblinoids now! Shoot and zig zag like Belkin taught us.” Belkin had been their trainer in the Kerr militia, which both men had joined at age seventeen. Both owed a lot to the grizzled old one-armed veteran.

Each stepped out from the opposite side of their respective trees, shooting a single arrow into the handiest target. Turning to run, each ran on a diverging course, then after one hundred feet turned abruptly back towards each other. Hail after hail of missiles targeted them, hitting where they had been or where the goblinoids expected them to be. Between the trees and the ragged running patterns both escaped without a scratch.

Half a mile farther the land rose, a wide gully splitting it. The trail of the others led through the gully so Etjar and Trajan charged in pursuit. After half a mile the land dropped again, the gully petering out.

“Hey!!!”

Skidding to a halt the men saw the exiled wizard on the higher ground next to the gully. “We’re going to ambush them. Up here!”

Following the woman, they made their way back to the middle of the high land, looking down into the gully.

Mamoru hunkered down to their level, outlining his plan to hit their pursuers. “Kill the giants. Without them the others will break.”

The bowmen had a few dozen arrows between them. Marissa had used all her spells but one, but had a scroll containing a Lesser Poison Cloud spell like she had used on the ogres earlier.

Mamoru admitted that most of his spells were gone as well, but he had a Fireball remaining.

“I didn’t know oni could use fire magic? I thought it was just cold magic.”

“Most of my people are limited so, but I am a noble,” he stated proudly. “Nobles master magic similar to wizards. Plus we are mighty fighters. We must be greater than the commoners,” obviously meaning oni commoners, “so they will follow where we lead.”

Ten minutes later the first hobgoblins ran into the gully. According to plan they would be left to continue at the risk that they’d find their way onto the ridge. Next came a phalanx of ogres followed by a trio of giants, one with clothing and armor damaged by acid, another with lightning burns.

Marissa read her spell from the scroll, keeping her voice as low as possible, barely whispering the words of power. The characters on the vellum writhed as she read them, squirming off the vellum and coalescing into a greenish ball in the air.

Just before she finished a stream of fire spurted from Mamoru on her right, hitting the middle giant and expanding into a sphere of liquid-appearing fire. The struck giant collapsed heavily while the other two spun to either side. The ogres near them dropped or screamed as they batted at their flaming clothing and hair.

At the conclusion of her spell a moment later, the ball flashed into the gully and spread into a greenish cloud. The standing giants were too tall for it to affect them as their heads were above the cloud, but the ogres all started retching and choking. The acid and fire burned giant lay unmoving.

The five bowmen launched arrow after arrow into the gully striking giants, ogres, and the hobgoblins who had turned back upon hearing the noise of the fray.

The dwarves, who had the worst aim, concentrated on the giants, the biggest targets. Adelf focused on the unwounded giant while Trajan and Etjar shot whichever ogre or hobgoblin presented the best target at the time.

The flurry of arrows left all three giants and a score of ogres and hobgoblins dead in their wake. The wounded survivors ran back the way they came.

With typical greed the humans and demi-humans quickly searched the bodies for valuables. “We might as well make some profit from this,” Etjar quipped.

Mamoru stood by impatiently. After a couple of minutes he commanded, “We must flee. There may be more coming.” Survival beat out greed and with a final riffle of an ogre the elf set out behind the others.

The wizard commented, “I’m almost completely out of spells.”

The oni nodded in agreement, “I, too, have no further combat magic to employ.” The dwarves and the elf were out of arrows, while the humans had three between them. “Best we don’t get caught,” Etjar commented.

Moving at a fast walk the group quickly crossed several miles of light forest. They were starting to feel like they escaped when the elf stopped cold, right hand at shoulder height in a clenched fist. The party halted in fits as each realized the elf stopped.

“I have bad news.” Adelf didn’t have to articulate the bad news – it appeared among the trees, four frost giants, a dozen ogres, and two score of hobgoblins.

“This isn’t going to go well,” Trajan commented on the obvious. “How did they get ahead of us?”

“Does it matter?” Marissa replied snippily.

With a roar the hobgoblins charged and a moment later blasts of fire, acid, cold, and lightning burst amongst the attackers. Reeling from the attacks the surviving goblinoids struggled to defend themselves from a dozen oni who materialized in conjunction with the magical attacks.

Reacting with the reflexes of trained soldiers, Etjar and Trajan charged to engage the giants, followed by the dwarves. The fight was furious, brutal, and ended relatively quickly.

None of the humans or demi-humans suffered any serious injuries. One of the oni suffered a nasty slash down her right arm, but the wound was already closing. She quickly ate one of the unidentifiable white-ish blocks of food.

Mamoru walked up to the clustered humans and demi-humans, who eyed the oni with misgiving. The oni eyed them back with distrust and hostility. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend may not hold true,” Trajan thought.

“Our scouts report that this was the last group tracking us. Let us part ways on good terms.”

The group sighed a collective sigh of relief. Etjar started to comment when an oni stepped forward, spear held ready. “NO!”

“What means this?” Mamoru challenged.

“We never deal with the Little People on friendly terms! Kill them while we can, to lessen their numbers!”

“I swore an alliance of mutual defense with these Little People. You will NOT violate my oath!”

“Only a fool or a weakling would swear alliance with such as these!” With that he lunged forward at Marissa, aiming to impale her with his spear.

Obviously expecting the move, Mamoru reacted even quicker, snapping his spear across the attacker’s chest to stop him, spinning to strike him across the back of the head, stretching him headlong onto the ground. Twirling his spear, he spun again and drove the point into the prone one’s back and through his heart. Withdrawing the spear, he wiped the point on his fallen victim’s cloak. Four oni came silently and emotionlessly forward and picked up the body while a fifth retrieved the fallen one’s spear.

“Thank you for keeping your word,” Marissa said softly while the others remained pointedly silent.

“Do not thank me. I slew my younger brother because he would have shamed me by violating my word. For your sake. While he was a hot-headed fool who would have broken my word … he was my sibling.” His angry countenance was frightening to even the hardened soldiers. “It is best we not cross paths again. Farewell.” With that the oni turned to the west, carrying their fallen sibling.

The group silently watched them until they were out of sight, then fell to looting the bodies.

---

A few weeks later when the group was back in Kerr and had disposed of their spoils, a small man approached Trajan, Etjar, and Marissa while they were supping in a tavern near their boarding house. He carried a cloth wrapped bundle about four feet long. “Are you Etjar, Trajan, and Marissa?” he asked.

“Who wants to know?” Etjar shot back.

“I have been paid to deliver a gift to the people named, at this tavern.”

“Who paid you?”

“A man named Mamoru. He said you’d recognize the name.”

The three looked at each other. “Yeah, we’re them.”

The name laid the bundle on the table, turned, and left the tavern.

Trajan carefully unfolded the bundle to reveal ornate sheaths holding a finely made bastard sword, spatha, and dagger.

---

Jake’s eyes stung with tears instead of sweat. He, David, Bisonbit, and three of Trajan’s other students lowered the wide casket into the ground.

Marissa died the same evening Trajan told them the oni story. The old man crawled into bed, cradling his dead wife in his arms, and went to sleep. He never awoke. They were being buried together.

Jake wasn’t sure if losing both grandparents at once was better or worse. It wasn’t good no matter how he looked at it, but it was a mercy for Trajan to not have to live without his Marissa. At least Trajan would feel that way.

Jake decided losing both at once was worse. Turning from his grandparents’ grave he discovered his way blocked.

“What are YOU doing with that sword?!”

Hallan, Jake’s father, stood angrily there with his hands on his hips, his body taut.

Putting his hand on the sheathed sword Trajan had given him two days previously, Jake retorted, “It’s MY sword, Grandpa gave it to me.”

“Gave it to you? That old fool had no right to give it away. It’s mine by right!”

Jake reacted in blind hatred, his right hand swinging in an arc that intersected his father’s face. Hallan was taller by a head but Jake had far more muscle and led the blow with his hip, putting his entire body weight behind it. The sharp CRACK of the impact turned every head within one hundred feet, and everyone got a good view of Hallan picked off his feet and slammed into the soft, muddy earth.

“DO NOT EVER speak ill of my grandfather again!” Jake’s instantly bright red face shown in the morning sun as he towered over his prone father.

Slapped to the ground, Hallan would not be dissuaded. Looking at the spatha that David wore, Hallan rubbed his sore face and swore. “That one is mine, too! I’ll talk to the magistrate about you thieves!”

“Good luck. I won’t be here.” Turning to David he stated flatly, “It’s time to do what we’ve been thinking about. Time to leave.” Jake stomped off with David in tow, ignoring his father.

Struggling to feet Hallan vainly wiped the mud off his fine clothes. “I’ll see those two thieves in jail!”

“Etjar, they are not thieves, and you know it,” Galafid said quietly. He sadly eyed the man while Bisonbit stared holes in the ground, prudently silent.

Rounding on the cleric first of the Temple of Demeter, Hallan rounded on him screaming, “Don’t call me that! My name is Hallan!”

“Etjar is the name Marissa and Trajan gave you at birth, naming you after their best friend who died protecting them.”

“They named me after a FOOL!”

“The only fool is you,” Galafid stated calmly, his always polite demeanor dramatically contrasting Hallan’s anger. “They named you after a brave friend to whom they owed much, including preservation of his memory.”

“Naming you Etjar was a waste and a blot on a good man’s name,” Galafid thought. It wasn’t polite, but he called the man Etjar to his face to irritate him. Privately he thought of him as ‘Hallan’.

The words were quiet, but the effect was forceful. Surprisingly the excitable Hallan shut up. Well, he calmed down. Shutting him up for long was another matter. “Those swords are mine by right. I am their son, and they should go to me. They are far too valuable to be left in the possession of idiots.”

“Ahh,” thought Galafid. He should have remembered there wasn’t a sentimental bone in Hallan’s body, it was the value of the swords that invoked his ire, that and the idea that something of value didn’t belong to him. “Those swords belonged to Trajan and Marissa. Along with ALL their belonging, which they had every right to disburse as THEY pleased.”

“What do you mean? Their house is MINE! By law!” Hallan’s face reddened further. Kerrean law awarded real estate to the eldest child, unless there were extenuating circumstances.

Galafid thought, “If he keeps this up he is going to have a stroke.” Aloud he said, “Yes, it is.” Galafid’s calm never wavered. “But their individual possessions, parceled out prior to their deaths, are not.”

Hallan emitted inarticulate sounds of rage, his body clenched in anger. For a moment it appeared he would attack the older cleric … but something in the man’s calm demeanor shut down the fool’s misplaced anger. Hallan knew a moment’s fear, for no reason he could articulate.

“I witnessed the granting of items by Trajan and Marissa to various persons. Do you wish to dispute me in court?” The cleric didn’t smirk but gave the impression of a subdued smile on his plain face. That impression was the first emotion he had displayed since hearing of Marissa’s death.

The strange intensity of Galafid’s mild statement shut Hallan up, something not often accomplished in a man so self-centered and self-important.

“The house and land are yours by right. Their possessions that they assigned are not. Bother either of Trajan’s grandsons on this matter at your own cost.” The threat was obvious even to a man such as Hallan.

Not surprisingly, anger overcame fear. “That boy is NOT a grandson!”

“David may not be Marissa and Trajan’s grandson by blood, but that is exactly how they treated him these past ten years. Nor is he a boy. Confront him at your own peril.”

With that Galafid turned and walked away, Bisonbit trailing behind, leaving the fuming man in his wake.

“Bisonbit.”

“Yes, sir?”

“The look on Hallan’s face when he finds his parents’ house empty is going to be priceless.”

Bisonbit, at age twenty-two having the mixed confidence and fear young men often have, nearly choked. Then he laughed, “Yes, sir, it will.”

Galafid chuckled. “We will know when it happens. Everyone between here and Sathea will hear his screams of outrage.”

Bisonbit DID choke this time, laughing at the upcoming discomfiture of the greedy man.

“Jake and David are leaving Kerr.”

“Yes sir. They have spoken of it repeatedly over the past couple of years. No one believed they would go.”

“With Marissa and Trajan gone there’s no reason for them to stay. Talk to them. They may store their belongings in the temple where we will care for them until they return, regardless of how long that may be.”

“Yes sir.”

The older man stopped abruptly, turning to the younger man. Bisonbit nearly tripped over his feet, but with colt-like reflexes turned to meet Galafid’s eyes. The cleric locked gazes with Bisonbit, which immobilized the younger man. After ten seconds or so Bisonbit’s gaze glazed over. He was conscious but not really, under the effect of an unconscious geas, one of the most powerful spells any cleric could cast.

“You will go with them.”

“Leave Kerr and the Temple?” Even under the power of the spell the young cleric was surprised at the command.

“Jake and David are mentioned in the Book of Muur. Those two young men are going to save the world from Darkness. And you with them.”

“Darkness? ME?”

Galafid stared at the young man. Very few reacted with any emotion when an unconscious geas was laid upon them. To react with powerful emotion, Bisonbit possessed much stronger mental strength than anyone had realized. If he survived the next few years, a powerful cleric he would become. “Yes, some unknown Darkness that will engulf the world. And yes, by all means, you.” Galafid took a breath. “You will stay with them, guide them, teach them. They will listen to you and follow you. Grudgingly, unhappily. But they will follow you until they are ready to lead.”

Seconds passed then Bisonbit’s head jerked as if he had been nodding off and caught himself. Seeing the older man staring at him he recovered quickly. “Sorry, I was just thinking about what you said.” The young cleric had no conscious memory of anything while under the influence of the geas. To him, it felt like he had simply lost his train of thought.

At Galafid’s nod he continued, “Jake and David are a pair of real knuckleheads. They will get themselves killed.”

Swallowing he continued hesitatingly, “I think I had better go with them. I don’t want to leave the Temple, but I owe Marissa and Trajan too much to let those idiots get themselves killed.”

“I concur. You had better catch them before they leave. Make sure they stop by the Temple.”

“Yes Sir!” Bisonbit rushed off.

“Just as well that I didn’t tell you that YOU are mentioned in the Book of Muur as well,” Galafid whispered to the young cleric’s back.

On Dragonsfoot forums Stuart Marshall challenged others to re-write AD&D monsters for OSRIC. I took up the challenge. Then a few years later I wrote this pastiche for publishing in & Magazine.

 

---

 

Jannalanga, the Rathian owner of the tavern, asked Trajan a question as she handed him a mug of wine. “The other day Hal claimed he fought and killed a creature, Ock cue lus dish pot?”

“Oculus Despot.”

“That’s it. I never heard of it, even in the stories told around here, other than Hal slinging his usual bull dung.”

“Ahh, that’s no surprise. The oculus are deadly dangerous. Most who meet one don’t survive the experience.”

“But you and Gramma killed one, didn’t you?” Jake asked.

“No. No, we didn’t. We fought one and managed to drive it off without being killed.” He sipped his wine. “We were very lucky that day.”

---

Adelf led the way, carefully picking his way through the ruins. Some eighty years before Agarmemnar had been a thriving commercial center, the jewel of the eastern seaboard. Success bred jealousy, and rivals had banded together to hire mercenaries to reduce the powerful city/state. The result was the ruin the party picked their way through, holes in the ground where wooden buildings collapsed and burned, stone buildings crumbled, evidence of fires still visible on the few remains amongst the trees, bushes, and weeds that reclaimed the formerly beautiful city.

Senses flaring to spot dangers, Trajan still mused, “Funny, the two cities that led the gang that destroyed this city both fell within five years. The second stringers filled the openings and are still powerful today.” He snorted, “As they say, the second mouse gets the cheese.” He glanced at his best friend, Etjar, who was equally attentive thirty feet to his right. He knew that the third member of their tight team was thirty feet behind them, the small bronze woman with similarly flaring senses.

As much as they adventured with Adelf, none of them trusted him. He had never done anything adverse, but none of the trio trusted that he’d risk himself to save the others if things went wrong. He was distant and gave them all the same feeling of unease. That said, he was a great scout, his abilities had saved them from more than one ambush. “As much as Marissa and I fight, she’d not let anything harm me any more than I’d let anything hard her.”

But the elf? Best to not find out the hard way.

They trusted their employer, Sugarro, even less. The sage hired the group to guide him and his men to Agarmemnar, as they had been here before. He and his crew of cut throats were seeking a wizard’s tower that supposedly had never been breached. He paid good gold to be guided there, half up front, half on arrival, with the understanding that the payment was for guidance only – they’d part ways once the tower was reached. If the tower had not been breached during the sack, nor during the eighty years afterwards? It was more hazard than any amount of gold was worth.

For a sage Sugarro was a hard soul, trusting no one and never offering a crumb that he didn’t get good value for. His initial offer for their services as guides had been so low it was beyond insulting. All through the trip he acted as if they cheated him by charging their usual rates. In hindsight the big man wished they had asked for more. Maybe the sage would have been angered enough to find someone else who knew the way.

The four agreed that the wisest course was to get their remaining money as soon as the tower was reached, and to leave immediately. They watched for treachery and had grown to expect it once they reached the tower. If Sugarro seemed untrustworthy, his men seemed even less so. It felt strange for a highly educated man to surround himself with scum of such low caliber.

The suburbs of the city, outside the main wall, had been completely crushed. The invaders had taken everything of value and burned anything they could, tumbling stone walls. Some for fun, some to demoralize the defenders before the sack. Eighty years later the formerly cobble-stoned streets held back most of the shrubbery, but the places where buildings had been sprouted mini-forests.

Small animals and birds could be seen, and intelligent eyes could be felt. Most of the survivors fled as soon as they could, although some never left the city. Treasure seekers continuously pawed the ruins for trinkets, while the permanent inhabitants avoided all, watching everything. It was not a good place to be alone, or unguarded, or uncareful.

The city wall still stood in many places, rearing forty feet above the ground. It had been breached in numerous places. Treasure hunters had worsened the ravages as they sought imaginary caches hidden within the walls, tearing the stones out in their frenzied greed. Time had not been kind to the old stones.

The buildings inside the walls were typically in better shape than those outside. More were made of stone rather than wood, and once the post-breaching carnival of slaughter, rape, and savagery had sated itself, the mercenaries left with everything they could carry, and the survivors of the city fled as well. Wooden structures had burned, but no serious effort was made to destroy anything that wouldn’t burn.

“How much farther to the tower?” rasped Sugarro’s voice, unnaturally loud in the silence. He was seventy feet behind Marissa, his bully boys ranged protectively around him.

“What a coward,” Trajan thought.

Adelf, Trajan, and Etjar, stopped, and Marissa moved up between the two big men, as the party waited for the sage and his men. “I asked you how much farther?” the sage grated out, showing his irritation.

Etjar answered, “In hostile or unfamiliar territory, we keep quiet and don’t shout.”

“Are you telling me what to do?!” the man half shouted.

“No, I’m telling you what WE do,” the bigger man mildly replied. Etjar was well over six feet tall, with a lot of muscle on a heavy frame. Trajan was an inch shorter and looked less bulky in comparison, but that was deceiving. He was about as strong as his friend, and had a faster temper. More than one fool had chosen Etjar as the more dangerous and discovered far too late that he’d made a bad decision. Not that there was a good decision in deciding which was more dangerous.

All of the bandits fingered their weapons. “Sheesh, I think of them as bandits, not guards. Not that I think I’m wrong,” Trajan silently considered as he watched them for a first move.

“There are a lot of unfriendly things in this place. It’s wiser to not call more attention to ourselves than is absolutely necessary,” Etjar continued. Then he, Trajan, and Marissa all backed away from the sage and his bully boys, not turning their backs until they were another twenty feet away, Marissa turning last. The men discounted her and didn’t appear to consider her a threat, a tremendous mistake on their part, but one that didn’t need correcting. Foes tended to focus on the two big men, ignoring the small woman until it was too late.

The last mile to the tower was slower going. Trees and shrubs had shouldered their way between the cobblestones in many places, making the formerly straight avenues a meandering course. The foliage and wrecked buildings produced numerous ambush spots, so the going was even slower. Sugarro chafed at the slowness, but his neck wasn’t in the noose of an ambush. The guides would not be rushed.

An hour later they came within sight of the tower. It wasn’t tall, maybe sixty feet, and was a squat forty feet in diameter. An eight foot wall, appearing untouched by time, surrounded it, keeping invisible the courtyard that was probably thirty feet across. The wall and its single gate stood out oddly after passing through the wrack of the city – both were untouched by the ravages of man, elements, and time. Nothing had been built within eighty feet of the wall, so a huge area – nearly three hundred feet across – contained nothing but the tower and its enclosing wall. Low weeds and grasses grew in the area, but nothing above knee height. The gate was open, showing more grass like outside the wall.

His eyes gleaming, Sugarro heavily stated, “We are here!”

Etjar eyed him. “You agree that we have fulfilled our commission? We have guided you to the tower?”

Eyes closing to slits, the sage breathed, “Yes you have.” He snorted, “Begone!”

Etjar, Trajan, Marissa, and Adelf moved into a defensive arrangement, facing the sage amidst his cluster of thugs. “We are owed a sum of two hundred gold crowns as the remaining payment for our services, as we agreed.”

“I paid you well enough,” he grated out. “I deducted ten gold crowns for every time any of you were insolent. Be thankful I do not charge you for wasting my patience and take back what you were already paid. Leave now and I will spare your lives.”

Swords rasped as the elf and the two big men drew their swords. “Whose life will be spared?” Trajan asked softly.

A heavy weight slammed Trajan in the ribs, knocking him aside. A spear fell at his feet. It failed to penetrate his chain mail, but the impact bruised ribs. A ragtag shower of thrown spears rained upon them, and one of the sage’s men gurgled out his life after one drove through his neck. Another flight of spears wobbled after the first.

“It’s a wonder they hit anything,” Trajan marveled at the raggedness of the flight. Then he touched his bruised ribs and remembered that luck could be good or bad, as the dying bandit discovered.

A dozen unkempt men boiled out of the bushes, rusty swords in hand, their eyes gleaming in madness. They hit Sugarro’s men hard and slaughtered two in the first moments. But those men bought time – Sugarro rasped out words of magic and five bolts of red flaring energy erupted from the fingers of his left hand, each spearing a different target. Three of the men dropped with black holes burned in their chests. The other two threw themselves on the sage.

A glowing dagger appeared in each hand and the sage – revealed as a mage – deflected sword strokes and slashed an attacker across the ribs. Trajan, Etjar, and Marissa backed away from the fight, forcing themselves to glance around for other dangers. They barely watched as Sugarro killed his second opponent with a deft stab while his men finished off the remainder, although another of the thugs’ number fell to rusty blade. Better skill and armor had paid off for some of the thugs.

As Sugarro killed his opponents Marissa swore, “Damn, damn, damn – he’s more powerful than me by a lot!”

Half his force down, the sage turned back to the party. “It seems there are dangers here. Would you like to earn back some of the money you owe me?”

Trajan shook his head. “This jackass was beyond arrogance.” Then something happened that he had never heard before – Marissa screamed in horror. The woman had ice water in her veins, rarely showing any trace of fear. Something tickled his peripheral visions and h snapped his head to the left to see the thing that floated silently out of the bushes, the thing that evoked horror in the battle-hardened mage.

To his dying day Trajan could clearly describe the horror that menaced them. It was a spherical, roughly five feet in diameter. The huge eye that filled the upper half of the sphere was locked onto the sage, while another eight or ten small eyes on stalks or tentacles waved around and looked at everything else. A huge mouth filled with jagged teeth occupied the space below the great eye, drooling slime. The rest of the body was rough looking, as if the skin was partially sloughed off, although it looked tough, even at a distance.

Light flashed from the great eye, bathing Sugarro and his surviving men. The glow of one of his magical daggers winked out, and the sage screamed in horror as something unidentifiable happened to him. He dropped both daggers and clutched his head.

One of the thugs screamed as rents appeared in his skin, blood gushing forth. Another readied his sword in a defensive posture, and the last one froze in place.

Marissa howled out words of magic, and three bolts of cyan forth burst from her right hand, flashing across the distance to the thing. Two scorched the body and the third burned a small eye to ash.

Adelf flung a pair of daggers and darted for the tree line. Marissa charged the thing, her staff at the ready. Trajan and Etjar stormed past her, Trajan putting his armored body between her and the thing. Even wearing chain mail he was faster than the much smaller woman.

Out of the corner of his eye Trajan saw one thug turn and hack at the still howling sage, while the second started smoking and screaming. Then he had no more time for them, only time to bring his heavy sword down on the thing. A small eye stared at him and he felt drawn into it, an undefinable terror ripping at his conscious mind. His first instinct was to flee, and he wanted terribly much to do just that, but the sight of Marissa thrusting her staff into the great eye stopped him. Somehow, he mastered the induced fear and stood his ground. Still horrified, none the less he hacked at the thing again.

Next to him Etjar suddenly slowed, his movements reduced to half their normal quickness. He was still fast enough to get in a lick, snipping off a small eye, but something was wrong, his normally graceful moves were jerky and forced.

The light of the great eye flashed again, bathing Marissa. She rocked back from the thing and then inky darkness descended upon them, blocking out all light. Not even thinking, Trajan threw himself backwards and down. Some type of heat flashed above him, unseen but palpable. He rolled out of the darkness, which encompassed a sphere easily thirty feet in diameter.

To his left Marissa stumbled out of the darkness, and far too long after that, Etjar on his right. Sheathing his sword his snatched his bow off his shoulder, quickly checking it for damage. It looked ok, so he deftly strung it and snatched two arrows from his quiver, nocking one and palming the other. He backed up as he scanned for movement.

Marissa screeched more words of magic and a red pea flew from her finger into the darkness, apparently blossoming into a sphere of flame. Some of the fire licked outside of the darkness. An inhuman scream of rage and pain erupted from the hidden thing, and it rose out of its hiding, hovering on nothing. Trajan plunked an arrow into the central eye, and then a second. Etjar, normally a bit faster, got one off after Trajan’s second. Marissa screamed off another spell, this one producing a stroke of electricity that encompassed the thing.

Continuing to bellow, it went straight up and then arced over the tower. Trajan hit it with another arrow and missed with the second. They watched as it faded over the tree line. Etjar was still moving slowly, but his movements returned to normal after a few minutes. About the same time the darkness disappeared as instantly as it appeared.

On the other side one of the sage’s henchmen stood, burned to a cinder. His armor still glowed red from the heat and he must have balanced just right to remain upright. The sage himself was on his face, his back both burned and badly hacked, very dead. The last henchman had been caught in the Fireball and burned to death.

Marissa watched as Etjar and Trajan checked the bodies for valuables. The henchmen had some minor coinage, nothing of enough significance to pay for this journey.

Sugarro, on the other hand, had numerous pouches filled with many items Trajan knew would make Marissa ooh and ahh, implements necessary to cast spells. That was something. Trajan pulled off the pouches and stuffed them into his pack. He found minor coinage, nothing like the two hundred gold crowns the bastard owed them.

The big man found a small sack crumpled in the bottom of the sage’s pack. Trajan was going to throw it aside when some instinct made him look inside. To his surprise, the sack was not empty, it was filled with small bags, plus five books. From the outside it was an empty sack, but it was clearly not empty.

“Really great magic!” he marveled.

Reaching in, he hefted a small bag. Definitely coins, and from the weight probably gold. Yeah, there was probably enough to pay the bill, plus some extra for treachery. “This bag is bigger on the inside than the outside. There are bags of coins here, probably enough to make this trip worthwhile!” Extracting a book he showed the cover to Marissa, thinking he knew what it was. “Plus there is this!”

Her eyes glowed and she hopped up and down in excitement. Rushing forward she planted a kiss on his lips and ripped the book from his hands, so focused on the book that she didn’t realize she had kissed him.

“What is it?” Trajan asked in surprise. The mage was far more likely to kick him than kiss him.

“It’s a spell book, I think it contains spells of the next rank up from what I know!” Carefully turning pages she glanced up with bright eyes, “I won’t know until I have time to study it! I will need to use magic to read it!”

Pulling out another book he held it up. She greedily grasped at it, but he held it out of her reach. “I need a kiss for this one as well.”

“A KISS? You must be joking!”

“I got a kiss for the first one!”

“No you didn’t!”

Etjar interceded. “This is not the time or place for you two to fight. Let’s leave before that thing comes back.” Marissa looked like she wanted to argue but subsided at his glare.

Trajan put the books back in the bag. “What about the tower?”

“What about it? We were paid to guide them here. We weren’t going inside, and after fighting that thing, I have no interest in anything except leaving.”

Both Trajan and the mage nodded in agreement. Trajan changed the subject, “What was that thing?”

Marissa responded, “It was an oculus depot. An unnatural creature that can invoke magical powers through its eyes. The beam of the great eye can destroy magic items and stop a spell caster from invoking magic. She pointed to the roasted thug. “And the small eyes can do many things, including heating metal to red hot.”

Trajan instinctively rubbed his chain mail armor and glanced in the direction in which the thing fled. “Ok, I agree that leaving is good.” He paused, looking around, “Where is Adelf?”

“That coward fled immediately.”

As he stuffed the non-descript bag into his pack, he waggled it. “Are we going to share this with him?”

“Share what?” Etjar asked innocently. Marissa laughed. Adelf didn’t share the danger so he deserved none of the rewards. There would be words when they found him, maybe more than words.

As Trajan led the way back to their camp Etjar said in a low voice, “You did kiss him when he pulled out the first book.” The woman looked aghast. “And he liked it. I expect you’ll have to kiss him for the other books as well.”

“That is NOT going to happen,” she stated in disgust. “I will never willingly kiss that man!”

The big soldier laughed, “Never say never …”

---

“What powers do the eyes have?” Jannalanga asked.

The elderly woman spoke, “It depends on the oculus, the exact powers vary from one to the next.” She ticked points on her fingers. “The little eyes of the one we fought could charm men into being its thralls, heat metal to red hot, cause wounds at a distance, cause slowness, cause fear, and invoke darkness. The big eye evoked an anti-magic ray that could de-magick all but the most powerful magic items, and it may temporarily prevent a spell caster from casting spells.”

“Others? I heard of one that could kill with the big eye, and the powers of the small eyes are too numerous to list.” She locked eyes with her husband. “We were very lucky that day.” She planted a kiss on her husband’s lips.

Jake piped up, his young mind not understanding the somber atmosphere. “You didn’t share the loot with the elf?”

She laughed, “No. When we got back to camp, he was trying to convince the sage’s valet and horse wrangler that no one was coming back. He wasn’t doing well.”

“We explained that Sugarro was dead, and the men believed us. They actually looked happy.” Snorting, she continued, “They tried to take all the horses. We left them walking for their trouble.”

“What about Adelf?”

“We split the coins we found on the sage’s henchmen with him, a pitiful dozen gold crowns worth of silver and copper coins. He wasn’t happy, he didn’t believe that was all we found, but he knew not to argue with us.” She sipped her wine and continued, pain in her eyes. “We didn’t see him for nearly two years after that, when we made our last trip with Etjar.”

David was unusually somber. “That was when Etjar was killed by a bereaver?”

“Yes. When Trajan got me back to camp afterward, the elf had taken everything of value including the horses. We had to walk and the bereaver’s strike hurt me badly. Trajan carried me most of the way.” She leaned over and gently kissed her husband on the cheek.

The old man rested a fond hand on his wife’s shoulder and interjected, “We caught up with him a few months later, after we destroyed the bereaver and gave Etjar a decent burial.” His somber mood turned comical, “The elf saw me first, turned to run, and she,” he nodded at his wife, “popped his knee with her staff.” He pantomimed someone tumbling head over heels, and snorting with laughter said, “Adelf didn’t run too well after that.”

“Trajan beat him black and blue, then strung him up in a tree.”

“You killed him!!!”

“No, we hung him by his ankles. That really put a hurting on his knee.” Trajan continued, laughing.

“Served him right for running out on us, leaving us to die.”

“How long did you leave him?”

The elderly woman snickered, “No idea. We just left him. He either got himself down or someone took pity on him.”

“A few months later he got caught stealing in Kerr and the authorities hung him by the other end.”

As noted I the introduction, this was the first pastiche I wrote. The idea of Trajan and Etjar being childhood friends, and meeting up with Marissa on the road made sense. But they needed some shared trial to bond them. Being tracked for hundreds of miles by carnivorous monsters seemed like a good idea.

 

---

 

“Hal, did you ever fight a gree-kin?” asked the boy, his eyes shining with excitement.

“Gree-kins? Huge monsters that suck your brains out your nose?” The old duffer quaffed half his ale, dribbling some down his chest. He snorted in disgust, spraying ale from his mustache in a three foot arc. “There’s no such thing. It’s just a fairy tale.” With that he sucked down the remainder of his ale.

David’s eyes dimmed with disappointment and chagrin. Boys his age were easily excited and just as easily discouraged. He turned his crestfallen gaze to his best friend Jake.

Jake sniggered with contempt as only an eleven year old can, dismissing the old man. “He doesn’t know anything. Gree-kins are real. Besides, most of his stories are cow manure.”

The old man swatted at the defiant boy but came nowhere near close. Both boys fled out the door, laughing. Seeing there was no story the few others in the tavern wandered out behind the boys, onto other business. With his audience gone, and more importantly no more free ale, Hal grumbled unintelligibly for a bit then started his afternoon nap.

It was late afternoon. Trajan watched as Hal swiped at the boy and then as the few travelers left the tavern. Trajan mused that Hal had stayed awake longer than usual. “He must be getting old if he didn’t make up a story to cadge more ale from those travelers. Can’t be that he’s too drunk.” Hal emitted a snore that rattled the windows. “Maybe he is that drunk.”

Walking out of the common room of the inn/tavern, Trajan found the boys sitting outside, going back and forth about gree-kins. Sitting down between them Trajan cut off their arguing. “So you want to know about gree-kins?”

Volatile as children are, both boys dropped their argument and rounded on the old man with excited questions. It took him a minute to quiet them down so he could get a word in.

“Gree-kins are not a fairy tale. They are VERY real. My best friend Etjar and I met some while traveling with an exiled wizard and a small group of pilgrims who were coming up from Sathea to Kerr. We ran into the pilgrims and the wizard north of Sathea and we all agreed we’d travel together for safety. Their safety. The weather was good and the traveling was easy. Too easy …”

---

Trajan and Etjar strode the dirt road, their long strides eating up the distance. Both were big men, well over six feet in height, young and powerful. Anyone observing would realize these two could travel from Sathea to Kerr in a far shorter time than their companions bringing up the rear. Periodically the pair stopped to wait for them to catch up.

The dirt road meandered through the lightly forested hills, although it was more straight than not. Sometimes the forest grew dense but it was mostly scattered clumps no closer than forty feet from the road. Later the forest road would grow claustrophobic amongst dense trees, but here it was bright and open. It was the trade route between Sathea and Kerr and both the Empire and the City cooperated to keep the brush from encroaching on the road, which reduced the frequency and success of ambushes.

In contrast to the Kerreans, the Sathean pilgrims were easily a foot shorter, their swarthy features another contrast to the fair Kerreans. Although they were fit and healthy men, their shorter strides could not keep up.

Bringing up the far rear of their procession a young Sathean woman in riding clothes struggled along, trying to keep pace. She didn’t appear to be used to walking, her clothes more suited to horses, and her limp demonstrated her feet were unused to this effort. Over her brown riding clothes she wore a dark green vest that was covered with many pockets. Clothes too heavy for the weather and a weighty backpack made her struggle worse.

As she shambled up to the resting group the young woman, whose plain face was coated in road dust, grimaced when the others made to resume walking. “Wait,” she snarled. “I need a rest, too!”

Trajan had little patience and nothing resembling tact. “If you walked faster you’d get more rest!”

“If you walked slower I wouldn’t need to!” These two rubbed each other the wrong way from the first moment they met. Etjar tried to jolly her up, but she snapped at him as well. She glared at everyone as she sat down, pulling her canteen from her pack to clear the dust from her throat. None of the men moved until she got up twenty minutes later. Trajan would bait her and argue, but even he had enough sense to not invoke her ire more than he had.

This scene repeated itself during the long day, making the long day even longer. Trajan’s attitude towards the woman didn’t make things easier.

As the sun edged toward the horizon Trajan and Etjar started looking for a defensible site for a camp. The sun was still barely above the trees when they found a site, a ring of large rocks sixty feet across in the middle of a much larger clearing. Now in their early twenties, they had been training, working, and fighting together for nearly fifteen years. They didn’t discuss the decision. Both knew this was the spot, dropped their packs, and started preparations for the night.

The leader of the pilgrims, a squat man named Hax, accosted them. “What are you doing? We have another hour of daylight for travel!”

Etjar, always more genial than Trajan, answered promptly before his friend could stick his foot in his mouth. “We need a good, defensible spot for tonight’s camp. We may find one farther on, but by the time this one is prepared it will be close enough to dark anyway.”

Hax bristled and started to reply but Trajan cut him off. “We are camping here. If you don’t like it pick a different one.”

Hax looked like he wanted to argue, but his compatriots distracted him and started work to setup the camp. At the soldiers’ direction the pilgrims collected brush and made a ring outside the rocks. While this wouldn’t stop anything determined to get into the camp, it would slow them down and give some warning. Hax grudgingly assisted the preparations with poor grace.

About the time they were finished the woman, Marissa, trudged up to the camp site and dropped her pack.

“Glad you’re here to help,” Trajan jibed her.

Etjar appreciated that she was too tired to do more than glare at Trajan. “This is going to be an interesting trip, even if these two don’t kill each other,” thought Etjar. Trajan took charge and organized watches. “We all take two hour watches in pairs. Stay awake and pay attention to what is around us.”

“Why do we need to keep watch?” growled Marissa and Hax at the same time, turning to glare at each other as much as Trajan.

Etjar cut in, “Because we don’t know what’s out there and we’re all going to live longer if we’re warned and awake before something kills us. Would you rather be warned after you were killed?”

Trajan laughed and bit back the response he was going to make. “We don’t know what is out there. I’d like it to be nothing, but we’d best not count on nothing.” For the easily irritated Kerrean, that could pass for a polite rejoinder.

He paired Hax and Marissa for first watch, figuring the tired woman would be hard to wake later on and feeling the need to punish the thankless Hax by pairing him with her. Etjar and one of the pilgrims had the second watch, two other pairs of pilgrims had the third and fourth, and the last man had watch with himself for the last stretch before dawn. “Anyone who doesn’t want to share the responsibility can travel on their own.”

Etjar shook his head. Sometimes it seemed like Trajan went out of his way to irritate people.

While everyone grumbled they all, including the woman, wanted the two soldiers with them. Trajan and Etjar were big men, heavily armed and wearing chainmail shirts. Trajan wore a hand-and-a-half bastard sword slung over his shoulder, while Etjar bore a long sword and shield. They carried themselves with confidence and were no doubt experienced in dealing with trouble.

The pilgrims and the woman all carried walking sticks that could maybe double as fighting sticks, but Trajan guessed none had ever had to save their own lives with one. Maybe knock a few heads, especially the woman, but not anything serious.

The pilgrims arranged their bedding together, as did Trajan and Etjar. Marissa set herself up away from both groups, although given her prickly nature it wasn’t likely that any of the men would make any moves in her direction.

Trajan was in the middle of an oddly comforting dream which somehow involved Marissa (later he couldn’t remember for sure) when a shout woke him. Used to snapping from deep sleep to instant alert, he was on his feet with his sword drawn before he was even aware that he was awake. Nearby Etjar was in the same exact state, sword and shield ready.

An impossibly tall creature, hairlessly naked and looking like an emaciated, dark green giant, had crossed the brush line and had knocked one of the pilgrims to the ground. He grabbed the other guard with hands larger than dinner plates and bit into the man’s forehead with a horrible grating of teeth on bone. The five foot tall human looked like a doll in the giant’s claws. The Sathean screamed like a mortally wounded rabbit, sharp and piercing. The creature bit again, crunching through skull. The scream shut off as quickly as it began, although the man was definitely not dead. Before he or Etjar could react, the giant turned and bound over the brush and out of the light.

Hax and the other sleeping pilgrims had just pulled themselves to their feet, while Trajan noticed that the woman was on her feet, standing ready with her staff in hand. His opinion of her rose two notches.

“What was that?” blurted Hax. “We have to go after them! To save Horrus!”

Trajan started to reply, but Etjar cut him off. “Did you see that thing move? It was running as fast as a horse. No way we could catch it … and besides, if we did catch it we wouldn’t be doing your friend a favor.”

“We can save his life!”

“Did you see what it did to him? It bit the top of his head off. If he lived, which isn’t likely …” Etjar spit and looked queasy. “We wouldn’t be doing him a favor,” he trailed off.

Trajan interjected, “I am NOT chasing that thing into the dark. Your friend had really bad luck and I don’t want to share it.”

Marissa cut in, “Besides, we don’t know how many of them there are. Chasing into the dark is stupid. Especially after someone who is already dead.”

Hax turned visibly red in the firelight and made to argue more, when the second guard moaned. His shirt was ripped and six parallel claw marks were visible across his chest. They didn’t look deep and hadn’t bled a lot, but they looked puffy and his face looked feverish. As they watched he sat down on the ground with a barely controlled thump.

Rushing to him the woman checked his face and his wounds. “Poison,” she said, “the claws inject poison.” In the light of the campfire they could see the wounds were already inflamed and puffy. “Nasty stuff.” He moaned again. Dashing to her pack she pawed through it, taking what seemed like forever to find a small copper bottle. Before she reached the wounded man, he uttered another small moan and released his breath a final time, relaxing into death.

Swearing in a language none of the others recognized, she slid the bottle into a pocket on her vest. “Even if I had been quicker, it would not have mattered. The poison was too virulent, he was already dead.” Shuddering lightly she continued, “He didn’t have a chance.”

“We’ll bury him when it gets light.” Turning to his pack Trajan strung his bow. “It’s a couple of hours until dawn. Get some sleep if you think you can.” Hax started to argue but his remaining followers shushed him. It didn’t appear they were happy with the turn of events but didn’t want to alienate the two soldiers. Hax grumbled more as Etjar strung his bow and lay down with it across his chest, a quiver of arrows close by. Marissa lay back on her pad while the surviving pilgrims formed their clump. Their dark looks at the others showed their dissatisfaction with the general reaction to the attack and deaths of their two fellows, but they said nothing the others could make out.

As the others lay down Trajan sat as far from the fire as possible while still remaining within the circle of rocks, gazing into the darkness with his bow in his hands. He didn’t bother to keep awake the pilgrim who was supposed to keep watch with him.

Time passed, maybe an hour, and Trajan felt a change in the night air. Not moving a muscle, he listened carefully both with his ears and his mind. Something moved silently in the darkness.

He stood, drew the bow, and fired in one swift motion. The arrow traveled less than one hundred feet into the darkness when it impacted something with a meaty thunk. A shocked moment later a shrill scream pierced the night, wakening the sleeping humans. Etjar was on his feet instantly, his bow drawn and pointed in the direction of the scream. Trust him to arise from a sound sleep ready and able to fight. Marissa was just a moment slower, while the pilgrims uttered confused cries as they struggled with their tangle of bedding.

The soldier shot another arrow into the shape he barely perceived in the darkness, shooting by instinct as much as sight. The shrill scream cut off as suddenly as it started, leaving a stunning silence in its wake.

A pair of growls came from either side of the falling shape, and Trajan’s third arrow missed its target as two huge humanoid shapes hurdled the barrier, both intent on the dwarfed human soldier. He blocked a slash with his bow but the force snapped the bow in half and ripped it from his hands.

The second shape spun him from his feet as its claws opened his left arm from shoulder to elbow with three neat cuts. As he fell the second clawed arm slashed across his back, snapping links in his chain mail shirt, opening bloody gouges. As the first one moved in for the kill an arrow sprouted from its side, followed by a brother. Screaming in pain and rage the creature spun and charged Etjar. He dropped his bow and swept his sword from its sheath, lighting the scene with its magical glow, slashing and blocking the ugly claws. The claws must be made of something as strong as steel because the magically sharp sword failed to cut through, screaming in a clash sounding like metal on metal. The light of the sword surprised the creature as it back pedaled.

Meanwhile the second creature yanked Trajan from the ground in preparation for biting into his skull. Before it could bite three bolts of brightly green glowing magical energy punctured the creature’s side, leaving burn marks on its dark green skin.

Dropping the helpless human in a sprawled heap it turned at the woman who struck it with magical energy. Rushing her with unreal speed it raised its claws to slash her to ribbons. Frantically casting another spell she completed it just as it reached her. A fan of flame burst from her right hand, striking it in the face and leaving blisters in its wake. Recoiling blindly in agony the creature slashed futilely at the air and turned to flee. Moving with the same unreal speed it cleared the rocks and piled bushes in a single leap to disappear into the darkness.

The other feinted at Etjar and bound over the barrier to join its companion in the darkness.

Trajan groaned and his face was already covered with the sheen of perspiration. While he didn’t look anywhere near as bad as the pilgrim had before he died, he didn’t look good. The woman rushed to his side, plucking the small copper bottle from her pocket, unstopping it, and pouring its contents into his upturned mouth. Nearly choking on the liquid he managed to swallow most of it. A minute passed and his breathing steadied.

“What is that stuff?” Etjar asked.

“A potion that is an antidote to most poisons. I got to him quickly enough.”

“But not soon enough to help Hessan,” Hax sneered.

Rounding on the man Marissa snarled, “No, not soon enough. We didn’t know they were poisonous.”

Hax started to snarl in return when Etjar poked him in the shoulder hard enough to spin him half around. “Be thankful we were here. If we hadn’t been you’d all be brainless now.” He looked thoughtfully at the man. “Although I’m not sure anyone would notice.” Normally a tactful man Etjar instantly dredged up insults when the mood took him. The smaller man backed off with fear and anger on his face.

Turning back he saw Marissa kneeling, cleaning Trajan’s wounds. The wounded man started to thank her but groaned when she scrubbed hard at one wound. “Hey, take it easy, won’t you!” he complained.

“If you ducked faster I wouldn’t need to do this. Stop whining.”

Etjar shook his head. When they decided to kill each other, he wasn’t betting which would win.

Three days later the trio stumbled up to the southern gate of Kerr along with a single pilgrim. Hax and the others lay dead behind them along the road.

---

“They killed the other pilgrims?”

“There were six of ’em, two adults and four half-grown young-uns. After I killed the one young-un the big ones kept after us, trying to ambush us.”

“What did they do?”

“Kept trying to ambush us. Instead of straggling we had to stay bunched up. We lost Hax and another pilgrim ‘cuz they got too far from us. Almost lost the wizard, too. We finally killed both of the adults and another of the young-uns. No idea what happened to the other two.”

“You didn’t like the wizard, did you?”

“Nope. She and I rubbed each other the wrong way from the first moment we met.” Trajan was about to expound further on the topic but David interjected another question.

“Gree-kins are poisonous?”

“Yes, David, gree-kins are poisonous. Deadly poisonous. Most people don’t survive a clawing.”

“Why did they keep attacking you?”

“Gree-kins mostly travel alone and attack lone travelers. The group we met was a family, and after I killed the young-un the parents seemed bound to kill us all.”

“Why do they bite people’s heads off?”

“They don’t bite heads off, they crack the skull so they can eat brains. And they don’t suck brains out through your nose.”

“Why …”

“DAVID!” Standing beside them was a young man or an old boy, depending on point of view. He had arrived unnoticed in the flurry of questions and answers.

“Bisonbit!” Jake and David yelped in harmony.

“Time for lessons. Get your butts moving or I’ll kick them all the way to the temple!”

Trajan cut off the grumbles. “Time for you boys to get to your lessons.” Silently he added, “And spare me from more questions.” ‘Why’ was David’s favorite question, no matter what the previous answer was. As much as Trajan liked the boy, some time off from him was good.

The two boys trundled dejectedly off behind the older boy …

My brother and I created dozens of variations on the original gas spores from AD&D. Nearly thirty years later I wrote this pastiche – because I felt the need to write another one and gas spores popped out at me when I perused my monster notebook.

 

---

 

Hal was in rare form and it wasn’t even noon yet. A family of nobles from the southeast had stopped at the tavern, slumming it, and the obviously spoiled teenaged son had been enraptured by Hal’s questionable stories. Enough that they had kept buying ale which he steadily pounded down.

While entertaining when told sober, the one-armed man’s stories drifted from made-up into the realm of sheer idiocy as the ale content of his veins increased. Not that it mattered to Hal, he’d never see these people again and was drunk enough to last until the next morning, when a pounding headache would give him the impetus to tell stories to garner more ale.

He didn’t even realize that his audience had left him in disgust. Just as well.

As the family turned away a boy of maybe twelve years spoke up. “Hal doesn’t know anything. He lost his arm when he got run over by a wagon when drunk. Which he usually is.”

The father looked down his nose at the boy and was about to tell his guard to run the boy off. “The monster Hal says he saw was a gas spore, not an oculus despot. Ask Trajan, he’s fought with both.” With that the boy turned and walked out onto the porch.

Following him outside, the nobles found an elderly man sitting with an equally elderly woman, and in front of them another boy. The man was tall and fair, she short and dark. The guards nervously fingered their weapons. Although elderly and unarmed, the pair had an air about them that would make any good bodyguard nervous. Characteristically the nobles had no clue.

“Tell them about gas spores,” the boy commanded.

The old man laughed. “David, is Hal telling his tale of killing an oculus despot in one blow again?” At the boy’s nod he continued, “No one kills an oculus with one blow. Hal encountered a form of gas spore.” He laughed again and looked at the old woman who smiled back at him, an unexpectedly predatory smile. “We have, too.”

---

Trajan moved cautiously forward through the temple’s first cellar. He reached back and the linkboy behind him slapped another burning torch into the extended palm. The big man gently threw the torch underhanded to land about thirty feet in front of him, rolling a couple of feet. Thirty feet behind him was Etjar with another linkboy, standing in front of the previous torch.

The temple cellars were vast, obviously shaped from existing caverns. The ceiling was barely visible in the torch light, probably twenty-five feet above the soldier’s head, and for the most part he could see the walls on either side of him. The walls of this part of the cellar were stacked with crates ranging from three feet to six feet in size. No telling what the contents were, anything from stored foods to extra furniture to statues and decorations. Some were obviously ancient.

Trajan determinedly put those thoughts out of his head – their job was to find whatever had killed several servants, and either kill it or drive it off.

A voice called from behind, the Chief of Guard who was to guide them. “The bodies should be in the next section, unless something has moved or eaten them.” Twenty feet behind Etjar stood Demorov, Chief Guard of the temple of Athena in Kerr. With him was the third member of the hired trio, a diminutive woman as bronze as Trajan and Etjar were fair. She was a wizard, their backup and secret weapon against the nasties they expected to find.

The soldier threw another torch as he moved past the last one. Scanning the ceiling and walls for danger, he spotted two lumps on the floor at the edge of the light. Instead of reaching back for another proffered torch he opened a small pouch on his belt and brilliant light filled his fist. Closing his eyes tightly against the glare he tossed a small object at the lumps. Daylight showered from the object which struck the floor next to the lumps and bounced another five feet.

This light outclassed the torches the way the sun outclasses the moon. The ceiling and walls were brightly lit and he could see far past the lumps.

The lumps? Looked like bodies … excepting the clothing was wet looking and shredded. They looked wrong.

“What’s wrong with the bodies?” a woman’s voice screeched behind him. “Well, her voice doesn’t really screech but by Demeter’s hair, she irritates me,” thought Trajan.

“Something’s odd,” he retorted.

Even sixty feet away her exasperation was palpable. “HOW?” This time she did screech.

The soldier bit back his first retort. Drawing a breath, he managed to civilly state, “Clothes are torn, things look wet, maybe slimy.”

“Check it out!”

“In a minute.” She said something else but Trajan pointedly focused on not being killed. Nothing on the ceiling, crates and barrels were pushed against the walls, no place to hide. Nothing in sight. Nothing out of place except the bodies looked strange. “ Why do I have a bad feeling about this?” he asked himself.

As hard as he was ignoring Marissa, Trajan’s sense of self-preservation reacted to her cry of danger. He saw a shape flying down toward him on his left. It wasn’t fast but was fast enough. He started to move away from it at an angle but instantly realized the linkboy was frozen in terror, staring at the thing.

“Oculus!” Etjar and Marissa both screamed in harmony.

The trio had fought an oculus despot, a floating horror that resembled a huge eye with a gaping maw and a lot of tentacles on top. The true danger wasn’t physical, it was thing’s intelligence and varied magical powers. They had barely survived that scrap and Trajan wasn’t happy to be within a hundred miles of another one.

“I’m an idiot!” he yelled as he reversed course, snatched up the linkboy, and ran, shielding the boy’s body with his own. In his peripheral vision he saw an object flash by and then was thrown forward in a burst of flame that burned the back of his neck and his arms. He landed on the boy but managed to roll and not crush him.

His training forced him to struggle to his feet. The kid was either ok or he was not. Survive first, assess damage later. “What happened?”

Marissa answered, “Etjar threw a dagger at it. It just exploded, like a Fireball.”

“Oculus don’t explode!”

“This one did!”

The pair started to go back and forth, per usual, until Etjar cut them off. “Survive now, argue later.” They both opened their mouths to argue with him but shut up at his withering glare. “Sheesh! They’d rather fight with each other than live!” he mused. “They need to kill each other or get married.”

“Ok, what happened?”

“Just what I said, Etjar threw a dagger at the oculus, hit it near the big eye, and the thing just exploded. Not exactly like a Fireball, but close enough.”

Etjar examined the area, there were shreds of leather-like flesh scattered all over. He poked at the bits with another dagger but didn’t touch them with his hand. Lying nearby was the dagger he threw, the edge wavy and melted looking. He didn’t pick it up.

The first linkboy struggled painfully to his feet and staggered towards his compatriot. The boys hugged each other, turned, and ran at the fastest pace the injured boy could manage towards the stairway up. Demorov spoke for the first time, snarling at their shadows to return or he’d beat them. Trajan was just as happy to not have children in danger.

Demorov started after them but Trajan yanked him back. “Don’t worry about the kids, we have more important things to worry about. We don’t need kids underfoot.”

The Chief was a big, tough man but Trajan manhandled him like a rag doll. While his first instinct was to fight, the Chief was smart enough to realize he wasn’t going to win. The big soldier saw a momentary glint of fear in the other man’s eyes and made a mental note to speak for the boys to the high cleric, AND to watch his back where the Chief was concerned. Assuming they survived.

Etjar saw the interchange and distracted the Chief, at least temporarily, with reality. “Look at this!”

One of the bodies had shredded, soggy clothing and looked deflated, like the body was all there but sunken in. Raw flesh was visible, but it didn’t look normal, it looked more like old meat left out in the heat. In contrast the other had undamaged, soggy clothing but appeared bloated.

Etjar scooped up the light coin and tossed it farther ahead. He moved slowly towards the coin, scanning everything as the others looked at the bodies. Demorov drew his sword and made to puncture the bloated body. Marissa screamed a warning and Trajan moved like lightning, interposing his armored back between the mage and the body, scooping her up and running. Fast as his reflexes were, he only made two strides before the fool with the sword stabbed the body.

A smaller burst of flame erupted from the body, scattering bits and pieces of the body before several other equally small explosions went off in rapid succession. Trajan was thrown forward, landing hard on one forearm as he fought to keep his crushing weight off Marissa. He screamed at his broken arm and fell off it onto his side.

Marissa howled at him to get off her and managed to get leverage to move him. She swore at his clumsiness as metal disks scattered across the floor. “Where did those come from?”

Etjar came running back. A quick glance showed Demorov in a dead heap, badly burned with chunks of metal sticking out of his flesh, a mixture of copper, silver, gold, and even platinum slugs, all roughly the size of common crowns, coins.

Marissa was still grouching at Trajan’s clumsiness as Etjar looked him over. The left arm was badly broken but not bleeding much. No veins or arteries cut. Walking about behind him the big soldier felt a chill. The broken blade of the Chief’s sword extended askew from Trajan’s left kidney.

“Shut it, woman!” She glared at him but he spun her around so she could see Trajan’s back. Her defiance went limp when she saw the broken sword jutting from his body.

“That’s bad,” she whispered. Trajan just moaned. “He saved me.”

Etjar’s hyper acute danger sense spun him around, a trait earned in too many battles with too many strange things. Floating at the edge of the light was two more of the oculus. They floated slowly towards the trio. The soldier still held the melted dagger he had thrown at the first one, so without thinking he flung it into the closer one. The dagger struck and the thing instantly flashed into a fireball, engulfing the one behind it and igniting a second fireball.

Three other shapes loomed from the darkness. Etjar despaired, “I can’t move Trajan, as badly wounded as he is I’ll kill him!”

“I’ll stop them, but they have to be close together.” She moved towards them, waving her arms to attract attention. All three moved towards her, slow as a slow walking man. She used the time to circle and lead them from her friends. At one point the closest got to about fifteen feet away, and she could see that while the thing resembled an oculus at a distance, up close it looked partially formed. The great eye was not really an eye, and the eye stalks on top were just tentacles with light spots at the ends.

Circling several times, she got them to group together and walk quickly backwards to gain distance. At fifty feet she immediately invoked her favorite magic, one that never failed. Three lances of red energy flashed from her fingertips, one striking each sphere. The strikes were so fast the three exploded instantly, leaving her seeing spots. She did see that as the last one exploded it produced a spray of gems which scattered in all directions. She absently grabbed a few that landed close to her as she hurried back to the pair.

“How is he?”

“Not good. He’s lost a fair amount of blood, that blade ripped him apart internally.” Etjar, normally a paragon of strength, wrung his hands. “If we can get a cleric here fast enough we might save him, but he has minutes.”

Tears stung her cheeks. She often hated Trajan but as he lay there dying she felt a wrenching loss beyond anything she had experienced, even beyond exile from her school and homeland. “I wish I could heal you,” she cried; her magic didn’t lend it self to healing. The mage realized she was sobbing uncontrollably.

“Sheesh, woman! Stop your caterwauling!”

Blinking through the tears she saw Trajan sitting up facing her, his arm unbroken, the unendurable agony of his rended insides wiped from his face. She grabbed his head and kissed him hard and long.

“What was that for?” he asked in puzzlement.

Seeing that she was unable to answer, her face flaming red, Etjar responded. “You were killed. You had a sword blade rip your guts out and your arm was broken.”

“Right …”

“Marissa wished you healed, and you were.”

“Right …”

“I’m not joking, you idiot. Besides, if you weren’t dying why else would Marissa kiss you instead of kicking you in the head?”

Trajan blinked. THAT made sense. “How did she get the magic?”

Etjar shook his head, “No idea.” Shrugging, he continued, “What if it came from those things, like the metal slugs and these gems?” Bending, he picked up a rough amethyst the size of his thumb, one Marissa dropped when she grabbed Trajan.

Laughing, Trajan said, “You mean I could wish I had a thousand more just like that one?” A pile of identical stones appeared in front of him, empty air one moment and a pile of gems the next. The laugh drained off his face.

All talking at once they made wish after wish, none of which were granted. All trace of embarrassment gone, Marissa rounded on Trajan, “You fool, I wasted a Wish saving your worthless hide!”

---

The nobles were entranced. The father, whose supercilious expression was gone, asked, “Were the stones valuable?”

Laughing the elderly woman answered, “No, not really. They were cheap stones and what little they were worth was spent decades ago.”

Looking disappointed, the noble pulled a gold crown from a pocket and arrogantly tossed it on the wooden floor. “My thanks for your story.” With that he led his family and guards off.

Jake and David scrambled for the coin, fighting for it. Bigger and stronger, Jake won. He presented it to Trajan who declined it. “Take it inside and give it to the proprietor, in payment for my current bill and towards the near future’s bill.” He waited a beat and continued, “and get a mug of chocolate for you and David. If Bisonbit arrives as expected, get him one, too.”

Differences forgotten, the boys scrambled through the door.

The woman tugged on a gold chain around her neck. Hung on it was a finely cut amethyst, very large, which sparkled in the sun. She kissed him hard on the mouth and said, “Well, maybe … they weren’t that worthless and all were not spent …”

In the spring of 2014 Baen Books advertised a fiction contest. I wrote this one as a stand-alone, submitted it … and didn’t win. Bummer. It ended up on OSRtoday instead, while that site lasted.

 

---

 

The elderly couple sat quietly in the corner of the tavern, their grandchildren chatting nearby about something interesting to a pair of teenagers. A group of older youths crowded in the front door, clustered about the eldest. One pointed to where Hal was snoring the afternoon away, head down on a table. The one-armed ex-adventurer told stories for ale, and was generally unconscious by mid-afternoon. He had a good morning, so he had been out cold since before lunch time. Other than his snoring, it made for a quieter tavern.

“That one’s a drunk, he doesn’t know nothing.” Pointing at Trajan he continued, “That’s the one we want. His stories are real.” The crowd surge toward the couple.

Jake and David stood up and imposed themselves between the youths and their grandparents. Although shorter by a head and outnumbered, they were brawnier and had an air of confident violence about them. The youths stopped abruptly and piled together, trampling each other.

The leader recovered first, pushing the others off him, and tried to salvage his fragile dignity. “We want to talk to him,” pointing at the old man.

“Jake, David, let them by.”

“Sit,” the old man said gently. Although quite elderly the man projected strength and the youths obeyed the suggestion as if it was a command. “What can I do for you?”

As they settled into scattered chairs several started to speak at once, but the leader blustered through them. “We heard you fought draugar!” he blurted. Gesturing towards Hal’s unconscious form, he continued, “He’s told stories, but they’re different every time, all crap. Anyone knows that.”

Keeping his face genial, Trajan laughed inside. Given the number of people that bought ale in exchange for Hal’s stories, everyone did NOT know that.

“Everyone says that you know things. What you say is real.”

The man sipped at a mug of wine. He surveyed their faces over the rim. All young, strong, eager. Not a lick of sense in the bunch. “Hubris,” he thought. “The destroyer of fools.”

“Why do you want to know about draugar?”

“Ronja. We heard there is a draugar there, guarding treasure.”

“Demeter preserve fools,” Trajan thought. “Guarding treasure?” he said aloud, with a tone of polite interest, and an undertone as if talking to a stupid child. It was lost on these.

All five hunched forward in excitement, their bodies taut. “YES. We mean to destroy the draugar and take the treasure!” They looked around at each other, eyes bright with excitement, and with imagined glory and wealth.

“Ahhhhh,” the old man said slowly and dryly. “So you want to know how to kill a draugar?”

“Yes! We heard you killed two draugar! Tell us how to do it!”

“I–”

“No,” the old woman cut off the reply.

The youths thought she meant no story and started to protest.

“No. Trajan killed three.” She frowned. “And nearly died doing it.” The old woman glared at the old man, cutting off his reply. Looking back at the youths she continued, “I will tell this story. Trajan has never told the real story, but I will.” Looking back at her husband she softly stated, “Etjar told me what you really did. At the time I wasn’t ready to hear it, but now is the time to tell it.”

The leader of the youths started to object, but her withering glare shut him up. From the corner of her eye she saw Jake and David sitting attentively. They’d heard Trajan’s stories their entire lives, but they’d not heard her tell any.

“The gnomish scholar Petteri, who still teaches at The College, hired us to escort him to Ronja. The city had been sacked by bandits nearly eighteen years before. He wanted to visit the ruins and see if books supposedly in one of the minor temples had survived the elements. It was Trajan, me, our best friend Etjar, and a pair of dwarven brothers who had traveled with us before. Plus Petteri, one of his colleagues, and two senior students.”

---

Etjar groaned. Sixteen miles of walking from the gates of Kerr along the North-East Road to the ruins of the City of Ronja, formerly home of nearly ten thousand people. The dwarves were good traveling companions. They were strong, fit, and did their best to fulfill their duties. Petteri had hired the group before, and for a person with such short legs he managed to do pretty good at keeping up. The gnome’s companions? Yah, they were scholars, as soft of body as they were quick of mind, but they did their best to keep up. Besides, they were paying by the day so an extra day or two of pay for just walking was fine.

Marissa and Trajan? “Being jailed for killing them both doesn’t seem so bad right now,” he silently considered.

From literally the first moment they met the pair rubbed each other the wrong way. Like every good wizard Etjar had met, she was very intelligent, quick of wit, had a strong attention to detail with regard to anything that interested her, and a disregard of things that didn’t. Bronze skin, wide nose, fleshy lips, she wasn’t the Kerrean idea of beauty, but wasn’t unpleasant to look at.

Trajan was quite bright but had nowhere near the brain power she did. At six feet four inches he was more than a foot taller than the woman, muscular enough to make other men envious, the bronze of his skin was from the sun and not nature, and he was a master of the hand-and-a-half bastard sword he favored. His continuous fights with the wizard were typically brain versus brawn, although for diversity they’d sometimes snipe at each other’s appearance, clothing, personal hygiene, or something else equally pointless. The human scholars found it amusing, but they’d not listened to it for five years. Petteri and the dwarves found Trajan’s words scandalous, as both races coddled their women, but after listening to the woman for five minutes they hadn’t thought Marissa’s treatment of Trajan any better.

“How about you shut up?” he addressed them impartially. Both glared at him. “We haven’t been here in two years, there’s no telling what might have moved in.” He scanned the area pointedly; nothing moved except a few birds whose chirping broke the silence.

Before either could respond he addressed the scholars, “We are near what used to be the southern gate of the city. The temple you want is in the north-west corner of the city. We are going to do this just like we discussed. Trajan and I go first. Marissa follows forty feet behind us. YOU follow forty feet behind her.” Gesturing to the dwarves he said, “And they are forty feet behind you, watching the rear.” He said the last to obliquely remind the dwarves of their duty. They were generally good companions but their attention wavered too easily.

The dwarves were fraternal twins, like all dwarven twins, but he still couldn’t tell them apart. Addressing the academics again he said, “Watch both sides and avoid going near any tangle of bushes or anything that might hide a bandit.” It was best to not mention the real hazards, the scholars would get scared instead of feeling they were on an outing. Most likely they’d not encounter anything. He and Trajan were big, well-armed, and well armored. The dwarves looked plenty tough, like the majority of dwarves he’d met. Most common interlopers would avoid them, looking for easier pickings instead of a fight.

The original wall surrounding the city was mostly standing, but the wooden gates had been knocked down in the sack and rotted in the twenty years since then. The main thoroughfare to the center of town was cobblestoned, wide enough for two generous wagons plus foot traffic on either side. The wooden buildings had mostly collapsed inward, with trees growing up through the shards. Sometime in the recent past something had cleared or trampled a foot path through the places where debris straggled into the lane.

The best news was that both Trajan and Marissa concentrated on their duties and gave up sniping at each other. Trajan was a great left-hand partner. Etjar would never worry about that side while his friend still lived. Honestly? Having Marissa backing them up had saved all their lives more than once. When she and Trajan weren’t cutting at each other she was a good companion, friendly, not exactly charming but interesting. Etjar laughed softly at how that pair protected each other fiercely when danger loomed, and immediately went feel back to their normal relationship afterward. “Maybe they don’t know how to change,” he quietly wondered.

The half mile to the center of town was easy. The road was straight and relatively unimpeded, nothing visible but a few birds, whose chirping echoed between the few stone buildings whose walls still stood. The tiny remainder of the journey would not be so easy. The temple sector had no straight lanes, the roads meandered, and while the ones by the major temples were cobblestone, the others were packed dirt.

He looked at Trajan, who had memorized a map of the town. He knew where the temple was and gestured towards a choked path to their left. “Of course our path is dirt,” Etjar thought rancidly. “No luck in having a nice easy walk all the way,” he said aloud.

Trajan loosened a short sword in its sheath and drew his bastard sword. His favored sword took room to swing and the conditions on this path might preclude that. The big man had long since mastered dropping his big sword to swiftly yank the little one, striking as he drew with the much shorter eighteen inch blade. Many had been surprised at how quickly he reacted.

The big blade shed light in a goodly radius when he drew it, light visible even in the pre-noon sunlight. A mage had enchanted the blade, making it magically sharp and extra resilient against breakage; the light was a side effect.

The short sword was not enchanted, but it was high quality steel, quite sharp enough to cut most foes. And it took little room to swing. Or stab as the case may be.

Etjar drew his spatha, two-and-a-half feet of gently curving steel, its edge and point magically sharpened to a razor edge that didn’t dull. It also shed light, which was handy in dark places, but less so when they needed to hide. Hopefully they’d not need to hide, nor bloody their blades at all. Shorter and lighter than Trajan’s sword, it didn’t cleave things quite as well, but it was quite deadly and far more useful in tight quarters. He also ensured that his short sword, the twin of Trajan’s, was loose in its sheath. Having a backup weapon handy was, well, handy.

Trajan took the lead, his back twenty feet ahead of his right-side partner. In this narrower lane with more obstructions, they formed up closer. This had the drawback that it was easier to get the group in an area attack, but provided for quicker reaction time in protecting each other. It was a trade-off, like everything else.

As they approached a choke point where bushes grew into the lane, Trajan sheathed his big sword, drawing the little one. Just past the choke point, after Etjar came through, he swapped again. This drill was old hat to the pair who had trained together for nearly twenty years. Etjar habitually scanned the area; the silence was broken only by a few chirps although the birds themselves were hidden.

They passed another narrow point in the path, one between two stone temples where brush choked the path on both sides. These were all minor temples, there were dozens. Often a “temple” was little more than a twelve foot square building, the better with stone walls, the lesser of wood. None had quality in construction, as the major temples enjoyed, so the wood was all rotted and collapsed, the walls crumbling. Some might find it picturesque, but the soldier found it depressing. And it provided a lot of cover for ambushes, so made for nervous walking.

After that tight spot the path seemed more constricted, more claustrophobic. The trees growing in the ruins behind them were fairly tall for a twenty year growth, but these seemed shorter and bushier. Although it was but mid-morning, the light seemed dimmer than it had been, yet when he looked up the sky was clear and blue. But muted feeling.

Trajan stopped and held up his left hand, fist closed. Etjar automatically repeated the signal, knowing that Marissa did the same. Muttering from the scholars broke the silence and stopped at the woman’s soft but sharp rebuke.

“Ahh,” thought the big soldier. “Silence where there shouldn’t be.” Trajan had picked up on the lack of song birds that had previously pierced the silence of the ruin. Something was wrong, and it probably wasn’t anything natural. Scanning the bushes and wrack, Trajan briefly looked back and locked gazes meaningfully with his right-hand partner, then his gaze moved on to what had to be the wizard. The warning was clear. He heard her move quietly back to the scholars, warning them of a yet unknown danger, to be silent and to watch. Hopefully the dwarves understood. When they weren’t mistreating each other Marissa and Trajan worked together exceedingly well.

They reached another narrow spot in the path, a damaged statue on one side and brambles on the other. Trajan swapped weapons again and waited until his partner caught up before going past, scanning both sides alternately as he slowly moved through. As Etjar took his turn he realized it was darker than before but glancing up at the sky it was bright blue, the sun high in the sky. “We should turn back,” he wanted to say. Instead he moved to Trajan’s right and scanned rapidly for anything out of place, anything moving. The wizard moved up so she was between them, just behind them, so they moved forward a bit more to give her a better line of fire. Marissa wasn’t a full wizard, but her fire spells could kill an ogre and put a hurtin’ on even a giant.

Once all were past the statue Trajan moved along the path, and Etjar maintained their twenty foot distance. He knew Marissa did the same. A hiss behind him caused him to glance back; the scholars weren’t holding their separation, they were crowded up on her. They might be clueless but the atmosphere was getting to them as well. She warned them back, and the dwarves as well. “Damned dwarves!” he grouched mentally. Hopefully the only ones they’d get killed with their inattention would be themselves.

The path curved gently to the left, hiding anything beyond a hundred feet. Then it curved back to the right and opened up into a clearing in which stood a stone walled temple that was odd because it was whole, not crumbled. Trees had grown up all around it, more than previously noted, changing from scraggly hardwoods to ominous pine trees. Something about the tall, narrow shapes, crowded together in a mishmash of needles. Something was not right.

The human academics gabbled happily and crowded forward, pushing around Marissa, Etjar, and Trajan. “Stop, you idiots!” Trajan half screamed, wanting to stop them but unwilling to yell in this place, and more unwilling to charge forward blindly.

The taller of the students took the lead, his gangling form moving faster than the other two. He was laughing at the other two when a horror stepped from the gaping doorway, grasped his forearms with ugly claws, and raggedly bit a chunk from his right breast.

The human screamed silently, his body shocked by the mangling. As the thing masticated the mouthful of live flesh and choked it down, Etjar realized the only reason the student was not bleeding his life out was that he was too tall, the thing stood less than five feet and could not reach his throat — yet. But it would. It pulled him down to its level for the next bite, the one that would release a fatal spurt of life’s blood.

The second student shocked the soldier on several counts. He didn’t freeze, didn’t panic. Instead he yanked a dagger no one realized he had from a boot and stepping to the side of the thing, drove the point into its neck. The thing rocked from the force of the blow.

Etjar got a good view of the thing as it turned and looked at the second student for a few pregnant seconds. The thing looked like nothing he had ever seen, in waking hours nor especially in his nightmares. No one would mistake it for a living man, although maybe a human corpse, it’s greyish, sallow skin taught and shrunken over its bones. The long, stringy hair had fallen out in patches, leaving grey muck visible, and the teeth were tusks protruding from sunken lips and gums. The little remaining clothing cost a small fortune when new, but that was long in the distant past. Ripped, shredded, and stained, the fine shirt was as grey as the creature.

Petteri screamed, “Draugar!” as the thing shoved the first student from it, flinging him bonelessly down the steps. It leapt and bowled over its attacker. Shocked that his dagger’s perfect strike did no damage, the student died in a spray of arterial blood through his torn out throat. He might have screamed, if he had anything left to scream with. Instead he gurgled in agony.

Trajan moved like a cat, light on his feet, quick as lightning. He grabbed the professor who stood mutely in horror, spun him around and shoved him towards Etjar. He assessed the mangled student, the wound was horrific but would not prove immediately fatal. Still in shock, he lay where he had fallen. Maybe he had hit his head, maybe not. The soldier grabbed a wrist, knelt, pulled upon the arm, got his shoulder under an armpit, and flung the dead weight over his shoulder. The young man weighed short of two hundred pounds, but Trajan stood up as if he was a small child. He didn’t even glance at the second student, who was dead even if he hadn’t quite finished dying.

They ran.

The dwarves led the way, swords and shields ready. Marissa shepherded the human scholar who was still in shock. Petteri ran of his own volition but moved woodenly, as dazed as his associate. After a hundred yards Trajan stopped, and Etjar with him, as the others continued. “He’s bleeding too badly, got to stop it.” Etjar could see probably a pint of blood had run down his friend’s shoulder and backpack. It looked like five gallons, but blood was like that. Experience told him it was much less, but it still wasn’t good.

Yanking a folded cloth from a pouch he glanced around. No obvious danger, the draugar was probably feeding on the other. He wadded up the cloth and covered the wound, pressing hard. Trajan pulled twine from a punch and together they manhandled the youth to tie a tight X covering the compress.

“He’ll live or he won’t until we get out of here,” Trajan said in a matter of fact tone. Etjar knew his friend wasn’t as heartless as that sounded; in battle successful soldiers shut down useless emotions until the job was done.

“Carry him a while, I’ll guard your back.” Trajan had sprinted more than a hundred yards with a dead weight of nearly two hundred pounds on his back. He’d go farther if he needed to, but he didn’t while his right hand partner was there.

Etjar shouldered the weight and moved off. He shifted the man several times to get best balance, knowing his left hand partner was behind him.

“Damnation!” Trajan cursed. Spinning to look, Etjar saw the draugar charging, bright red blood dribbled down its chin and spewed across its throat and chest, sharply contrasting the grey. “GO!” he commanded as he turned to meet the charge.

Moving like a dancer he interposed himself between the thing and his partner carrying his gory burden. The draugar stopped short of the blade, then darted forward with supernatural speed as the sword swept past. Five ugly claws raked his breast, snapping links of his chain mail shirt and slashing through the underlying leather shirt. Backing up, Etjar saw his partner stiffen. Stories told around campfires said the touch of the living dead froze the blood of the living. Etjar froze in horror as well, his mind denying that his best friend since childhood, his buddy through childish misadventures, his left hand partner of six years with the militia and seven years of adventuring was going to die.

Somehow the soldier shrugged off the lethal chill, spinning to deflect the next claw with his shoulder, shifting back to slash at it. They traded blows, the draugar evading the magically sharp sword, Trajan slapping aside or dodging clawed swipes that would open his flesh to the bone. While this happened Etjar slowly backed up, knowing he needed to save the young man he carried, but unwilling to leave Trajan. The mortal suffered from the touch of the undead thing, tiring as the unequal battle wound down, it would end only one way.

Marissa was there, skirting the scrub trees to find an angle of attack. She should have been shepherding the scholars away from the danger. Demeter knows the dwarves couldn’t do it on their own, they were far too knuckleheaded.

Etjar heard her shout the words of magic, heard them and immediately forgot them no matter how hard he tried to remember. Four bolts of green energy materialized from her right index finger in rapid fire succession, flashing across the distance to burn holes in the draugar’s side. Badly hurt by the magical force it spun away from her, then tried to turn back. Trajan sliced upward, amputating an upraised hand, and rising up on his toes twisted the blade in a loop that impacted the collarbone with all his weight and strength.

The student’s dagger had not pierced the thing’s undead flesh, lacking the magically sharp edge necessary to harm it, although the impact rocked it. In contrast Trajan’s magically sharp sword slashed through skin, desiccated flesh, and bone — hacking the damned thing diagonally in half.

Trajan staggered in reaction and fell in a distorted heap. The halves the draugar twitched spastically, but there was no volition. Etjar softly stated, “It’s dead. Or destroyed. Or whatever.” He swallowed sickly and continued, “We had better burn it to be sure.”

Marissa screamed, a soul wrenching sound that cut to the bone. In horror Etjar realized two more draugar had materialized from the scrub, their wicked claws biting into her flesh. Her second scream cut off midway as the icy touch froze her voluntary muscles and she stiffened. Etjar thought that one was going to bite her but they both looked at Trajan scrambling wearily to his feet, and at the pieces of their comrade, still twitching. In concert they, turned and loped back towards the temple carrying her stiff body between them.

Etjar dropped his burden to the path and ran to Trajan. “No!” his friend moaned.

“Damn!” Etjar swore. “We’ll not beat two of them, not with you half dead already.”

“NO!” Trajan yelled, breaking free of his friend and the staggering up the path after the woman.

“Trajan! No! She’s dead! There’s nothing we can do about it!” Etjar looked back at the student lying on the path, groaning softly. “Kid, you’re on your own for a while. Hopefully I’ll be back to carry you.” With that he ran after his friend.

---

“Trajan caught up with the draugar in sight of the old temple. The only thing that saved him was that one was intent on carrying its dinner while the other turned to fight.” She sipped from her husband’s mug, wine clearing her dry throat. “Trajan was clawed twice more, bleeding and weakened by the icy touch before he killed the first. The second should have killed him easily, but he was too damned stubborn to die. Then Etjar caught up.”

The youths were amazed, trying to reconcile the old man sitting in front of them with the much younger man who had fought and slain three undead horrors, any one of which should have killed him first.

“Wow,” said the leader amidst the babbling of the others. “If you could do it on your own, the five of us should be able to kill one if we work together.”

Marissa blinked in amazement. “Children,” she thought. “Stupid children.”

“Draugar are not hurt by mundane weapons. All you can do is make them mad. If you don’t have enspelled weapons, you will die.” Nothing like being blunt.

She realized immediately it was the wrong thing to say. All five hunched their shoulders as if taking a blow, and leader dragged a broadsword from a sheath that had seen better days. “We have this!” he snarled as he brandished a glowing blade.

“David, check it.”

The leader was stunned to immobility as the shorter grandchild snatched the sword from his fingers. He made to grab is back but the second grandchild, brawnier than his sibling, interposed himself. He smiled with his mouth, not his eyes, and said, “David will give it back in a minute.”

David laid the sword on the table, made some intricate hand movements over it and whispered something no one could quite hear. His eyes narrowed as he inspected the sword, which did nothing obvious.

After fifteen or twenty seconds he staggered a bit and caught himself on the table. Whatever magic he used had drained him. Drawing a deep breath he said, “It’s got a Glow spell and No-Rust on it. But not Ever-Sharp nor Never-Breaking. It won’t cut a draugar.” Supporting himself on the table he looked the older youth in the eyes and said, “Fight a draugar with this and you’re breakfast.” He had inherited Marissa’s bluntness, even if he wasn’t related by blood.

As David steadied himself Jake picked the sword up by the blade and handed it, hilt first, to the leader. The youth snatched it with ill grace and nearly gutted himself, slamming it back in sheath on the second try.

“Gods Damn You!” he profaned at the top of his lungs. “You’re a bunch of cowards, but I’m not! My grandfather’s sword is a powerful one, and you’ll see me come back with a wagon of treasure!” Turning he burst through his friends, who belatedly stumbled out in his wake.

“Crap,” Marissa said tiredly. “Let’s go to the temple tonight and light a candle for each of them.” She looked at her husband and recalled the aftermath of that fateful battle.

---

Marissa lay in a bed in the healers building of the temple of Demeter. She didn’t remember the journey back to Kerr, but Etjar had told her about it. They carried her, Trajan, and the student outside of the ruins. The dwarves ran the sixteen miles back to Kerr to get a wagon.

Say what anyone will about dwarves, but their stamina is amazing and they always take care of their own. They made it back to Kerr and returned in a wagon shortly after midnight, then drove through the night carrying the injured.

“Is Trajan awake?” she asked. He was in the men’s section.

“He’s been in and out all day. He was clawed six times. The healers don’t understand how he survived that and still kept fighting. Few can claim to have killed one draugar in a day, much less three.”

“Will he recover?” She spoke without emphasis, but he could see real concern in her eyes.

Etjar smiled. “The healers say yes. It’s critical to destroy the draugar who harm you before the next dawn, else the damage they inflict is permanent. He did that, and he survived the first night and that was a good sign. Nay a great one! It will take six or eight weeks, maybe more, but he’ll recover.” He smiled at her. “So will you, although your injuries are lesser.”

“How did he survive and win, I wonder?”

“For the same reason you left the scholars and came back.”

“To save the hide of a pair of dumbasses?” she snarked weakly.

Etjar’s tone hardened. “You know why.” He surveyed her critically. “That fool asked me to not tell you what he did, to tell you that I helped.” He laughed, a harshly cynical tone. “You should bed Trajan, it will do you both a lot of good.”

Marissa turned bright red. “BED HIM!” she shrieked, then coughed weakly, as if the indignation was too much for her weakened condition.

“Demeter knows you and Trajan are too damned stupid to see what is in front of you. I’ll not live long enough to see you get past that.”

---

The old couple walked to the temple to light candles for the young fools, ones doomed to die because of their arrogance and pride. “Etjar told me that he’d not live to see us get past our stupidity.” Her voice caught and tears streamed down her cheeks. “Sad that he was right. I wished he could have lived and seen us.”

The old man stopped walking and pulled her head to his chest, catching her tears in his shirt, crying his own tears for the best friend anyone had ever lost.

I created the cave blinder after being inspired by a thread on Dragonsfoot. If I recall correctly, the author needed a low-level monster for an Underdark campaign, and this one flowed out of my word processor. The text for this pastiche flowed almost as easily, and this was published in Footprints.

 

---

 

Jake was sick and tired of Bisonbit. The young priest had been quizzing him for more than forty minutes about the reign of Hazzat the First, a merchant autocrat who briefly ruled Kerr seventy years before in between the Selkan and Wandsor monarchies. “Pay attention Jake! You have an exam tomorrow and you have not memorized your lessons!” At age twelve it was near impossible to care about someone who was executed sixty years before he was born.

Jake sighed, but before he could retort a black shadow fell across the boy and the teenager. Both spun to face the source of the shadow: a huge, bulky figure with a misshapen head that loomed over them.

Both recoiled in shock, but Jake quickly recognized the woman, an old friend of his grandparents. She was very tall and had a humped back, and wore a large floppy hat and a long cloak, even in the warmth of summer. Jake immediately volunteered to escort her to his grandparents’ home. Bisonbit started to protest, but gave it up. “I’m going with you. We have more to prepare you for tomorrow’s exam!” Jake sighed, but enjoyed the reprieve.

They chatted lightly as they walked the short distance, mostly the woman asking the youngsters about their recent days. Bisonbit noticed that she left no opening for questioning her. Knowing that she wasn’t human, the surprisingly perceptive young man considered this was a normal tactic to keep the attention off her.

They found Trajan in his garden, on his knees weeding. A big smile creased his aged face as he creakily straightened up. He led the way into the house where his wife was making bread. The visitor immediately divested herself of the hat and cloak, displaying small horns on her forehead and bat-like wings on her back. She was on the slender side but the cloak that hid her wings made her look humped back. Neither of the youngsters showed any surprise; they knew what she was. If it didn’t bother Trajan or his wife, it didn’t bother them.

“What brings you through Kerr?” the old man asked.

“I’m on a commission to capture a cave blinder, and I know you”, meaning both Trajan and his wife, “have faced them before.”

The old couple locked gazes, trading an unfathomable stare. Looking back at his visitor the old soldier replied, “Yes … a nasty piece of work they are …”

---

Trajan looked around. The tunnels were rough, varying from five to thirty feet wide, with a ceiling anything from three feet ranging up to more than forty feet. Mostly they could walk and had room to swing a sword, but both he and his right-hand partner Etjar also carried a short sword, really a long knife, handy for the tight places. Trajan favored a hand-and-a-half bastard sword, but it required room to swing. Etjar’s long sword was shorter and lighter, but it, too, was not a weapon for tight places. Both kept their short swords loose in their sheaths.

Something tracked them.

This area was rotten with tunnels, many far too small for the chain mail clad men to climb through, although their charge, the sage Petteri could easily manage most of them. Even the dwarven brothers, wide and bulky as their shoulders were, could fit through amazingly small spaces. Marissa, the slight wizard, a foot shorter than Trajan – she could fit through a lot of the spaces, although she was more likely to get stuck than the non-humans. Trajan visualized her trapped in a tight tunnel. As much as he disliked the bitch, that was nothing he’d wish on her or anyone.

Trajan led, watching up and down and side-to-side. Etjar followed ten feet behind him, with the sage another ten feet behind him. Marissa and the dwarf brothers brought up the rear. The soldier did not trust that they watched the back well, but there were two of them between Marissa and anything that hit from the rear. As much as they disliked each other, he’d never put the small woman in harm’s way.

Trajan glanced back at Etjar – both knew something was shadowing them. Too many years of adventuring in bad places for their instincts to be wrong. He looked farther back at the wizard; from the way she scanned around her, she knew too. But the dwarves and the gnome? No clue.

The tunnel constricted ahead, certainly wide enough for his armored figure, but tight for swinging a sword. Sheathing the bastard sword, he drew the smaller weapon. Nothing appeared unusual, but old soldiers become old soldiers by not taking unnecessary chances. After twenty feet, the tunnel widened out again. Etjar caught up with him and both looked back at the gnome and woman coming through.

Snick! That slight sound of claw on stone spun both men around in time to see a lithe figure drop off the wall almost in front of them. Trajan brought his sword up to fend off a tentacle when the sun stabbed through his eyes into his brain. Somewhere in the distance his mind registered a scream.

He covered his eyes and blinked repeatedly. The brightness faded and he could see, sort of. The creature was no longer in front of them. Spinning he took count. Etjar, gnome, dwarf, dwarf … something was wrong.

His paralyzed mind took an extra beat, then another to realize Marissa was gone. Her staff lay on the stone floor.

One of the dwarves picked himself off the stone floor. Both were farther back and had not been as badly blinded, recovering faster than the humans. “That thing grabbed the woman and knocked me over. It ran that way carrying her,” he jabbered, pointing over his shoulder the way they had come.

Trajan’s mind froze in horror but his body moved of its own volition, bowling the dwarves over again as he plowed through them in pursuit of Marissa. The thing was obviously strong, but still a hundred-twenty pound woman wasn’t easy to carry, especially if she was struggling. His mind avoided the possibility that she was already dead.

Having no place to go but back down the tunnel, he charged, bouncing off the walls once or twice in the narrow area until he got his stride. The thing was fleet, but he barely caught sight of it in the light of the flickering torch he carried. Redoubling his pursuit he bellowed a hoarse, incoherent roar that caused the thing to slow and turn its head back, flaring its ears.

It looked sort of human, the way an orc looks sort of human, except this thing had dark green, rough looking skin, and had a long tentacle protruding from the middle of its upper back. The face was less human – it had a normal looking nose and a wide mouth filled with fangs, but there were no eyes, just skin where eye sockets should have been. Bat-like ears framed the face. The tentacle pointed back at him and he could see a clear bulb at the end. Instinct made the soldier clamp his eyes shut, but the bright light penetrated his eye lids, stabbing into his brain again.

The difference? This time he was prepared. He threw himself forward at the thing, sword high as he didn’t trust himself to not stab the woman in his blind rush.

The shock of crashing into the thing jarred his short sword from his hand. He heard it skitter across the fairly smooth stone floor. Eyes still clamped shut he found its head with his left hand, and slammed his mailed fist into whatever was between his hand and opposing fist.

The thing squealed a high pitched scream, matched by his own screaming fit. As he drew back for another strike a cable wrapped around his chest and flung him away. Another squeal punctured his darkness and as he rolled to a stop he realized he had a piece of the thing’s ear in his left hand. “Bet that hurts,” he thought muzzily. Struggling to his feet he saw the thing bolt into the darkness.

Marissa lay on the floor where it dropped her, her open, blank eyes staring upward. Moaning in horror Trajan scrambled across the floor to her body. She had a ragged bite on one shoulder; it oozed blood from a matched pair of puncture wounds. He ripped her blouse open and planted an ear on her chest, listening for her heart.

The pounding in his ears made it hard to hear so he carefully swallowed and relaxed. Her strong heart beat pulsed in his ear. He felt more than heard the dwarves go thundering past him. He also felt Etjar approach. Trajan looked up at his friend, and belatedly thought to cover Marissa’s naked chest with her ripped blouse. He gently patted her face and chafed her hands, trying to rouse her. Distantly he realized his cheeks were wet but didn’t know why.

Petteri spoke, “She will be ok. The bite is poisonous, but it’s a light paralytic. In another five or ten minutes she will rouse. The sightless cave blinder lives up to its name, it blinds its foes with a burst of light, bites and paralyzes a victim small enough to carry, and takes the prey back to a lair for its meal. If you had not given chase so quickly she would already be partially consumed, although probably not yet dead.”

Squeals, shouts, and howls echoed down the tunnel. The sounds continued for a minute or so, then abruptly ceased. A dragging sound grew louder.

As the dwarves entered the torchlight Marissa blinked her eyes and focused. A moment later Trajan helped her sit up.

The body was humanoid, but certainly not human. It looked far less deadly in a dead heap than it did as a predator attacking from darkness. One of the dwarves stripped off his surcoat, it was wet and shredded. He swore in dwarven. Within knowing the language all knew he was swearing.

The gnome explained, “Ahh, the cave blinder can spit a stream of its digestive acid. Good that you were hit on the chest, rather than the eyes. If it was your eyes we would be hard pressed to save your sight.” The dwarf blinked and didn’t reply, but he stopped swearing.

Etjar asked, “What is it?”

“As I said, it’s a cave blinder, a normally solitary beast that hunts Darkworld for prey. It usually attacks lone travelers, but will attack a group if it thinks it can take its prey and escape.”

Marissa realized her blouse gaped open and rounded on Trajan. “You stupid fool! Just waiting until I was down to put you grubby hands on me!” Trajan looked aghast at the accusation. The others all stared in shock.

She started to yell more but Petteri cut her off, “Stupid human woman!” He spat on the stone, as strong an oath a gnome could make. “If he a step slower you would now be enjoying the pleasure of being eaten alive! These beasts do not kill their prey before consuming them!”

“Not understanding the poison, he feared for your life.” In lower tones, he continued, “Be thankful not angry, your life you owe him.” Swallowing to make his point he finished, “More than your life.” With that he turned away.

Etjar hoped the pair would settle their long-running differences, but there was no hope of that. Scalded by her accusation, Trajan snarled something unintelligible at her and stalked off. She snarled back at him and weakly rummaged in her pack for an untorn blouse.

---

“Petteri said cave blinders are normally solitary, but they do mate every few years, producing a litter of usually three or four young. The parents stay together for about eight months, then the male wanders off. The female drives the cubs away at about one year of age.”

“And the young are dangerous?”

“According to the dwarves the young tend to be ravenous, so they may be more dangerous, killing more frequently. Grown dwarves are too heavy for them to carry easily, but they will kill lone travelers. Of course, any place in Darkworld is not a place to be by yourself.”

Changing subjects, the alu-demon slyly said, “So … did you like what you found in Marissa’s blouse?”

Trajan turned red. Jake marveled. He had never seen his grandfather embarrassed by anything. The old man coughed, looked at his wife, and coughed again. “It wasn’t like that at all …”

Like the bone guardian, this was someone else’s creation – Nicole Massey. Nicole and I agreed I’d add the fiction, and the collaboration worked well. This is probably why I hit Andrew up to add to the bone guardian.

 

---

 

“I have never heard of orcs eating their own dead,” David interjected.

Hal pounded his fist on the table in fury. The man was well into his cups, it being just after lunch time, and he brooked no disagreement with his tale. “ORCS EAT THEIR DEAD!!! I damned well was there and saw it with my own two eyes!”

At age twelve David was not dissuaded by fury, so he continued to prod. “That is NOT what you said, Hal. You said you came back and the bones were picked clean.”

Hal was probably somewhere between fifty and eighty, but years of hard drinking made it hard to tell. He had been a fixture in the tavern for five years, telling stories of his adventuring days in exchange for drinks. The tavern owner tolerated him because he was mostly entertaining and he brought some business her way. She wasn’t pleased that David was prodding the old man yet again, but tolerated the boy’s presence because of his grandparents. Well, maybe not grandparents, but they treated the boy same as they did their actual grandson Jake.

Pounding the table again in even greater fury Hal howled, “Don’t tell me what I said! I know what I said!”

Several of the listeners finished their drinks and got up to leave. Focused on the boy the old man didn’t even realize he was losing his audience, and more importantly, more ale. Not that he needed more. Another ale and he’d spew instead of wandering off to sleep, before coming back after dark for another round of ales-for-tales.

David grinned impudently in the face of ire. “David!” a voice commanded. “Leave off pestering people!”

The grin vanished at the sound of his tutor’s voice. Bisonbit was no fun, and besides, Hal was full of horse dung all the way up to his eyeballs! Grudgingly he got up and turned away, reflexively evading the awkward swipe the old man made at him. Finally realizing his audience was gone, Hal drained the little bit of ale left in his mug and settled his head on his arms, snoring before his head touched his arm.

David’s mood swings were legendary for their quickness, but rarely was he downbeat. His native intelligence and lack of anything resembling good sense combined to make him upbeat. “Let’s go ask Trajan, he knows everything!”

“We have only half an hour before lessons begin. Make it quick!” Barely five years older than David, Bisonbit was a stodgy jerk.

“He’s no fun!” David thought, “but he wants to know too!”

They found Trajan in his garden, weeding, Jake in the next row over helping with the work.

“Trajan! Do orcs eat their dead?”

The old man straightened up stiffly. He was probably a lot older than Hal, but even advanced age hadn’t wounded him too badly. His eyes were clear and he displayed evidence of having been a powerful man in his youth. Two years earlier robbers had discovered the old man could still swing a sword, to their short-lived chagrin.

“Is Hal still claiming that?” he grinned. Trajan rarely said anything bad about anyone, but Hal’s foolish tales brought him closer to it than anyone else could.

“What eats bodies?”

Dusting his hands off he walked to a nearby bench and sat. “Lot of things eat dead bodies. That’s what Hal said, one time when he told the tale while sober.”

“Hal has been sober?” Bisonbit interjected with ill grace. The young cleric/tutor was usually polite but he didn’t like the old one-armed braggart and quietly questioned how he had lost his right forearm, especially since that tale varied depending on audience and ale.

“No picking on Hal. Do you want to hear my tale?” The silence affirmed the desire, so Trajan continued. “Could have been several beasties, but likely it was carrion crabs. They are more-or-less not dangerous, but sometimes they kill fools and eat well …”

---

Trajan and Etjar chased the orcs through the tunnels, each catching one orc and then another, hacking them down from behind. Figuring the remainder of the band would flee until their legs fell off, they stopped the chase and turned back. Big men who covered distance quickly, they hadn’t gone far when they heard someone moving up quickly, panting hard. Weapons ready they waited as a woman ran around the corner in the tunnel under the old ruined town. Catching sight of them she stopped, fighting staff at the ready.

“What did you two fools think you were doing?” she snarled at them. Fixing Etjar with her baleful eye she spat, “THAT fool I’d expect it, but you mostly have more sense than that!” She didn’t even look at Trajan.

“Just as well, if she lights into me now I’m going to paddle her behind!” the young soldier thought.

Etjar’s deep voice resonated. “There was more of them than us. We had surprise but if they turned on us again we’d be in trouble. Better to put fear in them and drive them off before they think. Tonight they’ll be telling tales of the two dozen humans who died while the orcs fought and drove them off.” He ended his reasoning with a small grin. Etjar knew how orcs, like any bully, were terrible braggarts who would make their fleeing from a small band of humans into something heroic. By the third cup ale the orc would probably believe their own tale.

Marissa stared up at the man. Grudgingly she broke the stare and backed off. “Maybe you’re right. What’s done is done. Tessac is dead and Lesang is badly wounded, cut along the ribs. I bound the wound before chasing off after you pair of ninnies.”

“Dead?” Ejtar asked, puzzled.

“Yah. He had an artery cut, and bled out before I could help him. I was helping Lesang, didn’t realize Tessac was badly hurt.

The woman backed off on her ire, although Marissa rarely backed off anything completely. “At least she shut up,” thought Trajan acidly.

Trajan led the way, his sense of direction unerring in leading them back through the maze of tunnels. Before they got to the scene of the battle they found Lesang, crawling, leaving a trail of blood. He was making incoherent sounds as he scrambled frantically along. Ten feet behind him were three large land crabs, their shells two feet in diameter. The things patiently paced the crawling man.

“What are those?” asked Marissa. A native of Sathea, she had been a city girl before leaving the city under unnamed circumstances and taking up with the pair of soldiers.

“Carrion crabs,” Trajan commented. “Big ones. They eat carrion. Never heard of them going after anything live.”

“Looks like these are. Wonder if they’re good eating?”

“You’re thinking of your stomach at a time like this?” The woman spat incredulously.

Etjar snarked, “If I don’t think of my stomach, no one else will.” With that he stepped towards the crabs who scuttled together in a defensive formation, but didn’t run off. Suddenly he lunged forward, bringing his long sword down on the nearest crab’s shell. The shell was hard, it cracked but didn’t shear through as he expected. Still, the force of the blow made a double crack as the crab’s shell hit the floor. The other two backed off further as the damaged one squirmed its ten legs frantically. It was done for, it just hadn’t quit yet.

With no hesitation Trajan did the same, smashing a shell with his heavy hand-and-a-half bastard sword. The heavier sword cleaved the shell, and without missing a beat he caught the third crab as it scuttled back. “Easy enough to kill.”

“Damnation!” Turning back both men saw the young wizard crouched by Lesang. “He tore his wounds open, enough to bleed out.” Both men swore. They hadn’t traveled with Tessac and Lesang long but both men had been good companions, pretty good in a fight although not as seasoned as the two soldiers.

Sheathing their weapons they picked up their companion’s body. “Let get him out of here and give him a decent burial. Least we can do.”

Moving slowly down the tunnel they came to a large room, the one where a band of a dozen orcs had tried to ambush them, failing miserably. Well, not that miserably; the human party lost forty percent of its force. Looking into the room they saw two surprises.

Tessac and three dead orcs were being torn apart and eaten by groups of crabs, while another group circled and threatened a strange creature. It looked like an animated mushroom, roughly four feet tall. The cone at the top was sharply tapered so it appeared tall and thin, enough though it was shorter even than Marissa.

“What is THAT?” Marissa ask, gesturing at the walking mushroom.

“NO idea,” Trajan replied. Etjar shook his head, agreeing silently with his partner.

“I’m not letting them eat Tessac.” Trajan stepped forward waving his arms, hoping to scare off the ones eating Tessac. He wasn’t concerned about the orcs. In response the crabs hissed at him, and the ones worrying the orcs turned to face him. The ones menacing the animated mushroom were not distracted from their target.

Quickly realizing he wasn’t going to scare them off, Trajan lunged and hacked one with his sword. It nearly scuttled out of the way, but not quite. Instead of hitting it squarely the enchanted blade caught the edge of the shell, deftly removing the five legs on that side. The crab hissed in agony.

Unexpectedly the other crabs all sprang at him, two slamming into his chest and abdomen. They were heavier than they looked and knocked him back several feet although he didn’t quite fall. His chain mail armor kept them from tearing his flesh. The crabs quickly surrounded the soldier and sharp claws worried at his legs and thighs. Two hung off his cloak, snipping at his armor.

Their weight hampered him so he spun in a circle, waving his sword low but not at any particular target. The crabs on the stone floor backed off and one on his cloak lost its grip and flew off. He smashed the last one in what passed for its face with the pommel of his sword.

As it fell he looked for his companions, just in time to see three crabs drop off the ceiling onto Etjar’s head and shoulders. His helm saved him from a crushed skull but he was still knocked to the floor. More crabs scuttled toward him, claws clicking in anticipation.

Marissa, back at the entrance of the room with Lesang’s body, uttered words that were heard but could not be remembered. Three bolts of red energy flashed from the fingers of her right hand, lancing into three of the crabs menacing Etjar. The first was cooked by the energy, the bolt glanced off the shell of the second inflicting a good burn, and the third squealed in agony as the magical energy burned a hole through its shell.

She took a deep breath and did it again, the red bolts killing two and badly wounding a third. “Six down, dozens to go!” she thought.

In the respite the wizard’s magic gave him, Etjar struggled to his feet. He lashed out, shattering the shell of another crab as the others backed away from him. He saw Trajan kill several more, then turned as Marissa screamed. A crab leaped at her, striking her squarely in the stomach. She fell hard against the wall and slid down to the floor, the crab tearing at her.

Behind him Trajan emitted a scream of rage and charged across the distance to Marissa, his blade partitioning a crab with each swing. Reaching her side he lashed out with his foot, booting the crab tearing at her arms as she protected her face and belly. The crab hit the wall with a crunch and dropped messily to the floor. Pulling her to her feet he quickly assessed her wounds as non-critical and turned to the remaining crabs, which all stopped just out of sword range. “They’re not THAT stupid,” he thought.

Etjar heard a noise behind him – the mushroom thing took advantage of the distraction and ran past the crabs menacing it, taking a few pinches but escaping. Three quarters of the crabs started after him/her/it, while the remaining survivors backed up to Tessac and the orcs’ bodies. Etjar scrambled over by his companions.

Trajan held Marissa upright, blood dripping from her arms. “Get Lesang,” he told Etjar. We’ll come back later and bury what we can of Tessac.” The trio backed away from the crabs, which immediately began feasting again.

---

Trajan looked at his audience, spellbound by his story.

“What did you do?” asked Jake, sorry that the tale was ending.

“We went back the next day. Tessac and the orcs were there, well their bones anyway. The crabs picked them totally clean. Along with everything else edible they carried.” He sighed. “We buried Tessac’s bones with Lesang, and left that ruin as too dangerous.”

His somber mood cleared and he laughed. “We got enough cash from the orcs’ weapons and armor to feed us for another month while we planned an expedition to another ruin, the warren below an old wizard’s tower.”

Andrew Hamilton had the bone guardian ready for publishing for Issue 2 of & Magazine. I thought it needed more, so I wrote this to give it more flavor. I’m not sure he was really in favor of my addition, but he didn’t say “no” so it’s part of “and”.

 

---

 

“And that is how that miserable thing cut my arm off!” The old man waggled the scar-crusted stump of his right arm to emphasize that it had been cut off at mid-forearm. The audience oohed and aahed and clucked noises of sympathy. More importantly, one kind soul purchased Hal another mug of ale. Not that he needed it: at mid-morning he was well lubricated.

David thought to mention that last week Hal had told a totally different and equally implausible tale of how he lost his arm. But today he didn’t feel like Hal-baiting. Instead, his attention was drawn to a member of the audience, a woman who looked old – not as old as Hal – but old enough to a twelve year old. The woman wore a wide brimmed floppy hat of a style David had never seen before, and she had to be a hunch back given the shape her cloak covered.

Curious, he followed the stranger out onto the porch of the tavern where David’s best friend Jake sat with his grandparents. They had been adventurers in their youth but had retired long before David was born. Still, Trajan’s stories were REAL – far better than Hal’s and they weren’t made of cow flop.

Trajan and his wife both smiled broadly in recognition of the woman, who in turn swept off her hat and performed an intricate bow. As she straightened David saw Jake’s eyes widen. Looking at the woman David saw small horns the hat had covered. Jake started to say something, but Trajan hushed him.

The three adults made small talk for a few minutes, catching up on old times, things David and Jake didn’t much understand. They were twelve and a lot of the world outside of their home environment made little sense.

“That man’s story was interesting,” nodding her head towards the taproom, “but … hardly accurate. I know you,” nodding to both, “and Etjar faced a bone guardian. What can you tell me about them?”

“Well, we were searching an old tomb, helping a priest recover a relic …”

---

The four acolytes, fanatical followers of the priest like their deceased brethren, led the way. The first eight taught the survivors the wisdom of probing everything – floors, walls, ceiling, maybe even the air – with long wooden spear shafts. The ancient priest buried in this tomb intended that his eternal sleep remain undisturbed. During the century since his interment other interlopers had triggered many traps.

The traps varied greatly: pits, spears, acid, dead falls. The moldering bones verified the equality of their lethality. The late acolytes demonstrated that the traps were just as deadly as when first built.

That had been in the maze above. For the past hour the invaders cautiously traversed a curving, gently descending corridor – the devotees cautiously probing for traps, Trajan and Etjar with magical blades naked for protection and light twenty feet behind them, and Marissa and Hestan bringing up the rear. It was nervous work, the memory of the dead a constant, grim reminder of the penalty for not finding traps. Marissa kept an eye behind them so nothing would surprise them from the rear.

The corridor, smoothly finished and nearly twelve feet high and wide, imposed an oppressive feeling upon the trespassers. The grim mood made the front line tense. Normally good at estimating distances underground, Trajan felt unsure how far they had passed during the hour since exiting the maze above. He hoped that getting out wasn’t going to be as lethal as getting in.

Without warning the corridor ended, opening into a room of much greater dimensions. “Halt!” called Hestan in his resonant voice. He never raised his voice, but it carried. The probers froze in place like statues.

Trajan didn’t know the names of any of Hestan’s followers. They were eager puppies, instantly willing to do whatever the priest commanded. He never addressed them by name, and they didn’t address each other in Trajan’s hearing. Oddly, none showed much reaction when their predecessors died, other than relief that Hestan was safe. They were the oddest group Trajan had met.

The priest started a rhythmic chanting, words that were heard but indistinguishable and instantly forgotten, casting some unknown spell. Trajan and Etjar instinctively stepped to opposite sides of the corridor, vacating the middle in case a tangible spell effect needed to pass. But nothing passed. Bright blinding light sprang into being about fifty feet past the entrance to the room, twenty feet in the air.

Etjar estimated the room at fifty feet wide with a thirty foot ceiling. Pillars the width of a man’s chest zigzagged down the room, helping to support the ceiling. The light of the priest’s spell lit more than one hundred feet down the way and the room extended beyond that. “Someone put a lot of effort into excavating this room,” he thought.

Hestan softly commanded his disciples to spread out, checking behind the pillars, gently tapping and probing everything with the wooden spear shafts. The walls were bare stone, but the pillars were highly ornamented with bas relief carvings of armored men in battle with animated skeletons.

It was slow going but slow-and-steady was better than triggering a trap with one’s body. Trajan noticed that even in the cool of this deep, underground room the human shields were sweating. “Yah, I’d be sweating too!” He and Etjar glanced at each other for a moment, meeting glances in sympathy for the acolytes but not breaking their vigilance. Glancing back, he could see Marissa was the third part of their watchful triangle. “She may be a bitch but Marissa always does her part.”

“Hold!” Marissa called softly. The two soldiers froze, senses straining for whatever caught the mage’s attention, but the trap detectors kept at it. “Hold!” she called again, with no effect.

“Stop,” Hestan called and his people froze in place. Turning to her he started to speak but she held a hand up to silence him. His face showed that he didn’t like being shushed, he wasn’t used to being shushed, but he had enough good sense to accept the silent rebuke. For now.

Trajan heard nothing, but Marissa’s ears were better than his. He accepted her judgment that there was something afoot, adjusting his grip on his sword. Etjar did the same. The others remained frozen in place.

Then he heard it – stone scraping on stone. Faint but definitely there. Impossible to place. “Where?” he wondered. Marissa’s ears didn’t seem to help her, either.

After minutes of silence one of the disciples broke the silence. “My Lord,” he started to ask a question but was interrupted by a violent rasping of rock on rock, echoing all around the vast room.

The bas relief skeletons on the first eight pillars broke free of the stone that held them, a thin veneer of stone flaking off to reveal bone. Each carried a shield and a heavy, wide-bladed sword. Surrounding the human interlopers, they moved in for the kill in a coordinated fashion, an evil looking green light glowing in each empty eye socket.

Hestan thrust his golden scepter at the nearest two, speaking loudly for the first time, his ringing voice echoing in the vast room. “By the Grace and Might of Hestarunu I command thee to flee!”

The animated skeletons surged forward, chopping at the priest. His shock at the failure of his holy command was almost his death. At the last second he interposed his scepter between his neck and slashing death. Suffering a long slice on his left arm, he ducked behind Marissa to put her between him and death.

“Typical,” she grunted as she parried a swinging sword with her staff and side stepped the second one’s attack. Which by-the-way left the cowardly priest without a body between him and a skeleton.

Trajan, fighting with a hand-and-a-half bastard sword, parried a sword slash and shattered the skeleton’s shield in return. He thrust with the sword, a beautiful stab that skewered the undead … sliding between its ribs with no effect. “Damnation! I know better than that!” he screamed as he dodged the next slash.

Twenty feet away Etjar snatched a flail from his belt, side stepped a lunging slash, and crushed the skeleton’s head as it stumbled past him. The evil green lights dimmed.

Taking the measure of her attacker, Marissa evaded several slashes, feinted high, and struck low, shattering the thing’s right knee joint. Her staff rebounded from that strike to hit the left side of its skull, flinging it to the ground.

Screaming wildly Hestan ran away from his attacker, ducking around a pillar and slamming into Etjar, spilling both to the floor. The older man had no idea what he had hit, lashing out blindly. Fortunately the soldier’s armor protected him from the frantic blows. Gone was the prim, proper, and controlled senior priest – in his place was a frantic, weeping, out of control child.

Etjar extricated himself just in time to catch a hacking sword on his shield. He rolled away from the monster, trying to get to his feet. On his knees he brought his shield up and didn’t see Trajan decapitate it from behind.

The weeping priest cowered against a wall, his noises eclipsed by the howls of his disciples. One was dead, one was soon to be as two skeletons hacked his prone body, and the remaining two double-teamed a skeleton with their spear shafts, the last skeleton scattered across the floor beside them.

A crackle of lightning flashed through the two hacking at the now dead body, illuminating their frames and crumbling them in a scatter of bones. Marissa stood thirty feet away, panting from the exertion of casting. The last skeleton crashed to the floor as the spear shafts cracked its joints.

The acolytes hurried over to Hestan, who had stopped screaming. He waived them off as he collected himself, physically and mentally. He looked down, not looking at anyone. The young men had seen the priest in a very unfavorable light. While it didn’t seem to matter to them … it would to the priest. “Bet they end up exiled to nowhere,” Trajan commented quietly to Etjar, who nodded knowingly.

“CRAP!”

Marissa didn’t yell often. Her ire was usually expressed calmly and coldly, as Trajan could attest from being at the receiving end of it so often. When she did raise her voice or swore it was something bad.

Unseen forces moved the bones of the skeletons nearest the acolytes, skritching them across the floor where they jumbled into a pile. It looked like something was sorting the bones, and in a matter of seconds the broken bones knitted together and combined with other bones to create a monstrosity. The combined skeleton had four normal looking arms, a broad torso with double the normal ribs, double thick legs, and an oddly shaped head. The evilly winking green light radiated from the four empty eye sockets. It picked up two shields and two swords, and advanced upon the stunned devotees.

Frozen in terror, they stood woodenly as it advanced upon them.

Somewhere in the depths of his soul Hestan found courage. Or maybe the fear of looking badly in front of his followers outweighed mortal danger. No matter, he rushed in front of his men, thrusting out the scepter that was the symbol of his god and thundered: “By the Grace and Might of Hestarunu I command thee to flee!”

Two heavy swords powered by supernatural force sent parts of his body in multiple directions as his soul took flight from his sundered body.

Being splashed with the priest’s blood and fluids woke the men from their trance. Bawling in rage they insanely battered the monstrosity with their spear shafts, forcing it to retreat. In their fury they looked to crush it.

From the side another super-skeleton scythed one man down, and the second fell as he turned to his new attacker.

Marissa realized all of the shattered skeletons were combining in pairs, creating four super skeletons. “RUN!”

Evading a skeleton she ran for the corridor out. No slouches, Trajan and Etjar followed close on her heels, but the skeletons lumbered along as fleet as the humans. Glancing back she realized there was no way they could safely run through the maze with these things on their heels. They had to stop them here. “Guard me!” she yelled again as she stopped.

Trajan nearly ran her over, his six foot height towering a foot over her. Agile as ever he didn’t crush her, but swerved and turned in one motion. As the nearest super skeleton charged with an overhead swing he kicked it in the pelvis, knocking it back three steps, and knocking himself down in the process. “Damnation, that’s heavy!”

Struggling to his feet he heard the wizard cast a spell, longer than most she used in combat. He heard the words of an unknown language that didn’t even sound human – the words passed through his mind and later he could never recall the sounds – but he knew this one was taking longer than most.

Behind the two nearest super skeletons a wall of barely seen force shimmered into existence. The two other super skeletons, done with killing the acolytes, bounced off the wall. Marissa had reduced the odds for a few minutes, dividing the enemy into manageable chunks.

Trajan side stepped powerful swings and hacked across the belly. If the thing had been even vaguely human, or just alive, the battle would be over. Bone cracked but it didn’t stop. A flare of flame and a wash of heat on his side let him know that the wizard was helping Etjar – her Flaming Hands spell was a favorite when she was in close.

Against two blades and two shields the fight was hard. The soldier got in licks that would kill a mortal creature but barely bothered this thing.

Suddenly a point jutted from the skeleton’s forehead, a shiny silver glowing point.

Etjar yanked his sword from the back of the super skeleton’s skull. The evil green dimmed.

“We only have a few minutes before the magic of the wall ends. We need to be gone!” Marissa urged.

Skittering stopped them in their tracks. The pieces of the two super skeletons wriggled across the floor and rapidly formed an even bigger skeleton, this one with six arms, taller and double the weight of the previous one.

“BACK!”

Trajan and Etjar ran for the corridor as the force wall disappeared with a pop. Two super-skeletons and a super-duper version started forward as a glowing red bean flashed from the wizard’s outstretched hand and exploded inside the super-duper skeleton’s rib cage. Scorched bones flew in all directions!

But before the survivors could draw in a relieved breath the skittering sound of bones crabbing across the floor with no visible means of doing so filled their ear …

---

“Upon destruction the pairs from the original eight formed four tougher skeletons, then the pieces of the four formed two, and finally one?”

Trajan answered. “Marissa’s Fireball destroyed the second and third versions, and when the seconds formed another third but the first third didn’t reform we thought we were done. Until the two thirds formed a fourth, which was truly deadly.”

He took a sip of wine and added, “That’s hard to follow, isn’t it?”

Jake’s grandmother interjected. “No, it’s not hard. A pair of each version, when destroyed, forms one of the next version. There’s eight, then four, then two, then one.”

Trajan laughed. “I’m glad there weren’t sixteen to begin with!”

“Why couldn’t the priest turn them?”

“Because they are a type of golem, not undead. Constructed from bones with magical force, not with unlife. Makes them deadlier than undead in some respects.”