"All Role Playing Gamers dream of stepping into the shoes of their characters.  But when Simon Brewer finds himself really living the life of his favorite character, the saucy thief Foxglove, he discovers that Dungeons are no fun in real life, and Dragons are hazardous to your health!"

FOXGLOVE


or,
Reflections in a Gorgon's Eye
A Transgendered Fantasy

This story is dedicated every Gamer who had a really great game ruined by the unwanted intrusion of crass reality.

Edited by Steve Zink

CHAPTER ONE

First Level GM Spell: Summon Players

Diana Knight carefully lowered her perfectly proportioned body through the vent grate, and landed in the corridor with the grace of a ballerina.  Quickly checking the hallway for ghouls and thralls, she stalked along like a pantheress.  She came to an intricately carved black thornwood double door.  Gently she turned the ornate brass knob.  Inside the door in a large room lay the coffin of the Vampire Lord, Necrothane.  The black box lay in the middle of a checkered parquet floor, lit only by a sliver of moonlight that came from a tall window.  That window must be a stone bitch for a Vampire Lord when he's late getting to his coffin in the morning, but whatthehell, it's a cool graphic.  She crept toward the coffin, pulling an oaken stake from the belt in her skintight black leather catsuit.  With a deep heave of her generous bosom, she prepared to open the coffin lid-

Which was just when Collins, HRW's resident pointy-haired-boss, rounded the corridor and started toward the cubicle.  Simon Brewer quickly hit the F7 button to shut down Dark Slayer and bring up the payroll adjustments that he was working on.  Actually, he was waiting for personnel to get back to him, but Collins would find something stupid to do if he thought Simon was idle.  Simon wasn't lazy, he just didn't go chasing makework, and he understood the value of playbreaks.  Not that Collins would; work was work in his book, and the more slavishly you worked, the better he looked.

Collins moved on, slightly bewildered because he couldn't match the cubicle with the drone.  It amused Simon that the same 'hotelling' that made workers even more anonymous kept management from keeping tabs on them.

Simon went back to Dark Slayer and finished off Necrothane.  As the end-game credits scrawled, he mused that Dark Slayer was a lot more fun since he replaced the stock mesomorphic neanderthal-image with his own Diana Knight add-on.  He'd worked for a couple of weeks designing her, and she was worth the effort.  The thought of that supple leather catsuit on her generous curves just did it for him!

Personnel finally came across with a part of the data he needed, and he spent about a half hour doing actual honest work for the money he was getting.  Then, Personnel put him on data-hold, again.  He didn't feel like starting Dark Slayer all over again, but surfing the net always looks like work...

After hitting the usual spots, Simon cruised the Role Playing Game sites.  At first, there was nothing particularly interesting - the same ol' same ol'.  Then an ad that he hadn't noticed before caught his eye.  The border was a circle of Celtic knotwork that spun and changed, as if the pattern was shifting, and the strands were sliding in different directions.  Inside, in faux-Celtic font, the ad promised a whole new level of player interaction, and player avatars that were designed by the players themselves.  Player designed avatars?  Maybe this game would be a step above the usual chat-room screed that passed for role playing on the net.  3-D and real-time, maybe.  He made a note of the site's URL - this would be something to do at home, not at work with Collins breathing down his neck.

For some reason, the thought of the on-line game warmed him as he slogged through the rest of the workday.  By the time that he got back to his efficiency apartment, he was jazzed.  He plopped down in front of his cutting edge (this week) PC and logged on.  He quickly typed in the URL and waited.  The rotating Celtic knot circle, this time fuller and more complex, came up.  He clicked in, and hit the sign-on button.  After a few pro-forma questions about computer parameters, a menu of character options popped up.  The first menu said that the next roster of players was being filled, and that the following was the current positions status: Sorcerer, Druid, Paladin, Cleric, and Fighter were already taken.  Somebody actually wanted to play the Cleric?  Of the remaining options, he thought that Magic User/Thief would be the most fun.  It was highly flexible, and he had never been the type to go in blasting or hacking.  Subtlety, yes, that was the way to play it.

The program kicked into a sub-routine for sorcerers.  It listed a variety of spell types, and asked him to assign a priority for the ones he wanted.  Well, he'd decided on subtlety, so he picked Illusions as his first priority, Sensory spells as a second, Mind Effecting spells as a third, Defense as a fourth and Attack as a poor fifth.  He'd let the others cover Healing, transportation and junk like that.

He clicked in a few more character choices, and came to the 'Gender: Male/Female?' decision.  He paused.  Heck, why not?  Designing female 'sprites' was always a lot more fun than cobbling together male ones.  Besides, the way he was beginning to see this character, it would be driven by panache and style.  Female panache and style he understood - at least he knew it when he saw it.  Male panache and style?  If he had the slightest idea of what that was all about, he wouldn't be spending his nights playing online RPGs!

That sour thought broke his attention away from the screen.  He looked around his cramped apartment.  Everywhere in the clutter there was some icon of feminine style - Tomb Raider's Laura Croft, Catwoman, Diana Rigg in her Avengers' leathers, Sigourney Weaver as Aliens' Ripley, Airboy's Valkyrie, Wonder Woman, the Sensational She-Hulk, Milt Caniff's Dragon Lady, and other sleek and competent heartbreakers.  Not a loser or wimp in the bunch.  Then he caught a sight of himself in a reflection, and winced.  Flabby, slightly over-weight, out of condition, awkward, over forty and pale.  Stuck in the latest of a series of dead end jobs.  And if anything, his social life was even more turgid than his business life.  He went to the fridge and got a Diet Coke to wash the taste of his own self-loathing out of his mouth.

His eyes lit on the Catwoman poster.  It wasn't really the implausible pulchritude of her body, or the artist rendered perfection of her face that was so mesmerizing - artists had been committing dream girls to paper for centuries.  It was the complete freedom that she enjoyed, and the boundless confidence that made her more than equal to any threat to that freedom.  She knew that she could do almost anything-

-while he knew that he had to work as hard as he could just to keep from completely screwing up the simplest of things.  He looked at the Catwoman poster as a supplicant might at an Icon of the Madonna - If only you could grant me the slightest measure of your grace and power.

With that as inspiration, he decided to make this character a testament to the spirit that was Catwoman.  A cunning vixen who played by the rules - when it suited her whim.  hmmm...  Vixen?  No, too obvious, and done to death.  Not a Cat or kitten - too close to the source; she must have room to grow!  A fox, then.  He got out his dictionary and looked up the listings that included 'fox'.  One listing jumped out at him.

                    FOXGLOVE\'fahks-glev\n (bef. 12th c.) :
                       Any of a genus (Digitalis) of erect herbs of
                        the Snapdragon family; esp: a common
                        European biennial or perennial (D. Pupurea)
                        cultivated for its showy racemes of dotted
                        white or purple tubular flowers, or as a
                       source of Digitalis.

Digitalis?  If his memory served him right, digitalis was a drug used to prevent - or cause - heart failure.  A true heart-breaker, eh?  Or, a fox with gloves?  Or a fox's glove?  The possibilities of the multiple meanings amused him.  Foxglove it was!  

With the name to work from, Simon started working on the body.  He pulled up his Diana Knight schematic onto his workstation.  The mask slid over the frame, providing the stick figure with the ample curves of the leather clad huntress.  He sat back and looked at her again.  It struck him that he'd gone a little too generic with her.  The usual blonde mane of hair, the perfect oval face with pert little nose, the usual hourglass figure, the usual long legs.  She was better than a virtual Barbie doll, but not much.

Obviously, the first thing to go had to be the hair.  He made the hair flaming red.  No, too obvious.  He cycled through several shades 'till he found a really nice shade of russet that really was closer to the shade of foxfur.  With that, an almond set of green eyes suggested themselves in place of Diana's big round baby-blues.  Nyet!  Still too obvious - he tried hazel, and settled on a cool but not steely gray.  From there he made the brow stronger, the nose longer and sharper, the face longer and more pointed, the cheeks higher...

The only thing left was the mouth.  Diana's cupid's bow smile simply didn't go with the rest of the face.  He took a break and got up to pop a meal in the microwave.  With a steaming carton of whatever in his hand, his eye happened to fall on the cover of the TV guide, which was featuring something on sitcom actress Nikki Cox.  Her wide, expressive mouth appealed to him, and he spent the better part of an hour getting it right on Foxglove's face.

Foxglove's face smirked at him from atop Diana Knight's body.  Get with the program, loser!  Do you really think that I'd go running around with THIS body?

He agreed.  Diana Knight was too Playboy centerfold.  She looked like she'd fold and cry with the first hard slap.  He tightened her physique up a bit.  Simon gave the lines of her thighs and derriere more definition, and perked up her tits a little.  He made the neck just ever so longer and swanlike, and the waist just a little thicker and more athletic.  He put a bit more work on her hands, giving them a graceful quality that he hadn't been able give Diana.

He pulled back and took a look at her.  She was lean and feisty, rather than curvy and cuddly, as Diana had been.  Oh, yeaaahhh...

Sadly taking a last look at her in the skin-tight black leather catsuit, he imported a "fantasy" wardrobe.  Fantasy, as in D&D, though there was that latex fashions catalog - no, stick to the classics!

Since there are gray as well as red foxes, he decided that those would be her colors - charcoal gray and a very dark red.  Since as a magic user/thief, she'd be a sneaky type, he made gray the primary, with red accents.  A gray hooded cape, a gray silk shirt (hmmm...silk agains those tits...), and gray thin leather trousers.  Dark red belt, gloves, boots, and a red scarf to bind her hair.  But something was missing.  After a few false starts, he gave her a long red leather vest that laced up the front.  It was still a bit plain, so he decorated the shoulders with a floral design that he could say was foxglove.

On to equipment.  Given her swashbuckler in silks attitude, he gave her a dainty rapier and a main gauche with an elaborate filigree guard.  The usual assortment of stilettos and daggers were stashed in convenient places.  But she needed something more, something newer - his eye lit on a poster of Spawn's Tiffany, mixing it up with the title character.  Spawn's chains looked interesting.  He hung a loop of chain over Foxglove's left shoulder.  Interesting; it had reach, was good for disarming opponents, and could be used for a wide variety of amusing ends.

He could tell that she was almost complete, but she needed some finishing touch, something emblematic...a symbol, like Batman's bat-in-a-circle, or Superman's S-in-a-shield.

For the better part of three hours, he web-surfed for graphic designs based on foxes and bellflowers.  He finally got a nice Japanese design of a fox chasing - and catching - it's own tail, forming a circle.  He clipped it, silverized it, and set in on Foxglove's cape as a holding brooch, using a bellflower as a pin.

There, done.  Just to be sure, he dropped her into the middle of Dark Slayer.  She worked like a charm.

He reconnected with the site, and submitted his character profile and design.

A week later, Simon got an e-mail, saying that his submission had been accepted, and setting the date of the game for Friday evening of the next week.  Well, it wasn't like he had any plans for that evening - or any other evening. 

          **********************************************

Congratulations, Bek D Corbin!  Your character Foxglove has been selected for the party! 
Your game time is 8 PM on Friday the 12th.  Fight ON!

Congratulations, Drrggnnlord101!  Your character Doctor Zohar has been selected for the party! 
Your game time is 8 PM on Friday the 12th.  Fight ON!

Congratulations, Hailaird666!  Your character Brother Theocles has been selected for the party! 
Your game time is 8 PM on Friday the 12th.  Fight ON!

Congratulations, Avalon51!  Your character Lady Avalyn Mornsong been selected for the party! 
Your game time is 8 PM on Friday the 12th.  Fight ON!

Congratulations, Bronztar!  Your character Sir Justin Invictus has been selected for the party! 
Your game time is 8 PM on Friday the 12th.  Fight ON!

Congratulations, Siriusly Pzzzd!  Your character J'Mira has been selected for the party! 
Your game time is 8 PM on Friday the 12th.  Fight ON!

Congratulations, Kodachi23!  Your character Kitsune has been selected for the party! 
Your game time is 8 PM on Friday the 12th.  Fight ON!

Congratulations, Kixaxx14!  Your character Hargrim Garvimson has been selected for the party! 
Your game time is 8 PM on Friday the 12th.  Fight ON!

Congratulations, Harthrawb!  Your character Avon Galliard has been selected for the party!
  Your game time is 8 PM on Friday the 12th.  Fight ON!

                **********************************************

When the time rolled around, Simon was more jazzed about the game than he'd been about anything since he could remember.  He had his Jolt colas in an ice chest by the desk, an extra-large bag of Fritos by the monitor, and a clear path to the john.  He logged on and announced himself.  The Worldkeeper had insisted that all the players have microphones, since he claimed that typing text messages would only slow down role-play.

The whirling Celtic knot pattern popped up again.  The knot pattern faded into the background as a very detailed map appeared.  A deep base voice with the velvety tones of a professional narrator began the prologue.  It was basic stuff: a great empire (clearly Rome, or close enough for government work), waxed and waned like the moon.  Currently at a crossroads, the Empire could fall to the barbarians, or regain its lost heights.  Barbarians, goblins, monsters and worse threaten the outlying parts of the Empire.  But a worse threat has arisen.  A sinister force has been uniting the rabble that infests the Empire's northwest frontier.  Rumors of a sorcerer in a dark tower, guarded by a fiery dragon and undead legions have reached the capitol.  The Emperor cannot divert Imperial troops to deal with the menace, due to other threats to the East and South.  The Patriarch of the Church has decided that a small band must travel to the dark tower and bring back intelligence of the threat.  But who will the Patriarch choose for such an arduous endeavor?  (Like he seriously had to ask.)

"Brother Theocles, a stalwart priest of the Paracletean order, has stepped forward to lead this mission for the glory of the Church".  A tall stern figure in a dark brown cassock appeared, Sacred Writ cradled in the crook of his left arm, a largish Holy Symbol (a rather baroque ankh) displayed in the left.  There was obviously chainmail under the cassock, and a good-sized mace was holstered in the belt.  Theocles looked to be in his late fourties, with a full beard and hair cut into a tonsure.  He looked to be more of the "fire and brimstone" school, rather than the "turn the other cheek" school.  Oh well, there has to be a Cleric in every group.  Better him than me.

"Sir Justin Invictus, a courageous paladin of the Vallarian order, has sworn a sacred oath to bring back the necessary information, or die trying."  This guy was a knight in, well, not shining armor; he was wearing a full suit of chainmail, covered by a blue tabard with a large gold-cloth 'holy symbol' on it.  He was carrying a heater shield with another 'holy symbol'.  The coif of his armor was pulled back, and he had regular features in a long face.  He actually managed to project an air that combined confidence and humility; that he was a man who knew his limitations, and would push to the furthest extent of them if he had to.  Not bad!  Nice touches of realism, and the face is very well done. 

"Hargrim Garvimson, a dwarven warrior from the far north, has agreed to accompany the party for his own reasons."  At first glance, Simon could tell that there was something off about this guy's character design.  The basic short dwarven figure, in a winged helmet, in some kind of sleeveless hauberk, carrying a hammer.  Then it hit him - the guy had taken a picture of the Marvel comics character the Mighty Thor, in his Walt Simonson stage, and shortened it.  Other than the shortening, the only original thing about the design was a smoldering stogie in the dwarf's mouth.

"Avon Galliard, a bard of the Imperial Court, has decided to travel with the band, so that he might chronicle the deeds to inspire future generations."  The figure was tall, slender and dressed like a renaissance pimp.  Oh, well, maybe he'll die early on...

"Foxglove, a mysterious woman of strange and subtle arts, has insinuated herself into the troop for reasons known only to herself."  The Foxglove figure was a little stiff, but it was the spotlight that the narrator had put on her that rankled Simon.  Put a sign on me that says "I'm the Mole - Don't Trust Me" why don't you?

"Doctor Zohar, philosopher and mystic, will use his eldritch abilities to counteract the dark arts of the foul necromancer."  This guy had also cheated a bit when he designed his character.  The figure was basically the Marvel comics character Dr. Strange, only the colors had been changed a bit, and the Psi character on his blouse had been changed to the sephiroth diagram.  Still, at least this guy had done enough research to know the significance of the Zohar and the sephiroth design.  Hmmm, the doctor was in his ponytail stage...

"Lady Avalyn Mornsong, elven noblewoman and majickcrafter, has come from her sylvan stronghold to defend the Great Mother against the contamination.  Her nature-based wisdom will serve the Great Mother well."  This one was a stock 'Elf' of the stuffed plush unicorn school.  A tall and svelte woman, she still managed to hold up a D cup bust line.  Her waist-length ash-blonde hair framed what had to be Michelle Pfieffer's face clipped from People magazine, and a couple of Mr. Spock ears poked out from the golden locks.  Her clothes were overdone faux-Elizabethan, complete with too much lace.  At least she paid lip-service to the 'Great Mother' with a 'nature' motif of thread-work.  She carried a dark wood staff capped with an owl head in her right hand, and a copper sickle was at her waist.  Simon guessed that she was supposed to be the 'Druid'.  Wonder how she reconciles her fancy wardrobe with a sylvan life-style?

"J'Mira, ranger from the savage southlands, harkens to the call of the Great Mother as well."  This one clearly didn't give a damn about the 'classics'.  She was a tall African female, dressed in a skin-tight pair of thin leather trousers, a metal reinforced brassiere, some metal jewelry, and not much else.  She was thin and lanky, except for a bust line that looked like she'd strapped two halves of a watermelon into that bra, and the kind of round ass that really tempts you take two hand fulls and squeeze.  And then probably pull back two bloody stumps, judging from the face.  She had the regal leonine features of the 'Mother Africa' type.  She stood in the Masai stance - one foot folded like a stork, the other straight as a tree.  She used a long staff to help her balance.  The staff was capped at the ends with iron lions heads.  On her belt were a matched pair of hatchets and a quiver of arrows.  A black ranger?  Wonder how the GM rationalized putting an African character into a basically European setting.  Probably told himself that it was just a game, and didn't let it bother him.

"Kitsune, monastic mystic, has arrived from the mysterious East heeding a call beyond the mundane."  This one was a small Asiatic female in the saffron robes of a Buddhist monk.  Her hair was long and arranged in a pigtail, at odds with her monkish dress.  She had a kittenish face with large green eyes that would've been more in keeping with an anime femme fatale than a monastic.  Her only weapon was a staff with an iron circle at one end that had sliding rings strung on it.  Another 'I'm gonna play the character _I_ want, and to hell with thematic consistency' type.

"You have accepted your mission, and have arranged to meet at a point several miles from the Bishopric of Arvauld..."

And he was there.

*****

CHAPTER TWO

Who ARE these Idiots?

He wasn't sitting at a desk, he was standing in a grassy glade.  He wasn't wearing an Arrowsmith t-shirt with a couple of holes and over-worn jeans, he was wearing leather breaches and a silk shirt that caressed his nipples(!).  One hand shot up to his face, and he almost smacked himself with a handheld mirror.  He tucked it into his belt and felt his face.  There was no stubble.  He pulled the mirror back out and looked at himself.  The lovely angular features of Foxglove gaped back at him.

Wow!  This is some kind of program!  A scrabbling something/nothing skittered past the back of his mind.

He looked around.  The other figures that he'd seen were standing around, all feeling themselves as well, in the same 'is it real?' manner.  But there was something different - aside from the fact that they were milling about instead of standing stock still.  The knight carried a large circular shield with a large gold 5-pointed star on it.  The sorcerer carried a long dragon-headed staff.  And the Bard carried a large golden harp instead of a long lute.

Drawing his cloak around him, Simon snuck a hand under his silk blouse and tweaked one of his nipples.  Whoo!  He - or rather, or the time being, she - shook her head, clearing the intensity of the sensation out of her head.

The others were milling about, trying to work up the nerve to talk to each other.  Foxglove took a deep breath, steeled herself, and prepared to play her character.  In a loud voice she said in a lovely velvet contralto that surprised her, "Okay, the first one who says, 'Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore' gets it *BAM!* right in the kisser!"  She finished off with a roguish grin.

The others responded with polite laughter.

Just then, Foxglove felt something scramble up her pants, over her cape and onto her shoulder.  Jerking her head, she saw a little naked woman sitting on her shoulder.  The little woman stood - or sat, rather - about a hand span high, and was as red as a radish.  She had long black hair pulled back into a high-set ponytail.  Two dainty horns swept back from her dark hair.  Her tiny face was heart shaped and had a merry, minx-like expression.  Two pert breasts the size of strawberries projected from her chest.  Under her arms two batwing vanes reached to her lowest rib.  From the back of her peach-like rump came a barbed tail that reached down to the dainty hooves on her feet.

The tiny devil-like woman grinned up at her and said in a voice like a piccolo, "Greetings, Thaumaturge!  I be Scintilla, thine aide, guide, confidant, solace, friend and slave."

"You're an Imp..."

"Ahhh, quick, quick, and quicker still!  An Oliphant wouldst have toil enow to creep upon thee un-benoted!"

"I take it that you're my familiar."

"Another stunsome insight, like unto uncovering a camolepard cunningly hid in a cathedral."  [Author's note: A camolepard is an archaic term for a giraffe.]

"While I doubt that I could order you to be respectful, the least you can do is drop the faux-Shakespearean jibes.  If you're going to talk to me, at least do it in a normal voice, like a regular person."

The imp shrugged, and responded in an accent straight out of Fort Apache the Bronx, "Jeez, tryta have a liddle fun, an' da Bawss gets all bitchy!"

Foxglove arched an eyebrow.  The Imp gave a 'what would you have of me?' shrug, and said in a mild English accent, "Very well, I'll be good."  Foxglove didn't believe it for an instant.

Other members of the party had also had visitors.  The sorcerer was communing with a stereotypical black cat.  The Druidess was nuzzling a cutesy little yellow dragonet with polychromatic butterfly wings.  The ranger had them all beat with an eagle and a pair of wolves. 

From the edge of the glade walked three people, a middle aged woman in medieval dress and two boys - one in leather armor with a doublet matching the paladin's and the other in a cassock - leading a train of horses and mules.

The boy in the leather armor had a German shepherd trotting by his side.  He walked up to Sir Justin and dropped to one knee.  The dog barked and greeted the knight like a long-lost friend.  The boy had five mounts by the leads - two mules, two light horses, and a chainmail barded warhorse that looked like it could take out an entire team of Clydesdales with one hoof tied behind it's back.

The middle-aged woman presented herself, two horses and four mules to the Lady-Elf.  The young man in a cassock kneeled before the Cleric.  The Imp, Scintilla, clambered off Foxglove's shoulder and scurried over to one of the remaining horses.  She felt around inside one of the saddlebags and pulled out a small felt bag and a large square of paper.

Curiosity getting the better of her, Foxglove went over to the horse.  The trappings and field gear stored on the animal matched her colors of gray and dark red.  The Imp handed the bag and paper to her.  Inside the bag were two rings, one a simple silver band, the other gold with a large and ornate disk.  With a shrug, she pulled off a glove and put on the rings.  "Aren't you going to read the instructions first, Mistress?" asked the Imp too-politely.

Smiling archly at the Imp, Foxglove unfolded the square of paper into a large sheet of script.

 

Good Morrow, milady Foxglove!

 

In your search for relics of great power, you have learned of the existence of a fantastical gem that Alchemists call Seramirias.  This unnatural jewel has many wondrous virtues, but the greatest of them is the ability to weave illusions into the fabric of reality for a short while.  While you have searched long and hard for confirmation of the existence of this amazing stone, the best that you have been able to find are rumors and rogue's tales.  But now you have heard tales of this fearsome Thaumaturge of the Dark Tower, who is able to conjure forth beasts most fantastical with the simplest of cantrips.  He is said to carry an iron staff capped with a prismatic gem, which he calls the Eye of Baelczebog.  You believe that this 'Eye of Baelczbog' is, in truth, the stone Seramirias.  With Seramirias, your phantasms and illusions will be as powerful as the Thaumaturge's.

 

But, in order to gain the stone, you must penetrate the Dark Tower.  This group of reconaissaunts of the Patriarch's should guard your passage there, but pose problems of their own.  According to the Church, Baelczebog is a major Demon, puissant in the arts of deception and corruption.  Their emissaries will almost certainly insist that any relic associated with this fiend be destroyed on general principles.  Either the sorcerer Zohar or the Elven witchling Mornsong may have knowledge and plans for the stone themselves.  The foreign monk may also have an interest in Seramirias for her own reasons.  And dwarves are notorious for their lust for gems of all kinds, especially magical ones.

 

You have gained a few magical tools to assist you in your endeavors.  Your longsword is shod in silver, and has had a minor enchantment placed on it (+1).  In your bag is a wand which will assist you in casting illusion spells (+2).  In a bag are a Ring of Protection (+2 AC) and a Ring of Spell Storing, which holds two Dispel spells, two Jump spells, two Shield spells, a Read spell, and a Write spell.  Your Cloak of Mists has enchantments that improve your ability to hide in the dark, to evade attacks (+2 AC), and glide for short distances.  Your Darkling Elven boots will make your feet light, improving your ability to move silently, to climb and to jump distances.

 

To assist your efforts, you have, placed in your saddlebags, three flasks of Healing Potion of four doses each, two flasks of Poison Antidote of four doses each, a pouch of Magic Dispelling Powder of twelve usages, and four magical scrolls.  The spells on the scrolls are: Mass Invisibility, Teleport, Warding and Wizard Eye. 

 

You have one true Item of Power with you already.  You must discover what it is, and what its powers are, for yourself. 

 

 

The letter finished off with a description of the procedures for using the 'spell book'.  The spell book was actually a pretty standard forward backward oriented listing system, from which you had to select a set number of spells that you could use.  This was pretty much in keeping with the D&D magic system.  She had eight slots to fill, and up to level five spells.  Not bad, not great.  Apparently, again in keeping with the D&D system, she could only renew these spells by 'studying' the book - or in other words, the programs that fueled the 'spells' needed to refresh with a rather slow transfer rate.

There was a second, smaller sheet that looked to be a map of some sort.  Foxglove took a long hard look at it, but without any point of reference, it was just a mass of lines and symbols.  If the GM was any good, either other members of the party had a key to make it sensible or they'd come across something to act as a key later on.

The boy in the cassock called for their attention.  "Prithee, Lords, Ladies, and Gentles!  Harken!  My Master, Brother Theocles, would address you!"

That worthy strode to the center of the group with all the pomp that such an introduction warrants.  "Good morrow, fellow travellers.  In the name of his Holiness the Patriarch, I thank you for answering the call of Duty."  His voice was a smooth, carefully modulated baritone, that went on to state, in so many words, that He was in charge.

The blonde elf wasn't having any of it.  "Indeed, the Great Mother has suffered grievously from the depredations of the Unclean..." she countered in a lovely soprano voice, and proceeded to argue in oblique New Age terms, that She should be in charge.

The Asiatic Mystic (Monkess?  Nun?), walked forth, her features hidden by her bowl-like hat, two fingers raised, and asked, "When both Dragons battle over the Pearl, does the Pearl weep?" in a velvety, slightly feline voice.

As both Priest and Druid stopped their arguing in a stereo, "Hunh?", Foxglove sidled over to the Paladin and elbowed him.  "Get in there and stop them, or we'll never get this show on the road!" she whispered.

Sir Justin stepped forward and told the lady-elf, "Dear Lady, we really should concentrate on the task at hand.  The Empire and the Wild are both equally endangered..." and politely implied that while he wasn't explicitly acknowledging the priest's authority, if push came to shove, he'd back the priest.

Foxglove came up on the other side of her and whispered in a pointed ear, "Let the big baby think he's running things!  Then he'll have to oversee the persnickety details, while you can focus on the really important things.  If you force the issue now, he'll only pout, and try to force your hand later, when we really can't afford it."

Couched in terms that painted her as the magnanimous one, Avalyn conceded the point to Theocles.  Then, while the Magic Users studied their books and decided on their spells, the other adventurers consulted their maps, decided on a route, and got ready to leave.

Neither the sorcerer, the Asian mystic or the African ranger had horses.  J'Mira came up to Foxglove's horse with a broad smile.  "Mind if I stash my pack on your horse?" she said in the husky voice of a Jazz diva with the Caribbean inflections of a reggae star.

"Sure, no prob.  But how are you going to get around?"

J'Mira gave a hearty laugh, and pulled up one hard bare foot.  "I don't need to give some poor animal a backache just to make my way in the world.  Besides, I already have too many mouths to feed."  With that, she turned and jogged off to run point, her eagle powering aloft, and the wolves trotting after her.

As the lanky figure disappeared into the trees, Foxglove wondered exactly how much support that metal reinforced leather bra of hers really gave those whoppers.  Oh, well, its not like she'd ever have to really find out.  She turned to Dr. Zohar, who was standing next to a good sized pile of gear, without any way of getting it around.  Foxglove was about to offer some help, when Zohar pulled a rolled up rug out from under a box and unrolled it.  Oh, it wasn't...

It was.  The carpet lifted a good six inches off the ground.  Zohar piled his gear onto the end of the carpet and settled himself comfortably in the middle.  Lady Avalyn rode up and spoke briefly with the sorcerer, pointedly ignoring Foxglove.  Foxglove noted that Mornsong's 'horse' was actually a saddled white stag, which sported a set of silver antlers of twelve points at least.

Foxglove was about to make a snide comment about being inconspicuous, when Hargrim came hopping around the corner - literally.  The dwarf was riding astride a giant barded war-frog.  The huge amphibian was clad in segmented plates of metal, including a headpiece that was cut as to let the two long curving horns through.  Oh, Gaawwwddd, it was a bullfrog!

As adventuring parties have done since those long ago days in Lake Geneva, the party set up it's marching order and set off.  The paladin, Sir Justin, was in the lead on a palfrey, with his squire and his destrier riding just behind.  The others were two across, except for the frog-mounted dwarf, who brought up the rear.  As they were on their way, Foxglove noted that the 'Monk', Kitsune, despite carrying her entire amount of gear on her back and never breaking out of a walk, easily managed to keep pace with the trotting horses.  It must be a 'Zen' thing, she thought to herself.

The course they took was little more than a path through the picturesque deciduous forest.  Foxglove was riding next to Lady Avalyn, and made the mistake of trying to start up a conversation.  After meeting a bit of resistance on the lady's part, Foxglove succeeded in getting her to talk.  She almost immediately regretted it.  Foxglove - or more accurately, Simon - like many role-playing gamers, had done a fair bit of research on points of mysticism, comparitive religion, folklore, dream-working and so on.  The tangled mish-mash of Gardenerian, Alexanderean, Saxon, psuedo-Tolkienean, and Walt Disney drivel wouldn't have been so bad, but Mornsong just went on and on about how wonderful everything was.  Foxglove had heard worse - Simon had gamed with Hare Krishnas, for God's sake! - but being stuck next to this babbling brook of treacle was spoiling her enjoyment of the game.

The party pulled out of the forest, and were heading into the foothills of what the Map called the Barbegassi Mountains, when the still of the afternoon was shattered by a weird cry.  The ululating war-cry of the M'Jadji tribe echoed down from the hill like the wail of a lost soul.  Exactly how Foxglove knew that it was the war-cry of the M'Jadji, or how she knew that J'Mira was one of them, or even what the M'Jadji were, she couldn't say.  But she knew that their light-footed forward scout had run into something she couldn't run away from.

From the rear came a lusty cry of, "FOREWARD HO, WART-MONGER!", and the dwarf and his mount bounded past the others.  Sir Justin dismounted his palfrey, and his squire helped him onto the Charger.  The rest of the party gathered behind Sir Justin and advanced.  A few minutes later, the sounds of conflict and loud, off-key singing were heard.

Foxglove and Kitsune exchanged glances, and then split off from the main party on foot, going over the crest of the hill while the others rounded the bend.

As Sir Justin rounded the bend, he spotted the source of the commotion.  J'Mira and Hargrim stood more or less back to back, surrounded by a variegated band of humanoids.  These...humanoids will have to do, because the GM didn't bother to provide a Monster Manual, ranged from the size of a large housecat to that of a small house.  There was one really big guy, eight linebacker sized ones, another ten of them about the size of little leaguers, and a whole swarm of the cat-sized ones.  Their skin was a dark green, and several of the smaller ones had bushy head of dark stringy hair, though most of the larger ones were bald, or just had ponytails draping down their backs.  Their noses seemed to grow in direct relation to their size, with the little ones having just nubbins while the big ones had great honking schnozzes.  They all had caveman-like brows and large fan-like ears, many of which had earrings and other less wholesome things dangling from them.  The little ones were naked, and the little leaguers wore patched garments of leather and fur studded with bits and pieces of chain or plate armor.  The linebackers wore irregular suits of armor, in slightly better condition than that of their little brothers.  The behemoth wore just oversized shin and forearm guards, with a fur kilt wrapped around its waist.  Weapons were mostly either improvised clubs or what their mom gave them when she foisted them into the world, but a few of the linebackers had swords and spears.

Hargrim was laying about him with his hammer with gusto, singing something that sounded disturbingly like a German drinking song.  J'Mira was busy keeping the surrounding critters from getting close enough to actually do anything.  One of the two wolves was snarling and snapping at the humanoids, protecting the other wolf, which had fallen.  The house-sized one was having difficulty getting close enough to strike the two annoyances, because the smaller ones kept getting in the way.  Off to one side, Hargrim's frog mount sat stolidly, occasionally flicking its tongue out and grabbed one of the little critters, dragging it into its mouth.  Justin made a note to himself to never let the beast be alone around children.

Sir Justin paused to try to arrange the party into an effective formation, but only Karl, his squire, paid him any heed.  Brother Theocles dismounted, unlimbered his shield and mace, and charged into the melee with a martial hymn on his lips.  Galliard the bard climbed up on a prominent rock and began strumming his harp with a will.  Lady Mornsong was consulting her spellbook, gesturing wildly as her maidservant held the tome.  Doctor Zohar urged his carpet up a few feet higher and began doing strange things with his dragon-headed staff.  The mageling Foxglove and the - nun, for a lack of a better word - Kitsune were nowhere to be seen.

Damn!  It was a complete shambles, no planning, no cooperation at all!  Just like every first encounter he'd ever gamed in.  He slammed his full helmet on, and said to Karl, "Well, there's nothing for it; into the breach, lad, into the breach!"

With that, he hefted his lance into charging position and spurred Thunder forward.  The destrier surged forward as if let off a leash.  For hundreds of years, the Norman Charge dominated European warfare.  This is because a mounted knight, his steed and their armor altogether weigh more than two thousand pounds.  A knight's lance delivers over a ton of force, moving at over twenty miles per hour, in an area less than that of a man's thumb.  That much penetrating power was currently aimed at one of the 'linebackers'.  Justin braced for the collision, but was surprised with the ease with which the 'linebacker' was knocked off his feet.

Up on his rock, Avon found the song he was looking for.  He struck a note, let it hang over the scene of chaos, and began weaving his tune.  The music washed over the warring mob, bringing the fighting to a standstill.  The humanoids looked up enraptured by the sound, oblivious to the puny mortals, who had also stopped their fighting.

With Mirabelle holding the Book of Ages, Lady Avalyn called upon the timebound yet timeless power of Nature.  She weaved the ebb and flow of the lifeblood of the Great Mother into a peaceful, restraining chain, and sent that chain coursing through the lesser children of the glade.  The trees and shrubs around the becharmed mob erupted into long, serpentine tendrils of thornvine.  The vines snaked around them all, human and humanoid alike, wrapping them close in a thorny cage.

Being tied up like a prickly Kwanza present was enough to snap J'Mira out of the songspell.  It immediately struck her that this would be a hideously bad position to be in, if somebody did something stupid.  And with this group, that was only a matter of time.  Using her lion-headed warstaff, J'Mira pried herself out of the weed-cage.  Once out, she forced the weeds open to let Huey out, and reached in to pull poor, wounded Angela out.  As she ran, her arms full of wolf, she called over her shoulder, "Hey, FOOLS!  Look alive, or look real dead!"

Sir Justin and Karl took her at her word, and began hacking at the vines with their swords.  Theocles' acolyte, Hermod, rushed forward and helped his master from the razor edged snare.  The two servants of the church hobbled away from the tangle.  Hargrim shrugged out of the thorns and began swinging his hammer at the nearest humanoid with glee.

High above them, Doctor Zohar finished his encantation and a near-volcanic eruption of purple flame came forth from the mouth of the dragon-staff.  The flames washed over the entangled hoard, humanoids, dwarf and paladin alike.  Sir Justin had managed to get his squire free, and brought up his shield just as the flames washed over him.  None of those others entangled were so lucky.

J'Mira looked at the sight of the flames gushing down from the flying carpet - yep, somebody did something stupid! 

The fireflood burned them all, turning the thorny cage and the house-cat sized humanoids into ash.  Hargrim and the larger humanoids all were burned badly, but Sir Justin's shield deflected the flames not only away from him but from his mount as well.  Almost as a body, those who had been entangled pulled free of the burning vines.

Lady Mornsong screamed up at the sorcerer, "Zohar, you idiot!  We could have peacefully restrained them!  Now we have no choice but to kill them!"

Zohar shouted back, "Of course we have to kill them!  They are Darkbrood!  They are of the Unclean!  If we do not kill them, and sterilize the ashes, they will consume everything, leaving nothing, and breed more of themselves, ever spreading until they are all there is!"

What are they, monsters or Republicans? J'Mira thought to herself.

Suddenly, four large camoflagued trap doors sprang open.  From them, three more house-sized Darkbrood and a lumpy travesty of feminity climbed out.  The 'female' was the size of one the house-sizers, with pendulous breasts, pudding-like hips, and a long scraggly mop of greasy hair.  Other than these sexual differences, she was more or less the same as the house-sizers.  Her hideousness was made starker by contrast with the skimpy gown that barely covered her breasts, the masses of jewelry that she wore everywhere, her laquered nails, and the overdone makeup on her face.  The harridan pointed a cobbled-together looking staff of different uncarved woods, bits of cord and rawhide, and a cap of what looked like the skull of a horned humanoid, at the flying carpet.  A greasy looking streak of grayish energy snaked out of the skull's eyes and mouth, and slithered through the air at the sorcerer.

The grayish streak hit the carpet, and knocked it out of the sky.  Zohar broke his fall by shooting at the ground with his staff, causing a column of violet energy that broke his fall.  He shook his head to clear it from the jolt of the fall.  Looking at the harridan, he shouted, "A BroodQueen!  Destroy her!  If she is isn't destroyed, she'll just keep producing more Broodlings!  It will be like trying to stop a flood, once the dike is broken!"

Hargrim was having too much fun dealing with the Darkbrood he was already facing to listen to Zohar.  On a hunch, he began twirling his hammer by the thong, building up energy.  The hammer began to leave a circle of lightning as it spun.  When he felt it had built up as much energy as it could, Hargrim let it fly at the head of the singed house-sizer.  The hammer streaked forward as a bolt of lightning, and smashed the Darkbrood's head like a pumpkin.  Lost in the moment, Hargrim cried out, "Skullsplitter, TO ME!"  The hammer floated upright into his hand.

Lady Avalyn felt the truth of the unbelieving Zohar's words as she looked at the unsightly insult to the Great Mother before her.  Revulsed beyond words, she realized that to use the lesser children of the glade to restrain this abomination would risk contaminating them.  Only the purifying touch of fire would cleanse this wood of this filth.  She struck a flint, and called a Lance of Flame from the spark.  She gathered up her weapon and hurled it at the spasming she-thing, as the latter cocked her head back and seemed to be in the process of hawking up the phlegm-wad from Hell.  Avalyn's purifying bolt was shattered, however, as Brother Theocles evoked a Wall of Containing Evil around the BroodQueen.  The two priestlings began yammering at each other as to who should purge the blight, and according to whose priorities.

Seeing that Hargrim, of all people, was being the most effective as he sent another Thunder-hammer through the head of another huge Darkbrood, J'Mira decided to cover his slightly charred back from the remaining 'little-leaguers' and 'linebackers'.

Sir Justin was riding down another 'linebacker', when the BroodQueen spat out a huge glob of unwholesomeness at him.  The glob knocked him off his steed, and resolved itself into another mass of house-cat sized Darkbrood.  As Sir Justin struggled under the writhing mob of Darkbrood, the 'linebacker' appeared over him, raising a huge club with a crude stone axe-head affixed.  Just as the axe was about to descend, an arrow landed with a juicy sound in the Darkbrood's eye.  The force of the arrow, coupled with the unchecked power of the axe's swing, sent the 'linebacker' toppling backwards.

J'Mira saw that Zohar was about to attack the BroodQueen with his dragon-staff, and probably foul up both Theocles and the Elf.  She shouted at him, "Hold your fire!  Wait until she spits up another one of those globs- then shoot just as she spits!"  For a wonder, the sorcerer listened.

Sir Justin started to struggle to his feet under the biting weight of the Broodlings.  He saw the five remaining 'linebackers' surrounding him.  Then there was a billowing cloud of smoke, and suddenly the 'monk', Kitsune, was in the middle of them.  Her face still hidden under her bowl-like hat, she spun her staff in a circle in her hands.  With a snap, a long blade appeared at the end of her staff.

In a level voice, she intoned, "When the dew is heavy, is the Spider the jailer or the prisoner?"  She wove in and out among the Darkbrood, making passes with her staff that seemed not to strike.  Then the 'linebackers'' armor began to fall off, and their weapons to fall apart.

Hargrim recalled his hammer after splatting yet another big bogey.  The other fighters were busy handling the small fry, and the mojo-makers were busy with the broad, so that left the remaining bogey all for him.  He went into his pitch again, but something was wrong.  When his spin was greatest, he let fly again.  This time, the hammer flew directly into the brow of the giant, but aside from making a dent in its brow and forcing it back, nothing happened.  No flash of lightning, no crash of thunder, no splatter of gray matter.  The hammer didn't come when he called it.  He was disarmed!  This was so unfair!  The giant Darkbrood shrieked in anger, and charged forward, both hands raising what looked like an uprooted tree over its head.  Arrows appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, landing with squishes in first the left, and then the right eyes.

Though blinded, the giant brought the treestump down at Hargrim.  Just as the stump was about to make contact, Sir Justin leaped between them, deflecting the entirety of the blow with his shield.  J'Mira used the Darkbrood's confusion to use her warstaff as a lever to trip the behemoth.  The huge oaf landed with a resounding *Thud!*.  Before it could get up, Kitsune appeared as if from around a corner, and ran the tip of her spear into one of the hulk's ears and out the other.

J'Mira returned to helping Huey finish off the last of the 'little leaguers', as Sir Justin and Kitsune covered Hargrim as he recovered his hammer.

Brother Theocles and Lady Avalyn were finally getting to the point where they were more of a threat to the BroodQueen than they were to each other.  The BroodQueen managed to start to hawk up another glob, but Dr. Zohar sent it right back flaming into her face.  With a shriek, the BroodQueen threw her staff tumbling end-over-end.

Looking at the hurtling rod in horror, Zohar shouted, "Don't let that fetish-staff land on any of the bodies!"

But it was too late. The staff landed with a thunk, end first in the body of one of the giants that Hargrim had killed.  The huge body melted into a pool of dark liquid.  The staff settled end first into the soaked ground.  Then, all the other bodies of the Darkbrood slain melted as well.  The dark liquid rushed to gather around the fetish-staff.  J'Mira started to step on the drenched ground, but immediately thought better of it.  Kitsune snapped the ring cap of her staff toward the fetish-rod; the ring flew off, with a long chain snaking out behind it.  She wrapped the chain around the fetish-rod and pulled it out of the ground.

Again, too late.  The ground trembled, and a new Darkbrood, huger than all the others put together, erupted from the soil.  It had four arms, and sabre-like tusks coming up from its lower jaw.  It was completely naked, and repulsively male.  It let out a scream like of metal being torn, and began to reach down.  Then a stream of lovely golden music washed over the behemoth, causing the plate-like eyes to go blank.  It looked around blankly, as if seeking the source of the soothing sound.

Zohar and Mornsong set themselves, readying to blast the colossus in unison.  Then a voice from nowhere said, "HOLD YOUR FIRE!"   

The enourmous Darkbrood stiffened, swayed and pitched forward.  The adventurers scattered as the towering monstrosity fell forward.  A figure appeared on its shoulder, jumped, and gently glid to the ground, her fall broken by the mist-gray cloak billowing out behind.

Foxglove landed, smiled smugly and walked over to the body of the huge Darkbrood.  Her rapier jutted out at an angle from the fold where the thick neck entered the head.  She gripped the sword, braced a foot on the creature and pulled it out with a heave.  She turned to her collected collegues.  "Sever the spinal column through the gap in the foramen magnum.  It's the only sure-fire instant kill there is, for any humanoid," she said in a utterly professional way.

Foxglove walked over to the still form of the BroodQueen, and punctured the back of the Queen's head in a like manner.  "Just In case."

J'Mira gave a victorius laugh, and High-fived Foxglove.  Foxglove handed a bow and quivver of arrows to J'Mira.  "I borrowed these.  I do hope you don't mind."  Galliard launched into a song of triumphant celebration up on his rock.  Theocles and Avalyn began bickering.

Sir Justin banged his sword against his shield for attention.  "People!  That was Pathetic!  Ranger, you were too far ahead of the group!  You're supposed to be warning us of danger, not falling into ambushes!"

"Hey, I was getting used to being in the outdoors!  Or whatever..."  Can you really call a kickass graphics program being outdoors?

"Dwarf, you went off on your own, without any kind of backup or support.  If J'Mira hadn't been covering you, those Darkbrood would have been using your back as a pincushion!"  Hargrim just blew a smoke-ring with his cigar in sullen response.

"Doctor Zohar, just because you can blast everything in sight, doesn't mean that you should!

"Lady Mornsong, Holy Father...we're going to have to cooperate if our mission is to be a success.  Try to find some common ground.

"All of you!  Charging off, with no plan or battle order!"

Foxglove draped a hand over Kitsune's shoulder.  "Hey, we held back, and waited to see what we would be dealing with!  Then we each inserted ourselves at the most tactically advantageous time!"

Justin just looked at them closely, and turned to tend to his equipment.

Foxglove grinned at Kitsune.  "I think we can interpret that as a ringing declaration of approval!"  The martial artist just smiled back and gave a silent thumbs up.

*****

J'Mira cradled the whimpering Angela in her arms.  The she-wolf had fought bravely, and had bought J'Mira time for the reinforcements to arrive.  But there was nothing that the Ranger could do for the wolf's wounds.  She looked around.  The Priest was laying hands on the Paladin's wounds.  The Dwarf was checking around for any sign of the entrance to the Darkbrood's lair, his great honking nose atwitch with the anticipation of loot.  The Elf Lady was walking forward, holding a wide golden cup in both hands.

Lady Avalyn knelt down beside J'Mira.  Looking at the wounds on both the Ranger and wolf, she sighed.  "The Churchman is too busy tending to his loyalist to see the suffering around him.  But I have a great treasure."  She dipped a cloth in the gold vessel, and wiped at one of the gashes on Angela's side.  The wolf flinched, but then relaxed.  A scab appeared over the wound.  "This is the Chalice of Purity.  It embues any liquid poured into it with the raw essence of Life.  It cleanses wounds, fights ailments, purifies corruption, and renews the body's vigor."  She poured some of the water into her hand, which the wolf eagerly lapped up.  Angela slipped into a deep sleep.  "She should wake up stiff, but whole."

J'Mira looked at the cup.  "So, basically it's an everfull cup of Healing Potions."

Avalyn smiled superiorly, and stood up.  "Oh, it's far more than that."  She poured some more water into the Chalice and walked over to the dead hand of the giant Darkbrood.  She poured the entire contents of the Chalice on the hand, which melted like spun sugar.  "It imparts the Blessing of the Great Mother, washing away the filth that brings our Mother pain."

As Mornsong went on and on, J'Mira thought to herself, 'Oh, well, at least we won't have to risk a forest fire when we burn the bodies.'

Huey looked up at her and in her mind, J'Mira heard him say, Yes, that would be best.

 

'Huey!  I didn't know that you could talk!'

I can't.

 

'You mean that I can communicate with you telepathically?  Why didn't you tell me?'

You didn't ask.

CHAPTER THREE     

Can We Re-roll This Random Encounter?

Between Foxglove and Hargrim, finding the Darkbrood's lair was possible.  Not easy, but possible.  Now, your average GM usually presents a monster's lair as kind of like the prize stage on a game show: so much gold, so much silver, a few jewels, a magic item, and a year's supply of Rice-a-Roni.  Instead, it looked like a delicatessen designed by Hannibal Lecter.  Lots of bones and body parts, lots of ragged clothing, a few bedspreads, and an altar that would have given H.R. Geiger nightmares.  The good stuff was hidden under the altar.  A bag of gold bits, a couple of pieces of jewelry, a vicious looking flame-bladed dagger, and a bunch of scrolls.  Avalyn insisted on washing the gold and jewels in water from her chalice.  Good thing, too - two of the jewels burst into flames and exploded when they were washed.  They buried the dagger, with prayers for the dead said over the 'grave', and torched the lair.

They moved on for about an hour, it being generally agreed that hanging around a monsters' camp was not a good idea; the neighbors might drop over for a cup of eyeballs.

A few days later, by the curious passage of time within the game, J'Mira came across a strange set of tracks.

She was still looking at them when the rest of the party rode up.  From his horse, Justin asked, "What is it?  Some kind of roaming monster?"

J'Mira didn't stop to look up as she answered, "No.  Very strange tracks.  Three horses, well shod, travelling at a walk.  A pack of wolves, also travelling at a walk.  Men on foot, shod in old boots and shoes, also at a walk.  But the shoeprints change every so often, and occasionally change number.  More men, some wearing boots, some not, at a walk, marching two across.  Two wagons, middling loaded, with old wheels, being pulled by paired oxen.  No spoor for wolves, horses or oxen.  And judging by the dryness of the tracks and the condition of the road, I'd say that they passed by here about two hours or so before sunrise."

"Could the wolves be following the men?"

"No.  The men's tracks cover over the wolves' tracks.  As a matter of fact, the order seems to be the three mounted riders, then the wolves, then the loosely organized men, then the wagons, then the men in columns.  And by the spacing, I'd say that they're travelling in a group."

Later in the day, Eldritch, J'Mira's eagle companion, came in with news.  J'Mira turned to the party.  "Eldritch says that there's a farmstead just over the ridge, in ashes.  The tracks I've been following go off the road and in that general direction."  She looked at Brother Theocles with an ironic cock of an eyebrow and placed a hand on her hip.  "So, oh, Fearless Leader, do we check it out, or does the glory and majesty of the Holy Church demand that we ignore a threat to innocent farmers to continue our espionage mission?"

Theocles chewed on this for a bit.  Foxglove thought that he wanted to check it out in hopes of another easy Random Encounter, but didn't want to couch it in those terms.  "The protection of the innocent is our first priority.  If we ignore the suffering of the meek, then the Forces of Darkness win a telling victory without raising a finger."

Or, in non-clericspeak, let's check it out!

The farmstead was a few hundred yards from the path.  It was a two-story affair of wood and fieldstone, reduced to a ruin.  The adventurers looked around the rubble.  Hargrim found the remains of a mule, a cow, a goat and a couple of pigs, stripped to the bone, in the remains of the byrne.

Foxglove checked the door and noticed something strange.  "Check this out!  The door wasn't broken in - it's still on it's leather hinges, what are left of them, and the latch is in one piece!"

Avalyn picked through the ashes, carefully picking up her skirts and dancing around jutting pieces of char and soot.  Something in the hearth caught her eye.  "Come, look at this in the fireplace!  The remains of a wooden holy symbol!"

Then Avon came down what remained of the staircase.  "Cleric.  Please come here."  It was the shortest thing anyone could remember coming out of the bard's mouth.  Usually he tended to go on and on.  Talking a lot, but saying little.

Up the stair, in a corner, bound to a burned post by chains, were the charred remains of four children.  The oldest was about nine, the youngest barely out of the crib.  Theocles brought out his clerical tool-kit, sprinkled the corpses with holy water, and said a prayer.  Then, looking intently at the eldest husk, he asked, "Child, how did you come to die?"

A thin, unearthly voice echoes out of the gaping mouth, "Mother, why?  Why?  Why?" and faded off into silence.  No repeat attempts to Speak with Dead suceeded.

After they buried the children with all the proper rites, they left.  The only things they learned after that was what J'Mira got from reading the tracks - "The three riders rode up, and six adults came out.  The wolves went into the barn, I assume to feed on the livestock.  They set the place on fire, which burned itself out well before sunrise, and left."

Avon, still shook from finding the children, asked, "How can you tell?"

"The ashes were cool enough for dew to form on them."

*****

A day later, J'Mira said that they were catching up with them.  "I found a camp of sorts.  A place where the wagons stopped for a day, and the horses were quartered.  There's the signs of a peg-line of sorts where the people who walk in double lines were kept.  I think they're slavers."  Her face was set like stone.  "But there's a funny thing.  There's no sign of a campfire, I can only find a few signs of anyone eating, and the latrine - what there is of it - only has spoor for about one-quarter of the people on foot.  All things concidered, I'd say that we're about a day's trot behind them.  With a little speed, and eating iron rations instead of stopping to cook lunch and dinner, we should catch up with them before sundown.  If not today, definitely tomorrow."

*****

J'Mira's hopes of a battle before dusk didn't pan out.  The party pitched their camp.  As usual, Avalyn had a pavillion all to herself and her handmaid, and J'Mira preferred to sleep outside with her wolves, so Foxglove shared a tent with Kitsune.

In a gaming tradition only slightly younger than that of picking a marching order, the party had decided on a watch schedule.  It made sure that there was a magic user, a fighter, a stealth specialist and a person with superior senses on each watch.  What Foxglove wanted to know was why she always got stuck on the Midnight shift, with Avon and the Dwarf.

An early mist was rising, and the silence was oppressive.  No nightbirds, no insects, no frogs, nothing.  Not even creepy mood music.  Even Avon didn't try to shatter the quiet with talk or song.  Classic - when you could actually use the man, he comes up a blank.  Foxglove and Hargrim went to do a perimeter search.  When they came back, there was a pretty young girl with brown hair tumbling over her tattered blouse sitting by Avon, weeping into her hands.

"Typical," the dwarf muttered, "leave 'im alone for two minutes, and the prettyboy picks up a broad."

As they approached the pair, Foxglove quipped, "What's this?  You called out for pizza, and they didn't put anchovies on it?"

The girl stood up, still weeping into her hands and threw herself around the Dwarf's neck.  Hargrim chuckled, "Well, all riiiight!" which died in his throat.  His hands fell limp to his side.

Then Foxglove noticed that the bard wasn't saying anything.  Or moving.  She looked over at Hargrim.  He seemed to be paralyzed.  The girl turned to Foxglove.  Her face was young and pretty, but it was pale as a sheet of clean paper.  Her eyes were as red as her bloody lips, and a set of dainty fangs glistened in the firelight.  Foxglove's imp familiar went, "Ick!" and clambered off her shoulder and clung to the back of her head, hiding in the roan tresses.

Foxglove cleared her rapier and main gauche in a single movement, and shrieked, "ALARM!  ALARM!  THEOCLES!  JUSTIN!  UNDEAD!  UNDEAD!"

The walking dead girl tisked sarcastically, and said in a treacly voice, "No need to shout.  Your friend over there didn't shout, even when he thought that I was in real danger.  It will all be over soon."

With that she threw a bucket of water on the fire, sending the camp into near total darkness.  By the campfire, Foxglove could see something that had been obscured by the fire - five tiny foxfire blue flames, flickering up from what looked like a candle in the shape of a human hand.

Foxglove knew enough folklore to recognize it: a Hand of Glory.  It was a powerful charm, that had the ability to keep everyone who was asleep that way, regardless of all attempts to wake them.  And it couldn't be extinguished by natural means.  A possible scenario presented itself.  The raiders were vampires; they would sent this or a similar leech to cozen their way into a house and light the Hand of Glory.  Then they would be invited in by their spy, take all the adults, chain up the children, and torch the place.  The bitch had probably gotten past Theocles' Warding the same way she got in the farmhouse - the old 'help me!  I'm being chased!' routine.  Avon, being the eternal horndog that he is, asked her in, and she put the bite on him.

Foxglove wrapped her Cloak of Mists around her, and edged around trying to put the vamp between her and the Hand of Glory.  It would be the only way that the thiefly mage would be able to get a shot at the undead strumpet.  Neither of them could get a good look at each other - the vampire was a creature of the dark, but Foxglove's Cloak of Mists effectively concealed her body warmth, making the darkness no ally to the leech.  Foxglove whispered to her familiar, "Go, wake up the Priest, the Paladin, the Mage and the others, in that order!  If the Priest simply won't wake up, don't bother with the others, just bring me a large flask of Holy Water.  Scoot!"

Scintilla piped, "I'm gone!" and scampered off in the direction of the Priest's tent.

The vampire lashed out at the sound of the Imp's reply, and grazed Foxglove's shoulder with a claw.  Foxglove immediately counter-struck and cut the vamp's arm with her main gauche.  The vamp hissed in surprise and rage - either the blade's silver or enchantment made her vulnerable, and she wasn't used to it.  Foxglove struck with her rapier at the sound of the hiss, and scored another hit.

They broke, and the deadly shadow-dance continued, both feinting, parrying, counter-striking, sidling for advantage and then trying to strike at vapor.

It struck Foxglove that this vampire must not be terribly bright.  If it were really thinking, it would simply invite the rest of it's unholy clutch past the Wardings.  Foxglove knew how to stop that.  But first, she had to end this stupid shadowdance - the hard way.  Under her breath, she muttered two spells, and kept them uncast.

Then, she let the vamp get a grip on her left arm.  The vamp bit hard, and Foxglove could feel the blood being sucked out of her.  Holding onto her wits, Foxglove hit the vamp with the first spell, LIGHT, right in the face.  The leech pulled back, hissing in surprize.  Then Foxglove hit her with the second spell, SILENCE.  Jumping back a pace, Foxglove gloated, "Let's see you call your friends now."

The comely bloodsucker bared her fangs in a noiseless hiss.

Shifting her rapier to her left hand, Foxglove reached into her vest and pulled out the pouch of Magic Dispelling Powder, and measured a dose of it in the neck of the pouch with one hand.  She threw the dose at the Hand of Glory - the sooner the others were up and running, the better.  The powder hit the gruesome talisman with a sulphurous *poof!* the flames dancing over the candle/fingers flickered and there was a sense of the powerful magic lifting.  Then the five corpse-lights renewed themselves.  Shit!  She would have to wait for Scintilla to get back with either the Priest or the Holy Water!

A moving of the light warned Foxglove that the vamp was up to something.  A wolfish form rushed past her, and grabbed the pouch of Magic Dispelling Powder out of her hand.  Then it came to her that she had just screwed herself over big time!  Now, the vampire not only knew that it would be a good idea to get the other vampires past the Warding, thanks to Foxglove's gloating, but had the means to lift the Silence spell.

Foxglove charged after the wolfling vampire, trying to keep it in it's wolf-form and unable to use the powder.  The wolf stopped and tried to begin to shift, only to be skewered by Foxglove's blade.

Then, there was another light.  Foxglove turned around.  Scintilla was bouncing along, awkwardly carrying a flask on one shoulder and a lit lantern on the other.  She hurried over, quickly mumbled, "Good job!" and snagged the flask.  Running over to the Hand of Glory, she uncorked the flask.  "Scintilla!  Go try to wake up the others again!"

"Again?'

"Go!"  The Imp went.

Looking over her shoulder, Foxglove could see the vamp taking human form again.  There was no way she could get over there in to prevent the leech from using the powder, or calling to the Undead no doubt waiting beyond the Warding to be let it.

She sprinkled the Holy Water over the Hand of Glory.  The Light spell faded from the vamp's face.  The flames on the gorey fingers flickered.  Foxglove poured the entire flask on the Hand.  It finally went out.

Almost as one, the thief and the vampire called out to their own.  The pretty bloodsucker called out, "ENTER!  I invite you in, my darkling lords!  Come feast, my brothers and sisters!"

Shouting, "ALARM!  ALARM!  UNDEAD!  UNDEAD!" Foxglove sprang toward the vamp and pierced her pale neck with the rapier.  The vamp fell silent, but even as the body fell, Foxglove knew it was too late.  Out there, beyond a Warding that no longer denied them, in the darkness, through the heavy mist, a galaxy of red eyes twinkled in hunger and hate.

CHAPTER FOUR       

You rolled WHAT for the Random Encounter?   
      
Or, A Little Night Music

Foxglove held up the lantern, and peered into the darkness.  Behind the glittering red eyes, forms became apparent.  Human forms, and wolven forms, snake forms, cat forms of all sizes, and forms too noisome for the eye to hold, peered over and around rocks and trees and shrubs.  Then three mounted figures silently emerged from the haze, and rode to the ring of small stones that marked the perimeter of the Warding.

The rider on the left wore thick red robes, and carried an arcane looking device in his left hand, that Foxglove guessed was the evil counterpart to Theocles' Holy Symbol.  He was thick-set, balding, and had the stock 'evil cleric' goatee.  Only the extreme pallor of his skin, his red eyes, and the hint of fangs kept him from being a central casting Priest of Evil.  A vampiric anti-cleric?  Well, why not?

If the leech in the robes was an Evil Cleric, then the next rider could only be the Anti-Paladin.  He rode a dark red war-horse, that didn't look properly alive.  The undead hell-warrior wore bright red plate armor, over black chain.  Somehow, the armor made absolutely no noise.  It must be a vampire union rule.  Over the armor, he wore a black tabard with a red flaming sword device on it.  His helmet sported a an elaborate gold crown, and concealed his features, except for the red eyes.  Hung from his belt was the biggest, nastiest sword that Foxglove had ever seen.  It creeped her out just to look at it.  He held a nasty-looking lance in the at-rest position, and a banner with the same device as the tabard jutted out from the saddle.

The third rider was the third cliche in the unholy trinity - a stock vampiric temptress, with long straight ravens wing tresses framing a perfect oval of delicate ivory features, a long swanlike neck and an alabaster decollatage bulging from a wine-red gown trimmed with spider-web inserts.  She wore a lot of odd jewelry - heavy on the rubies, of course - and carried a long ebony staff, capped with a huge ruby framed with a pair of gold batwings.  An evil Sorceress, y'think?  Naaaahhhh!

 

Black is, of course, the classic color for vampires, but Foxglove could see where they might also have a soft spot in their unbeating hearts for the color of blood.

Apparently, being invited in by another vampire may weaken a Warding against Evil, but it doesn't completely drop it.  The trio stopped at the ring of stones, and the Sorceress started making passes with her staff.  The stones began to tremble and part.

"THEOCLES, Get your ecclesiastical ASS out here Right NOW!"

 

Foxglove grabbed the flask of Holy Water, and poured what little was left into her hand, and rubbed it on the wound on Hargrim's neck.  The Dwarf startled, and blinked his eyes, as if suddenly awaking.  'Great stuff, Holy Water,' Foxglove thought.  'I gotta remember to have Theocles bless some for me.  That is, if he ever gets out of his damn bed!'

 

Finally, the flaps on Theocles' tent parted, and that worthy cleric came stumbling out in his nightshirt, prayer shawl over his shoulders, Holy Symbol in one hand and mace in the other.  His acolyte came stumbling after him, trying to strap the cleric's chain mail on him as he ran.  Sir Justin also charged out of his tent, also not taking the time to put on armor, carrying only his sword and shield.  Lady Mornsong poked her braided head out of her pavillion to see what all the fuss was about, saw what was happening, and jerked back in.  What appeared to be a shadow crawled out of the tent that Foxglove shared with Kitsune and crept along the ground toward the scene of combat.  J'Mira appeared with her wolves, with an arrow nocked in her bow.  And lastly, Dr. Zohar emerged from his tent, with Scintilla clinging desperately to his shoulder, and violet fire smoldering in the mouth of his dragon-staff.

 

Once roused, Theocles ran to the perimeter of the Warding and chanted the Ward against Evil prayer again.  As his acolyte, Hermod, buckled on the chainmail, Theocles held up the Holy Symbol and worded in a way that the Church was have no problems with, loudly told the assembled legion of the Undead to piss off.

Theocles' counterpart held up his Unholy Symbol and told Theocles, in so many words, to go fuck himself.

As the two rival priests went at it in this impromptu ecclesiatic debate, the Sorceress reached behind her and pulled a young girl of about six out from her perch on the Sorceress' saddle.  The Sorceress easily handled the squirming tot, and laid her across her saddle.  Then she pulled out a nasty looking obsidian dagger and without ceremony, cut the girl's throat.  Taking only a sip from the spurting neck, the vampiress tossed the child onto the circle of stones, where she died, desecrating the Warding.

The Children of the Night gave a triumphant group howl, and charged the camp.

The Anti-Paladin unlimbered his lance and circled his horse to begin a charge.  Batting a few ambitious wolfling vampires aside, Sir Justin made a wordless challenge to the Champion of Evil by beating his sword against his shield.  Come and get me, you unbreathing bastard!

Not expecting much, Foxglove interrupted whatever bit of nastiness that Vampir-spella had up her slinky sleeve by throwing a Light spell on her face.  Vampie just wiped it off, as if Foxglove had thrown a pie in her face.

To his credit, Zohar showed the good sense to use his dragon-staff to re-light the campfire, sending back the darkness a bit.

The Anti-Paladin came at Justin at a full charge.  The force of that lance, even without any spells, charms or evil blessings, should have been enough to pierce a two-inch thick stone wall.  The lance caught Justin square in the center of his shield.  Neither Justin or the shield budged an inch.  The lance exploded with the force of the impact, and the hell-knight was thrown completely clear of his saddle.  Justin advanced unfazed, and told his prone adversary, "Get up.  Let's settle this."

Vampir-spella was in the middle of casting something vile, when a pair of black-clad hands came from behind her.  One was carrying a very sharp dagger, which drew across her throat.  The vampire-mage ceased her spelling, reached behind her and threw Kitsune for an easy five yards.  Kitsune twisted in mid-air and landed on her feet in a crouch.  Instead of her saffron robes, Kitsune was wearing a black outfit which consisted of black leggings coming up to mid-thigh, a black thong, a black top which covered both of her arms, but for some reason left most of her decollatage and midrift exposed, and a black mask over the bottom of her face.  She was only visible for a second, and then disappeared in a cloud of smoke.  Foxglove took this in - a bikini ninja?

 

J'Mira was busy dropping bats and other flying things with her bow.  The some of the flyers dropped to ground and stayed there, others shifted to non-flying forms and kept advancing.  She decided to take out one of the real threats, and drew a bead on the Sorceress.  Her arrow was straight and true, but jinked off at the last minute.

Zohar stepped up to the Warding perimeter, and faced Vampir-spella with a look of fierce satisfaction on his face.  First he conjured up a Magic Shield, and then he began a Dr. Strange-style mage-fight, dueling with spell and counter-spell.

The vampires weren't doing too good, and the small fry fell back.  As she was fencing with Zohar, the Sorceress shouted an unintelligible command.  From the depths of the woods, a hoard of humanoid forms began to emerge from the shadows.  They appeared human, but as they trudged toward the campfire, their true nature became obvious.  Their gait was stilted, their eyes lacked any glisten of life, their skin was pale and their features where trapped in death agonies - they were the Walking Dead.  There were at least forty of them, and fresh, too.

Doctor Zohar saw them, and realized the Sorceress' plan.  The zombies would wade in and tire out the party, while the vampires retreated and regrouped for another attack.  He pointed his dragon-staff at the zombies, and conjured forth a wall of violet flame.

The Walking Dead just kept walking.  They walked right through the wall of unnatural flame.  Some of them were completely destroyed by the spell-fire; others were only partially immolated.  Some passed through all but unscathed.  But a good portion of the zombies were just fresh enough, yet decomposed enough that the suet in their bodies caught fire, turning them into human torches.  The walking firebrands advanced in the classic arms-forward position, seeking out anyone slow enough not to get out of their way.

Foxglove and Kitsune circled around them and struck at the back of the firebrands' legs, trying to hamstring as many as they could.  It slowed several down, which is important when that enemy only has an effective life of about ten minues.

Lady Mornsong and Mirabelle wrestled the brazier out of the tent and into a working position.  The others were keeping the Undead busy, but that fool Theocles wasn't doing his job!  He kept trying to beat that undead anti-cleric in some kind of facedown, instead of dispelling as many of the lesser undead, which were probably the greater threat.  Avalyn had a hunch that she knew what the undead's next ploy would be, and she warmed up the counter-measure.

Then they came. The vampires had regrouped in the woods, and now a very thick blanket of fog came flowing out of the woods like a vaporous river.  J'Mira saw it, and shouted, "Theocles!  Another Ward against Evil!  NOW!"

Avalyn poured the vegetable oil on the mass of herbs and lit it with a flint.  As the flames rose, she waved an oak branch over the coals, and said a prayer to the forces that rule the clouds.  She pointed the branch at the oncoming wave of mist-form vampires, and summoned forth a powerful wind.

The unexpected gust forced the vaporous vampires back and intertangled their mists.  It forced several of the flaming zombies back, and extinguished several of their fires.

Foxglove decided that the greatest immediate threat was the zombies in their midst.  Therefore the best way to remove that threat was to get rid of their puppeteer.  And she had an idea of how to do that.  She hopped-skipped-and-jumped through the zombies to Hargrim's side.  "Hargrim!  Does that hammer of yours have any more thunder-charges left in it?"

"Sure!  I haven't used any today!  But I need a target worth using them for!"

"What about the goth glamour girl on the horse?  She's probably the one directing these zombies!"

"Sure!  But you saw what happened to the Ranger's arrow!  I don't want to waste my charges!"

"Not to worry, Spud-muffin!  I'm way ahead of you!"  Foxglove reached into her pouch of Magic Dispelling Powder.  It was too far away to hit her normally, and the wind was gusting to hard, even if it were.  So, she cast a DISPEL, and wrapped it around the Powder.  "Batter's up, eagle-eye!  Try to bean her, if you can!"  Then she cast the spell and powder at the Vamp-Mage.  Foxglove sensed both the Missle Deflecting spell and the anti-magic spell fall.  "NOW!"

Hargrim loosed his hammer and sent it at the she-leech.  Vampir-spella saw the lightning bolt in barely enough time to turn to mist.  The hammer went harmlessly through her and gouged out a path through the trees as it went, but that was what Foxglove had planned on.  The Vampiress couldn't reform her solidity because of Mornsong's wind-charm.  She was blown far from the scene of battle, like all the other fog-form vampires.  The zombies stopped in their tracks, even the ones that were still on fire.

Heartend by this turn of events, Theocles decided to stop using the verbal abjurations that he had been using, and rely solely on his Holy Symbol.  He focused all this will through the device, until something gave.  It shone, like someone had thrown the switch for a light-bulb.  The light spread, filling the area with both the inspiring illumination and a glorious wordless choiral of sound.  It shattered the concentration of all the remaining vampires.  Several of the zombies fell, devoid of even the power to remain upright. 

Theocles' conterpart hissed, and presented his own Unholy Symbol in defiance.  He held the abomination against the glory, despite the flickering flames that sprang from the foul icon.  It seemed that the anti-cleric had True Faith in his undead deity.  It made sense, in a horrible, twisted, Tim Burton kind of way.  The two clerics held each other in a war of conviction.

The light from Theocles' Holy Symbol snapped Avon out of his vampire induced paralysis.  He was too groggy to think.  Almost instinctively he began to play his harp.  The best he could do was that he hoped against hope that the Sun would rise.  His harp filled with that hope, and against his haphazard playing, began an ode to the sun.  It sang a wordless glorification of the incandescent bringer of light and life into the world.  It painted a picture of sound of the simple majesty of a summer's day.  The image bore into the harsh cold of the vampire's world, melting their certainties.

The music ran through Foxglove, filling her with an inspiration.  "Scintilla!  Go to my tent, and fetch me my handmirror."

"This is a helluva time to be thinking about your 'do, Boss!"

"Go!"

"I'm gone!"  And she was.

Slashing at the vampire-wolves that ran across her path, Foxglove made her way to Avalyn's brazier.  Scintilla brought the handmirror and watched.  Foxglove stared into the mirror, and not quite sure how she was doing it, moved what the mirror reflected.  At first, it only reflected her face; then she moved it, and the glass showed the darkling chaos of the melee.  She moved the view westward, ever westward.  The movement increased in speed.  Finally, she saw what she needed.

Foxglove shoved Mornsong away from the brazier without taking her eyes from the mirror.  By feel alone, she found the material components she needed.  As Avalyn bitched about Foxglove using her brazier in such a cavalier manner, she weaved a masterpiece illusion.  She created a false Sun out of phantasmagory.  More powerful than any Light spell, it brought day to the dead of night.

The remaining vampires, human-formed, wolven, bat-shaped or mist recoiled from the sight of their greatest fear, their greatest sorrow.  The vampire-priest turned from his contest of wills with Theocles to try to ram a little backbone up their spineless behinds.  "STAND, you idiots!  It's only an _Illusion_!  It isn-"

Doctor Zohar, no longer tied up with _his_ counterpart, conjured up a gag out of his violet flames, and silenced the priestling.

The Anti-Paladin was cut and would have been bleeding, if he still could bleed.  His armor was a shambles, his shield was in tatters, and his sword was notched and starting to break.  Sir Justin was cut, but unbowed.  In the withering light of day, his forces dwindling like snow in summer, the Anti-Paladin turned to mist and fled.

Finally, only the vampire cleric remained, with what was left of the motionless zombies.  Give the walking dead man his due, once he started a battle of wills, he stuck it out.  Now that he no longer had to spread the force from his Holy Symbol outwards to beleaguer the lesser undead, Theocles focused all the energy against his opponent's Unholy Symbol.  The blasphemous standard shattered, sending shards into it's wielder's face.  The evil cleric, facing the full undiluted force of Holiness, in the face of what every sense told him was the hated Sun, alone and unaided, stood his ground.

For about ten seconds.  Then he turned to mist and fled, like all the other bloodsuckers.

As the cleric faded into the woods, Foxglove tore herself away from the sheer glory she was creating, and let the glowing image of the Sun fade back into her mirror.  Tottering slightly, she brought the watch-lantern over to Lady Avalyn and handed it to her.  To all and none, she said with the immense dignity of the exhausted, "_My_Watch_is_over_.  _I_am_tired_.  _I_am_going_to_bed_."  She went to her tent.

Kitsune, now mysteriously back in her 'monk's' robes, whispered, "Is this such a good idea?  What if those things come back for a second try?"

Foxglove shucked out of her vest and the imp helped her off with her boots.  As she crawled onto her cot, she yawned, "Don't be ridiculous.  No GM I ever heard of ever threw two major Random Encounters at a party in the same night."

CHAPTER FIVE          

How Many Experience Points For That? or, The Obligatory Bath-tub Scene

Foxglove awoke with Scintilla sitting on her chest, holding a hot cup of tea.  "'Bout time you woke up!  The rest of the camp has been up and running for hours!"

Foxglove took the tea.  The imp helped her get dressed and clambered up to her shoulder.  Then she opened the flap of her tent to a crowd scene.  "Where did all these people come from?"

Kitsune seemed to shimmer out of nothing at Foxglove's elbow.  "After you checked out last night, J'Mira and I backtracked those vamps.  Following the tracks of those three hellhorses, we found those wagons the vampires had been dragging around.  We also found all these people chained on a line.  According to them, the vampires have been raiding farmsteads, taking prisoners.  Apparently, they were raiding to pick up zombie slaves.  They would keep them alive, tapping them bit by bit for blood - after all, why waste time hunting, when you could keep the blood fresh?  They would turn the ones that were old and fading into zombies, and turn the young and attractive ones into vampires.  It seems that when cruelty, greed and bloodlust are part of your everyday 'life', vanity and snobbery just come naturally.  If there were kids, they'd keep one or two of the littlest ones in case they needed a quick sacrifice, and leave the larger ones chained in the house when they torched it."

"Anything interesting in the wagons?"

"Well, the first one was packed with coffins - the vampiric equivalent of a mobile home, I guess.  The second one had bushels of food for the still-living prisoners, a crateful of pawn-shop grade weapons - after all, they've been raiding farmsteads, not arsenals - a few baubles, that Sorceress' equipment and library-" Foxglove perked up when she heard that! "and the ugliest, vilest altar that I've ever seen."

"That Anti-Cleric was dragging around an altar?"

"Yep.  Apparently, he was very devout.  But then, I imagine that he got to 'lick the spoon', so to speak.  We torched it, first thing.  Only thing I've ever heard Theocles and Mornsong agree on.  Damned thing even screamed when Mornsong sprinkled its ashes with water from that Chalice of hers.  They even got along during the burial of the zombies and the spiking of the fallen vampires.  Since then, she and Theocles have been genteely wooing the survivors - she's trying to convert them to the worship of the Great Mother; he's trying to keep them in the fold.  It hasn't gotten to the point of nastiness.  Yet."

"Have they divided up the loot yet?"

Kitsune put on her poker face, held up two fingers and intoned, "The prisoners quarrel over their chains - will the shackles keep them warm?"  Then she bowed and all but teleported away.

Oh, lovely - a Zen wiseass.

Next, Foxglove found Sir Justin trying to coordinate the refugees as they torched the vampire's coffins.  "So, My Lord Paladin, what do you have in mind for these people?"

"Ah!  Good morning, Miss Foxglove!  Well, I hate to leave these simple people in the lurch, but our mission for the Church has a higher priority.  We'll see them safely to the nearest village, and leave them in the care of the parish priest.  I was thinking that we could donate the gold coins and bits we found in the Darkbrood's lair to help finance their recovery."

"Better just make it the bits, or Hargrim will set his own beard on fire."  One of the farmwives handed Foxglove a bowl of savory soup.  She took a spoonful.  "Mmmm!  Now this is good!"  She took another spoonful.  "Ah!  If one of the refugee women cooked this, we're keeping her!  As Kitsune might say, 'Gold is only metal, and jewels but stone, but a good cook is a true treasure!'"

"Acutally, I think it's more due to the fact that Lady Mornsong insisted on lacing the soup with water from that chalice of hers."

"Really?  I take back half the nasty things I've said about her."

"By the way, Miss Foxglove, I'm afraid that in order to get these people to civlization, we're going to have to temporarily commandeer your horse."

"Why?"

"Well, most of these people are exhausted and underfed, and have even been fed upon by vampires.  Even Lady Mornsong's purifying brew can't get them right enough to walk to the nearest village.  They'll have to ride in the wagons, and we'll need all the horses we can find to pull them."

"What about the oxen that were pulling them?"

"They're dead."

"The vampires killed them?"

"Yes.  Apparently weeks ago.  Theocles insisted on putting them to rest."

Foxglove crossed her eyes at this.  Undead oxen?  Zombie slaves?  This Dark Tower Thaumaturge was dangerous!  He was actually building an infrastructure to support his organization.  He was acting intelligently, and that's always a bad thing in bad guys.  Still!  She lifted up one leg.  "See these boots?  No matter what Nancy Sinatra says, they're not made for walking.  Sneaking, running, jumping and climbing, yes.  Walking mile after mile, no!  If you take my horse, I'm gonna need alternate transportation."  She brushed up against the paladin.  "Maybe you could let me ride in front of you, on your great big horse, hmmm?"  She looked up at him winsomely.

Justin blushed and hemmed, "Ahhhh, I'm afraid that Thunder wouldn't put up with the weight of two riders.  Warhorses are very touchy about that kind of thing."

Foxglove got a fresh bowl and stalked off.

She found Doctor Zohar and Theocles at the latter's tent, arguing.  On the table in front of them were laid several pieces of magical equipment, several scrolls and a couple of bound books.

She sat down.  "What's the hubub, bubs?"

Zohar turned to her, his not-quite-copyright-infringement face red with frustration.  "HE-" the doctor pointed at the priest, "wants to burn all the books!"

"They are abominations and works of heresy and lies.  They were written by Evil, to serve Evil, by the darkest of means.  While they could not corrupt me, they present a clear and present threat to you two practitioners of the Gray Path."   Theocles gave them both a glare that said that he thought that he was being quite charitible in assuming that they were only Gray, and not the Blackest of Black.

"They are information!" Zohar thundered.  "Beyond any spells we may learn from them, they might have valuable information that we will need!  If the GM lets us have this information, we have to use it!  Anything else is stupid!"

"Beyond their capacity for corrupting the learned, there are many tales of books of Dire Lore that pose a deadly threat by their very existence, even if unread!"

Zohar started to respond, but Foxglove cut him off with a shrill whistle.  "GUYS!  Please!  Sorry, Doc, but the good Brother has a point."  Theocles gloated, and opened his mouth, but she didn't surrender the floor.  "Look at this book!"  She picked up one book with a stitched together cover.  "That cover isn't leather, it's snake skin - or worse."  She opened the book, and ran a finger over one of the pages.  The writing was sloppy and wandered all over the page.  She flipped the page over - it was only written on one side, and much of the ink - if it was ink - showed through on the other side.  "Zohar, I don't think this page is parchment - I think it's tanned human skin.  I don't even think it was written on.  Judging by the irregularity of the script, I'd say that this was written on living skin and tattooed in.  Then the poor wretch was flayed alive, and the skin cured to make this parchment.  Maybe it's a trifle Lovecraftian of me, but I wouldn't want to sleep in the same house with it."  She dropped the book like it was contaminated - maybe it was.  "_Burn_ it?  I'd say bury it, drive a stake through it, and say a Prayer for the Dead over it!  Guys, let's split the difference - Theocles, bless all these books and scrolls.  If they react to the Blessing, they're yours to dispose of as you see fit; if they just stay put, then Zohar, Avalyn, and I will read through them to see if there's any relevant information.  Does that sound reasonable?"

Zohar picked up the book and checked out the pages.  He dropped it.  "Sounds good to me.  But if there's no unusual reaction to the blessing, then the books and scrolls are mine."

Foxglove corrected him.  "The party's.  Until there's a final division of the spoils."

Theocles must still have been tired from the last night, because he agreed.  He called Hermod, his acolyte, and they arranged a semi-formal blessing of the books.  As the light sprinkle of Holy Water hit the stitchwork bound book, it sprang open, and figure after wraith-like figure rose up out of the book.  When the last moaning specter floated off, the book burst into flames.  Zohar tried to put a postive spin on it.  "Well, that book was a gimme, anyway."

There were a few puffs of sulfurous smoke when the other texts were blessed, but even Theocles had to admit that those were probably just necromantic booby-traps being defused.

The rest of the magical equipment was too far from any of the adventurer's traditions to be of use, and too bulky to take along, so it was destroyed.  On a hunch, Foxglove had Lady Mornsong sprinkle water from her chalice over the Sorceress' ebony staff.  The ruby shattered, and the staff writhed like an impaled snake, before withering like a dead vine.

That settled, Foxglove brought up a topic of her own.  "Well, I have this small transportation problem..."

*****

Flying on a carpet was wonderful!  There was no road dust, the carpet was much more comfortable than a saddle, and you didn't have to listen to Avon trying to hit on Avalyn.  Or Kitsune.  Or J'Mira.  Or Oneself.  Foxglove paid her way by reading from the books and scrolls to Zohar as he drove the rug.  Indeed, the only problem was that the familiars didn't get along in such close quarters.

*****

Give him this, Dr. Zohar was a thorough reader.  He was the sort who went back to cover parts that he'd read again, on the chance that new information would put a new slant on a passage.  Or maybe he was just looking for loopholes.  Foxglove had a definite feeling that she was dealing with a Rules Lawyer looking for an edge.

*****

The nearest village was really a good sized walled town, with an actual church, a town hall and in all probability, a sewage problem.  Looking at the three to four-story tall houses all huddled close together, Foxglove was seized by an unexpected urge.  She'd give in to it, but she'd wait until well after dark.  If anything, it would probably be sweeter for the delay.

After putting the fate of the refugees in the hands of the local priests with a good-sized bag of gold bits and (over Hargrim's pained objections) a couple of gems to finance their resettlement, the party retired to the local inn to rest for the night.  J'Mira wasn't that jazzed about the thought of spending the night indoors.  She'd developed a real liking for sleeping under the stars, with only her wolves for warmth.  But, she'd had to send her friends into the woods when she went into the town, and sleeping alone in the inn's back yard had all the allure of going to the prom with a grandparent.

The inn only had so many rooms, so they had to double up.  Foxglove was paired with her tent-mate, Kitsune.  She bade her time, combing her hair, until the 'Monk' was busy, and then she was out the window, over the eave and onto the peak of the roof.  She looked out over the ill-lit townscape of steep gable roofs, towering chimneys and narrow streets.  Where J'Mira, Sir Justin, Hargim or Mornsong would have seen only a bleak obstacle course to be struggled over, she saw the greatest playground ever built.  There was only ONE way to go through a course like this - at top speed, unseen, and in complete silence!

She began to back up for her running start, one part of her brain calculating the most challenging path, when she backed into something!

She whirled around, rapier in her right hand, main gauche in her left, and barely managed to block the incoming naginata blade with both of them.  Looking past the locked steel, Foxglove stared into the astonished green eyes of Kitsune, in her ninja suit - if you can call what little she was wearing a suit.  "Kitsune?"

"Foxglove?"

It only took a second for the realization to settle in, that the 'monk' was on the roof for exactly the same reason.  Two minds with a single jones.  Foxglove smiled vixenishly; Kitsune waggled her eyebrows over her face mask.  It was mutually understood - the only thing better than a jog over the urban obstacle course would be a race through that course!

Foxglove took a look at the direction that Kitsune had been considering, and then pointed the way that she had been headed.  Kitsune nodded.  They set their marks on opposite side of the peak, and on an unspoken cue, started off.

They were across the roof in a dash, and kicked off the edge.  For a second, they hung side by side in the air, and then in tandem they landed on the roof across the alley.  A couple of shadowcats at play, they ducked through the nooks and cornices of the roofs of the neighborhood.  Kitsune touched Foxglove on the shoulder, and was off!  The silent game of tag went back and forth, in one shadow and out the other.  At first, Foxglove thought she had an advantage in her Cloak of Mists and Dark Elven boots, but Kitsune more than made up for that with her 'zen' abilities.  To make things more interesting, the hare would drop something in the path of the hound.  They added the element of taking a potted plant or other bit of loose bric-a-brack and putting it somewhere silly.  From roof to roof, they chased each other, occasionally breaking off to 'count coup' on an unsuspecting late night pedestrian by tapping them on the shoulder.  It was understood without speaking that if they were seen or heard, they lost.

They circled the town, leaving a trail of 'ghostly signs' behind them.  Finally, they swooped in the inn room window as one, and collapsed on their beds.  Lying there, they finally let out the laughter that they'd been holding in since they started.  They laughed themselves out, until Foxglove reached over and crooked a little finger at the ninja.  Kitsune looked at it a second and then hooked her own pinkie with Foxglove's.

Kitsune pulled her mask down and gasped, "Man!  That was fun!"

"And you know what the best part is?"

"What?"

"All the adrenaline and none of that asinine 'extreme athlete' posturing!"

They both cracked up again at this.  Kitsune exhaled loudly, and said, "If this dinky little town was this much fun, can you imagine what a fantasy world city would be like?  Towers!"

"Gargoyles!"

"Belfries!"

"Rookeries!"

"Gothic cathedrals!"

"Giant statues!"

"Monuments!"

"Necropoli!"

"Treasuries!"

"Prisons!"

"City Walls!"

"Guardsmen!"

"Watchdogs!"

"Fiendish traps!"

"Guardian beasts!"

In unison they screamed, "All the good stuff!  Eeeee!"

Scintilla looked indulgently down at them from her perch atop the dresser as they cracked up again.  "Well, you two definitely worked up a sweat!  Why don't you both go take a nice hot bath?"

Kitsune jerked up her head.  "This place has a bath tub?"

Scintilla snorted.  "And you call yourself a ninja!  Didn't you do a preliminary search of the premises?  MY mistress did!"

Kitsune looked daggers at the gasping Foxglove.  "And you didn't tell me?"

"It didn't come up!  Besides, I figured you knew!  Big ol' wooden tub, looks like it used to be wine tun or something.  They have a hot mineral spring that comes up from somewhere, and they pipe it into the tub.  It looks big enough to hold about six adults."

"Ooooh, then what are we doing, wasting time hanging around here?  Knock on Avalyn and J'Mira's door, and let's go!"

Foxglove did, and the Ranger was all for it, but the Druidess' handmaid merely mentioned that her mistress might partake later.  Foxglove made a moue and stuck out her tongue at the closing door. 

Kitsune had her hair up and was wrapped in a towel, with a bowl holding soap, a sponge and bathing oils when Foxglove got back.  Foxglove told her familiar, "Show her where the tub is, Scin.  I'll change and show J'Mira the way."

Kitsune was already in the tub luxuriating, when Foxglove and J'Mira got there.  Foxglove noticed that J'Mira stepped onto the bench within the tub with the towel still around her, turned around and used the towel to screen herself as she lowered until all but the very tops of her breasts were discretely underwater.  And then noticed that she herself did exactly the same thing.  Hmmm.

The three peacefully relaxed for a while, when J'Mira sighed, "Oh, man, I have got to get one of these programs!  I wonder if they sell it for the PC."

Not bothering to open her eyes, Foxglove said, "Sorry!  With output this good, the graphics alone must require a mainframe!"

"Damn!  Ain't that the way it always is?"

They soaked in companionable silence for a while, when Kitsune decided to go to the next level.  "Ladies!"  J'Mira and Foxglove heard the sound of glass chiming.

They opened their eyes, and saw a wooden bowl floating in the warm water.  Kitsune was filling three brandy snifters with a purplish liquid.  She put two of the filled glasses in the wooden bowl, keeping the third for herself, placed the mostly full bottle in the bowl as well, and pushed the drink cart over to J'Mira.  J'Mira took a glass and passed the bowl along.  Foxglove picked up her glass and took a sip.  Mmmm!  A very good plum brandy!  She sighed, "Yep, even if a PC had the RAM and processing power for this, there's no way the big boys would let it out of their hands just yet!"  A nagging unfocused worry skittered across the back of her conciousness, but was gone before she could nail it.

J'Mira grumped, "Truth, sister, truth!"

Just then, Lady Mornsong and her handmaiden came into the tub room.  Her Ladyship took a look at the three of them in the single large tub, and her peaches and cream complexion went from pale to ghost-like.  "Oh!  I didn't realize that there would be only one tub!"

J'Mira raised her glass to the newcomer.  "C'mon in, the water's fine!"  In an aside, she added, "I've always wanted to say that!"

Kitsune added,  "Sure!  There's more than enough room for one more!  Maidservant, scare up another brandy snifter from the barroom!"

Avalyn did her best to pretend to be gracious.  "I'm sorry, but I'm used to bathing alone.  Come, Mirabelle, I'll bathe later.  After the tub has run itself clean for a while."  The cute little dragonet gave them a hiss from Mornsong's robed shoulder as she left.

J'Mira humfed at the retreating slender figure.  "Yeah, well, let's see who sleeps next to the open window t'night, Missy!"  Kitsune just stuck out her tongue.

Foxglove lazed back and took a sip of brandy.  "Oh, dear, I wonder how deeply we've been made?"

J'Mira raised an eyebrow.  "Made?  Whaddya mean, made, Foxy?"

Before answering, Foxglove shifted her eyes from left to right about the room.  "Scintilla, are we alone?"  The imp merely flickered a minute eyelash in the direction of a dark knothole in the wood of the wall.  A dagger materialized in Foxglove's hand and she sent it into the knothole.  There was a sound behind the wood that faded.  "Six will get you Nine, that it was that gawddamm Dwarf!"

J'Mira looked at her askance.  "You brought a knife into the tub?"

"Sure!  Doesn't everybody?"  She turned to the imp.  "Any more?"

The imp grinned and used her tail to point out the darkness under a chair in the corner of the tub-room.  Kitsune reached into her hair-knot and sent a line of spike shuriken that drove Dr. Zohar's black cat familiar out from under the chair and through the small ventilation window near the top of the wall.

Foxglove sipper her brandy.  "So much for Peeping Tom night." 

Then she let a knowing smirk pass over her face.  "Oh, I think that M'Lady passed on the tub because I think she realises, on some level - I'm not sure which - that she is the only female Player in this game."

Both Kitsune and J'Mira's faces were as if cast in stone.  "What do you mean 'only female Player', Foxy?", J'Mira asked in a carefully neutral tone.

Foxglove gave them both a broad worldly smile.  "Welllll...based on the statistics regarding the male/female ratio of Users on the 'Net, and similar statistics regarding the same ratio regarding Role Playing Gamers, _and_ the way that you got into this tub, I'd say that the odds are there are  _No_ female Players in this tub right now.  Three female _characters_, but no female Players.  I don't think that Avvy gets it up here-" she tapped her temple with a finger, "but I think she gets it here."  She thumped her stomach with a fist.

Both Kitsune and J'Mira had looks that suggested that they were going to stick to their story, thick or thin.  Not that Foxglove blamed them - getting caught pretending to be a girl is one of the most embarrassing things that can happen to a guy.

"Oh?  Going to be stubborn?" Foxglove raised a single shapely leg out of the water.  She poured a trickle of oil on her shin, and languidly caressed the oil into the skin of her leg, sensuously running her fingers over the curve of her calf and thigh, until the leg was sticking straight up out of the water.  Both her tub-mates watched the performance transfixed, like deer caught in headlights.

With a heavy-lidded smirk of smug certainty, Foxglove said, "Well, Guys, want me to do the other one?"

As one, they both said, "Oh, Yesssss..."

The smirk never left her face as she watched those four eyes follow every detail of her repeat performance.  With a lop-sided grin, Foxglove said, "Now, are there any more denials?" and lowered her leg.

J'Mira lowered into the water until just her eyes were unsubmerged, and glared at Foxglove while blowing angry bubbles.  Kitsune just made a moue.

"Ah, mellow out, guys!  It's a role playing game!  The entire point is that we get to play people that we're not!  Heck, stepping out of who you really are, is half the fun!"  A knowing grin spread across her face.  "Oh, and speaking of fun, I call dibs on the Paladin."

J'Mira rose out of the water a bit.  "Hunh?" she grunted, her face a puzzlement.

"Oh, just sorting out who we're going to have sex with tonight, of course!"

J'Mira almost dropped her brandy in the water.  "What are you talking about?"

Kitsune had apparently decided to drop any pretense.  "Get real, Jammie-poo!  We're sitting in a hot-tub, drinking brandy - with killer output like that, do you honestly think the programmers left out a SEX sub-routine?  By the way, Foxy, I call dibs on the Sorcerer.  Maybe we can make a little magic right here in this tub!  Oh, don't look so stricken, 'Mira!  It's a computer game!  It doesn't matter who's on the other side of the computer screen!  Just have fun!"  She leaned closer, sardonic amusement sparkling in her emerald eyes.  "And, admit it - this is the closest that you will ever come to knowing what the female end of sex is really about.  And even if it turns out not to be your cup of tea, just think of the advantage that it would give you in dealing with the opposite sex!"

J'Mira relaxed a bit and thought it over as she took a good slug of brandy.  She looked over her silent bath-mates, first Foxglove, then Kitsune.  Then she leaned back and grinned roguishly.  "Why not?  I think that Galliard has been lobbying hard enough - let's see how he does when it actually drops into his lap!"

Foxglove and Kitsune raised their glasses in salute to their friend's decision.  "While," Kitsune drawled, "I think that our 'Bard of Avon' will be only too glad to have you pop into his bed, don't be too disappointed if he's expecting M'Lady Avalyn to be knocking on his door."

Foxglove grumped, "Gawd, duelling Ren-Fairies!  Like he has a chance!  Archimedes never had a lever long enough, or a fulcrum large enough to pry those knees apart!  One of the first things she told me was that she's a Virgin Priestess, and Proud Of It.  Probably making a virtue of a neccessity.  Oh, well, Bon Chance, Jam-Pot!  Better the harp-player than Hargrim the munchkin!"

J'Mira blinked.  "Munchkin?  I thought that he was a Dwarf!"

Both Foxglove and Kitsune stared at J'Mira.  Kitsune leaned forward a bit and gently asked, "J'Mira, honey?  How many role playing games have you run in?"

J'Mira looked rather embarrassed and tried to hide behind her brandy snifter, "Um, this is my first.  To tell the truth, I never really thought it would be this much fun."

Foxglove roared with laughter.  "God's TEETH!  She's a Virgin!"

Kitsune patted her hand.  "There, there, it could be worse - you're only a virgin once, but you're a munchkin until somebody kicks some sense into your head - and not always then."

Foxglove tittered herself out, and explained.  "J'Mira, honey, role playing games have been around for more than twenty-five years.  In that time, players have noticed certain kinds of personality types for other gamers.  When we say that somebody's a 'Munchkin', we mean that they're a certain kind of jerk.  It originally meant little kids who bought D&D books, and immediately wanted to play 25th level fighter/magic user/thief/cleric/ranger/druid/assassin/necromancer/demi gods, who carried soul-stealing swords and rode dragons.  Nowadays, it means anybody who just goes out doing whatever tickles their fancy, no matter how it screws things up for any body else - cheating on dice rolls, stealing from other player-characters, picking fights when they should be using diplomacy, and like that, mostly because they want to win.  And to quote Gore Vidal, 'It is not enough that I win, but everyone else must lose'.

"While it still implies immaturity, some of the biggest munchkins you'll ever meet are thirty-plus, two hundred, fifty pounds-plus, with long beards, and decades of gaming under their belts.  J'Mira, your mistake with the Darkbrood - about going too far ahead?  That was a perfectly understandable beginner's mistake.  After that, you performed like a Pro!  Hargrim charging forward on that gawdawful frog of his?  Classic Munchkin.  Believe me, that asshole thinks that the solution to all problems lies in his smashing it to bits with that hammer of his, and if he can't, then it's So Unfair, and the GM won't let him win!"

Kitsune grinned.  "Every gamer I've ever met has at least one 'Goddamn Munchkin' story."

J'Mira kicked back and took another sip.  "Are there any other of these 'types' in the group?"

Kitsune pondered for a moment.  "Well, I'd say that Theocles is your basic 'I-gotta-be-in-charge' type, but I'd hardly say that was just a gamer thing.  That type pops up everywhere."

"Dr. Zohar is a classic 'Rules Lawyer' - they're the type that read the rules books and Creature listings-"

"Creature listings?" J'Mira asked.

Foxglove nodded, "Almost every game will have descriptions of the various kinds of antagonists - human and non-human - that a character will run into.  These descriptions list how many hit points (that's the game term for how much damage a thing can take) it has, how much damage it can dish out and what kind, what sort of special abilities it has, and so on.  Your basic rules lawyer will read the rules and Creature listings looking for loopholes and weaknesses they can exploit.  And when they find one, they keep it hid, until they can use it to their maximum advantage.  Believe me, Supreme Court deliberations have nothing on a Rules Lawyer trying to get the GM - who is supposed to be GOD - to let them get away with something."

J'Mira thought a bit.  "Okay, the Paladin is pretty obvious - he's your basic, 'Dudley Do-Right' type straight-arrow, right?"

Kitsune nodded.  "Yeah, but give him his due - most guys who play Paladins are either straight arrows, or they're the most obnoxious Glory Hogs you'll ever see - another type, pretty self-explanatory.  Justin is a pretty fair Straight Arrow-type.  Better that for the Paladin, than a Glory Hog, or another ecumenical Al Haig-like Theocles, or God Help Us All - another munchkin!"  They all shuddered at that last thought.

J'Mira smiled knowingly.  "And what about my snuggle-bunny for the night, Avon?"

Without even looking at each other, Kitsune and Foxglove said in unison, "Drama Major," and left it at that.  Though Foxglove did add, "Expect a lotta poetry afterwards, honey."

"And my roommate, the high-and-mighty Lady Mornsong?"

Foxglove quirked a one-sided smile.  "Oh, she's a text-book 'Pretty Pagan', or what I like to call a 'Graduate of the Plush Unicorn School of Witchcraft'.  I know a few real-life Neo-Pagans, and 'Pretty Pagans' like Avalyn drive them up the wall.  They want everything to be like a Harlequin Romance, and they seem to get their ideas of what nature is like from Walt Disney.  Not even the wildlife movies, but the cartoons like Bambi!  If she runs true to type, I'd say that she's anywhere between twelve and thirty-five, is at least thirty pounds overweight-"

"Stringy hair and glasses!  Let's not forget the hair and glasses!" Kitsune interrupted.

"Yep, the hair and glasses, and probably bad skin, too.  As player types go, they're not that bad, just annoying, especially if they're the evangelizing type."

J'Mira looked at both of them over the rim of her glass.  "And what about you two, hmmm?

"Why, WE-", Foxglove put one arm around Kitsune, and pulled her to her side, "are the very souls of honor, virute and wisdom!  You can place yourself entirely in our hands, trusting us implicity, heeding our counsel in all things, and buying us large gooey frozen desserts!"  They both smiled widely in utterly inconvincing mock sincerity.

J'Mira's only reply was a double-handed splash, which of course led to a rousing splash war without ally or quarter.  By the time they splashed themselves out, they were giggling uncontrollably.  While Foxglove's hair was soaked, J'Mira was spared due to it's short length; oddly, Kitsune's long raven tresses somehow were bone dry.  Foxglove glared at her.  "What's that?" indicating the hair.  "Some zen ninja trick to avoid split ends?"  Kitsune merely looked inscrutible.

"Ninja?  I thought she was some kind of 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Drag-queen' kind of monk," J'Mira said.

"What?  Didn't you catch the smoke bombs?"  Foxglove raised an eyebrow.  "Or the trick staff?  Or the small arsenal of throwing knives she has stashed on every part of her body?  Those are all classic ninja bits!  By the bye, Kitsune - are you?"

J'mira interrupted, "Excuse me?  Is she what?"

"Is she a Kitsune?"

"Is she herself?  What is this, some kind of Abbot & Costello routine?"

"Ah, J'Mira, in Japanese folklore, were-critters aren't people that turn into animals, they are animals that turn into people!  While there aren't any were-wolves, there are were-badgers, were-cats, and, of course, were-foxes, called kitsune.  Kitsune are considered classic tricksters, and, according to some tales, taught the first ninjas the arts of stealth and deception.  So, Kit, any pointed ears under that oh-so-dry 'do?"

J'Mira snickered, pointed at Foxglove and Kitsune and started roaring with laughter.  Foxglove looked at Kitsune, who just shrugged.  When she laughed herself out, J'Mira explained, "I took my character's name from a corruption of a Zulu phrase, which pretty much means 'to try something risky just for the sake of getting away with it, and get away with it', but translates directly as 'Fox-foolish'."

So, Foxglove, the 'Were-fox', and 'Fox-foolish' looked at each other.  In perfect unison, they all said, "The Fox Sisters!  Eeeeee!" and clasped hands in a moment of bonding.

They chatted gaily for a while, killing the bottle of brandy.  Then, a little bolder and a lot less stable thanks to the brandy, they wrapped their towels around themselves and teetered off toward their various self-appointed trysts.

Foxglove went to her room and fished out her mirror.  Directing the mirror's reflection toward the room that Justin was sharing with his 'squire', she checked the scene out to see that the coast was clear.  The squire was safely tucked in his bed - Aaawww.  Justin was kicking back cleaning his chainmail, with his tunic off.  Ooohhh, nice chest!  This was going to be fun!  Foxglove took few deep breaths to steady herself, and prepared a SLEEP spell.  No sense in having the squire wake up and embarrass everybody.

Measurably steadier with the Sleep spell stored away, Foxglove put her cloak around her.  A touch of surprise always helps with skittish types like Justin.  She told Scintilla to stay in the room.  The imp agreed, but was pouting as Foxglove left.

She walked up to Justin's door and knocked gently.  As he opened the door, Foxglove awarded him with a smouldering smile.  He was gracious.  She was coy.  He was kind.  She was playful.  He was understanding.  She was roguish.  He closed the door.  She was on the wrong side of it.

As she trudged down the hallway, Hargrim opened his door, wearing only a towel around his waist.  As he took the cigar out of his mouth to say something, Foxglove cut him off.  "Stuff it, Spudwad!  I may be on the rebound, but I'm not desperate!"

Back in her room, Foxglove found Kitsune sitting on her bed, looking mad enough to spit tacks.

"What's the matter, Kit?  You get turned down, too?"

"It never came up.  You ever watch the original Star Trek?"

"Who hasn't?  But why-"

"Remember that episode with Gary Seven?  The one with a young Terri Garr?"

Foxglove furrowed her brow.  "Kinda.  Waaaiiit - isn't that the one with the black cat-"

"That at the very end turns into this hot, rather feline woman?  Yep."

"You mean - Zohar and...?"

"Uh-hunh."

Foxglove just stood there for a second and then blandly said, "Well, that's one way to get a some pussy..." [Insert Rimshot Here]

Foxglove looked at Kitsune fuming on the bed.  'Waitaminnit,' she thought, 'I'm standing here in only a towel and a Cloak of Mists, horny and mad because a man refused me, standing next to an exquisite asian girl - similarly clad - who is also horny and mad because a man refused her.  What, Am I Stupid Or Something?'

She sat next to Kitsune, and consoled her.  And Kitsune consoled her back.  As a matter of fact, they consoled each other four times, and another time after they woke up, as a pick-me-up.

CHAPTER SIX

          Information, Please

The next morning, as Foxglove and Kitsune were cuddling, Dr. Zohar was going over the scrolls that had been stored in the vampire's wagon.  He didn't much like what he was reading.  He needed more information.  But the only way to find the information was to read the voluminous scrolls until he found what he wanted, which could take days.  And the party wouldn't allow him that much time.  So as noxious as it was-

He picked up the scrolls and tomes, and took them down to the common room of the inn.

When Foxglove and Kitsune came down for breakfast, Zohar was seated at the long table, the various bits of literature that they'd collected so far piled in front of him.  He told them that he had something important and that he didn't want to repeat it for everyone that came down on their own.  J'Mira came down, and there was a relaxed, contented look on her face.  Both Kitsune and Foxglove took this in and silently agreed to grill J'Mira at length, once they were alone.  When the last person - to wit, Galliard - struggled down, Zohar began.  Taking in Avon's state, Foxglove and Kitsune decided to get J'Mira alone at the very first opportunity.

"Okay, people, I think that I've found a major problem.  We were each given a major Power Item - the most obvious being Hargrim's hammer.  Sir Justin has his shield, Lady Avalyn has that marvelous chalice of hers, and Brother Theocles has his Holy Symbol.  I admit that I haven't quite figured out what Kitsune, Avon, J'Mira, or Foxglove's power items are, or what their powers would be."  He raised an eyebrow at the ones he'd mentioned.  They declined comment. "My power item is, of course, my Dragon-Staff.

I think that in order to achieve our common goals, we will need all the power items, and in working order.  But there is a matter of charges to consider.  If my observations are correct, Hargrim's hammer can only be used as a thunderbolt three times a day."  For which wisdom, Foxglove was duly grateful to the GM.  "Lady Avalyn's chalice requires a material to function - water, wine, or some other liquid.  Both Sir Justin's shield and Theocles' Holy Symbol appear to be conditional, responding to genuine need.  But my Dragon-Staff has none of these limitations.  It works when I want it to, as often as I want it to.  But lately, I've sensed that my Staff's power is fading.  I believe that my Staff has a set number of charges, and these charges are running out.  If my Staff becomes useless, it may jeopardize the entire mission - as I said, I believe that every power item will be needed at some point."

Foxglove snorted over her tea.  "So, trot out your Green Lantern and chant, 'In the brightest day/In the darkest night...' to recharge it!"

Kitsune slapped her shoulder, and Avalyn chided her that this was a serious situation.  But Zohar raised his eyebrows, "No, silly as the imagery was, there is a point there.  If every power item is required to fulfill the mission, then there must be a method of recharging my staff.  So, I think that there must be a mention of what that method is, either in these scrolls and tomes we've collected, or in the archives of the local temple."

Theocles stood up.  "Very well then, I will go to the temple and ask the local curate to let me look at the archives."

"Take the Illiterates with you," Avalyn suggested, pointing at Hargrim, J'Mira, and Sir Justin, "I doubt that the GM will be satisfied with just having you poke around a dusty library for a few hours.  There will probably be some kind of challenge there, and they can't help we literates read through these scrolls."

"HEY!  Who are you calling Illiterate!" J'Mira bridled.  "Just 'cause I'm-"

Kitsune placed a calming hand on J'Mira's shoulder.  "Peace, sister.  In this world, literacy is rare.  Only a few, who need it for their professions - to wit, Magickers and Clerics - can read.  Even Avon, whose business is information, is illiterate, because the Bards of Europe were from a pre-literate tradition.  So were the Druids, but Avalyn is also a Sorceress, so she can read.  As a Nun, I can read, but I don't read those barbaric chicken-scratches that these round-eyed savages use instead of the graceful ideograms of truly civilized people."  Kitsune looked smugly at the less-than-amused 'literates'.  "And Avalyn is right - it's unlikely that the answer will just be lying there waiting to be found, so we will need as many people there as possible.  But that'll still leave our magic-users staying here, reading these scrolls.  We'll be vulnerable to magical attack.  Any ideas?"  

Zohar raised a finger.  "Why don't we send our familiars along with you?  We sorcerers have a mental link with our familiars.  With them along, they can look for any signs or clues that Theocles wouldn't know about, and if anything pops up, they will let us know.  With my flying carpet, we can be anywhere in this town in minutes."

"Better!" Foxglove interjected.  She pulled a Magic Scroll out of her travelling bag.  "Teleportation Spell, good for up to five people.  If Scintilla lets me know, I can have all three of us Mages at the spot in the blink of a gnat's eye."

It was generally agreed to be a good idea.  Scintilla clambered up Sir Justin's side, possessively wrapped her tail around his neck, and blew the too-late dragonet a razzberry.  The drakeling took a perch around the bard's neck with an air of sufferance.  Zohar's cat silently curled up on Kitsune's shoulder, a relationship that the 'monk' took as a zen riddle.

As Mornsong's ladysmaid brought them some tea to help while away their studies, Foxglove watched the rest of the group leave, with an air of amusement.

"What's so funny?" Zohar asked.

"Oh, watching them go off, I was reminded of a gaming story I once heard.  A party of adventurers is approaching a town.  The party consists of a paladin in shining silver armor and purple robes trimmed with ermin, on a huge white warhorse with a flowing mane and tail, and barding and dressing to match it's rider; a shaman in jaguar skins and a quatl headress, on a large demi-deific feathered serpent; a sorcerer in robes of night, with stars shining in them, riding a stormcloud; a cleric in cardinal's robes, complete with miter, with an entourage of lesser functionaries, including an altarboy swinging a censor; an insectizoid ninja riding a giant preying mantis; and a half-ork/half-sprite berserker in punk's leathers and purple mohawk, but with a pair of polychromatic wings out the back, riding a giant barded war-turtle.  The party leader says, 'We ride into town inconspicuously.'"

The others gave the story a polite chuckle - they'd probably already heard it, but still - and turned to their readings.

*****

Sometime in the afternoon, as Foxglove was working down some very tough bread with some inferior soup, Zohar and Mornsong were quibbling about a mention in the 'diary' of the vampire sorceress.  The bone of contention was a referrence to a 'Wyrdling Three', and the implications of 'Hag'.  Zohar stopped in mid-quibble.  Then Foxglove and Avalyn also heard the distant cries of their familiars.  Foxglove had a brief flash of ruined masonry and timbers, of shouting and confusion.

Zohar and Mornsong scrambled for their travelling bags, as Foxglove reached for the Teleportation Scroll.  She unrolled it and chanted,
Slip the latch, unlock the Door,
I can no longer tarry.
By the power of eldritch Lore,
I board the mystic ferry,
And I am here no more!

The world blurred around them, and suddenly the three mages were standing in front of a half-timbered building that had a hole a semi truck could have driven through.

"Scintilla!" Foxglove shouted.  "J'Mira!  Kitsune!  Justin!"  Sword drawn, she advanced into the rubble.  Hargrim came trotting out through a gape in the wrack, his arms full of scrolls.

Seeing Foxglove, he brightened.  "Ah!  You're here!"  He handed his armload over to her.  "Take these!"

Looking at one of the scrolls rather askance, she said, "What Happened here?  Did something attack?"

The Dwarf shrugged and said, "Something like that."  Then he headed back into the building.

Zohar saw something that interested him, and grabbed one of the scrolls.  Avalyn cuffed him in the shoulder.  "Don't you think that we should find out what's happened to our other comrades, before we start checking out the booty?"

For once, Foxglove was with the Elf.

She carefully picked her way into the wreckage.  "Scintilla!  Are you in here?"

"Mistresssss!" came a thin piping wail from one side.  Foxglove pushed aside some rubble to uncover her battered imp.  Scintilla gave a glad whimper and fainted.  Foxglove took the tiny figure and cradled her in the crook of her arm.  Looking around, she began calling for the others.

"Foxxxyyy!" came J'Mira's enraged roar.  Foxglove skipped over a fallen portion in the direction of J'Mira's voice.  She found them - J'Mira, Theocles, Hermod, Avon, Kitsune and two local clerics - all huddled under Sir Justin's shield, which the paladin was straining to use to hold up a large portion of the collapsed roof.

Foxglove called over her shoulder, "Zohar!  Get your Green Lantern ass in here and get this rubble offa them!"  She reached in and managed to get Kitsune out.  Together they began trying to dislodge as much debris from the paladin's shield as she could.

Zohar showed up, but instead of using his staff, he used a regularly cast spell to levitate the wrack.  When enough weight was off the shield, Justin was able to dump the rest of the rubble and let the others out.  Avalyn excavated her dragonet from under the beam that it was trapped under, and brought out her chalice.  As she rather loudly made a point of not making an issue of her healing the wounds of the Church on it's own grounds, Zohar's cat crawled out from under the rubble and begged a sip of solace.

As the battered survivors were brought back to full Hit Points, Foxglove asked again and again what had happened, but other concerns interfered.  Then Hargrim came up out of a stairwell, a stuffed bag over one shoulder, a keg of something under his other arm.  The Curate bolted up straight and thundered at the Dwarf, "YOU!  You vile, twisted lump of corruption!  You mad, thieving-"

"Hey!  I resemble that remark!" interrupted Foxglove.

"Mass of filth!  I curse you!  In the name of-"

Hargrim dropped the keg and lashed out with his hammer at one of the few remaining load-bearing columns still left in the church.  The Curate continued to evoke his anathema until a piece of brick beaned him.  The entire party barely managed to scramble out of the collapsing building before the west wing fell completely, taking the bell tower with it in a clanging cacophony.

A crowd of townspeople gathered around the wreckage of their beloved spiritual haven.  Foxglove put down the cleric she'd been helping out of the building and turned to the Dwarf.  "Okay, Rootwart!  What was all that inside?  What did you do?"

Hargrim took his lit stogie from out of his pocket and took a quick puff.  "The Padre here wouldn't let us into the 'Secure Archive'.  And you just know that the only copy of what Zohar needs is in there, and some other kickass stuff, as well.  So, I hadda put the fear of somethin' besides HIS God inta him, thass all."

Even Avalyn was aghast.  "So, you tear down an entire Church?"

"Hey, it got the job done, didn't it?  What were we supposed to do?  Go pussyfooting around on some asshole side-quest to a side-quest, or come back in the dead of night and steal them?"  He looked at Foxglove.  "Oh, of course that's what you'd want to do!"  He crossed his arms with the air of one who is much put upon.

Around them, the crowd was getting the wrong idea - or worse, they were getting the right idea.  Angry mutters and angrier gestures began making the rounds.  Foxglove looked around and saw a lynch mob or worse brewing.  She slapped Galliard on the shoulder.  "Avon, you're our PR department, calm these people down."  The bard strummed his harp and went to work.  Then she said to Theocles, "Brother, talk to your collegue, convince him that Hargrim is a dangerous moron - shouldn't be hard, and it ain't technically a lie - and we're taking him to a well-padded asylum, or something.  Just talk him out of slapping a curse you can't lift on the Dwarf, or siccing that mob on us.  We need the little brain-donor, like it or not."  Then she turned to the Paladin.  "Justin, keep the Tater-tot and this crowd away from each other.  We're in enough trouble for wrecking a church, we don't want a massacre on our hands as well.  Just get him out of town without a fight!"  The paladin nodded and stood behind the Dwarf.

Hargrim bridled, "Hey!  Who died and made you Hillary Clinton?"

Foxglove reached down, grabbed one of the large braids of his beard, and pulled him up off his feet.  "Here, hold this."  She handed the struggling Dwarf over to J'Mira.  With Hargrim securely without leverage, Foxglove removed his wide belt with a single fluid movement and slapped it over J'Mira's shoulder.  She told the Ranger, "Put this on.  If I'm reading the situation correctly, this is a Belt of Strength, and Mighty Mite here can't use his hammer without it.  Without his hammer, I doubt he'll be quite as quick to do something stupid."

She clapped her hands and addressed the entire party.  "Okay!  Here's the Plan!  The Main Party will escort Spudley here out of town and go North from town a ways.  The Stealth Squad-" she indicated Kitsune, J'Mira and herself, "will go back to the Inn and get the horses and all our stuff, and find you.  Mornsong, can your dragonet talk?"

"No, SweetEmber can only sing like a bird."

"All right, send SweetEmber, along with Scintilla, ahead to the Inn to let your handmaid and Justin's squire know to start packing.  Scintilla will do the talking, SweetEmber <yech!> will back her up."

Theocles bridled at this, "Wait a minute!  I'm in charge here!"

Foxglove crossed her arms and shrugged.  "Fine!  I hate being the party leader, anyway!  You come up with a plan!"

The Cleric looked around, saw his fuming collegues and the way the crowd was fulminating.  The efforts of the bard had kept it from escalating, but it's hard to convince people that everything's all right when their cherished temple lies in ruins right behind you.  Theocles made a disgusted noise and gestured at the druidess.

The drakeling flew off with the imp on it's back, neither very happy about the situation.

Foxglove reached out and touched Hargrim on the head.  "CLOUD OF CONCEALMENT!" she encanted, anchoring the illusory fog on the Dwarf.  With a gesture, Foxglove and Kitsune took to the roofs, hauling J'Mira up after them.

*****

The Belt of Strength gave J'Mira the edge she needed to keep up with her Fox-Sisters.  But what they saw as a playground, she saw as an ordeal.  She was breathing hard when they pulled down into Foxglove and Kitsune's room.  She took a few minutes to catch her breath before going down to the stables to help Karl, Justin's squire, get the hor- er, animals ready to travel.

*****

The horses and the deer were ready, but the frog was still squatting in it's stall.  Karl gestured helplessly at the monstrosity, which only slowly blinked one eye, and then the other.  J'Mira carefully approached the absurdity and tried to reach out with her mind.  It only looked at her stolidly.  Then she felt the gold band around her forehead somehow come to life.  Suddenly, she understood the frog's need to stay where there was food.  She understood the frog would only leave if the stubby one with the beard told it to - though for the life of her, she couldn't understand why.  She reached out again through the diadem, and conceptualized taking the frog to the stubby idiot.  It needed a rider to give it direction.  She sighed and reluctantly climbed into the awkward saddle.  With a jerk, the frog hopped out of its stall and into the courtyard.

At the desk of the Inn, Foxglove slapped down a tooled leather purse.  "I think that this will pay for our lodgings."  She produced a glittering emerald.  "And I think that this will pay for your silence."

The four women and the squire quickly put a ramshackle train together, with J'Mira riding the frog and Foxglove riding the carpet.

Once they were a safe mile out of town, J'Mira turned to Foxglove and said, "Hey, Fearless Leader!  I just spotted a small problem with your Grand Scheme!  How are we gonna find the others?  It'll take me forever to find them following tracks, and if we have another Random Encounter, without the others, we're Fox Chowder!"

Foxglove floated down on the carpet and smiled.  "Oh, Ye of little faith!"  She turned to the dragonet.  "SweetEmber, go find your mistress!"  The drakeling sped off.

J'Mira hopped on one leg with frustration.  "You're letting it get away!  Now, how are we gonna find them?"

Foxglove's grin widened.  "I never intended to follow it.  I just wanted the damn iguana out of my hair."  She reached into her bag and pulled out her hand mirror.  "I didn't want the dragonling - or more to the point, her mistress - to know about this.  This-" she indicated the hand mirror, "is my power item."  She looked over her shoulder, but the lady's maid and the squire were safely out of earshot.  "It's a hand-held magic mirror that can find things; y'know 'Mirrror, mirror', and all that?  I can search around, or it can find people and things that I know well."  She concentrated on the looking glass, and the image of Sir Justin swam into view.  He was standing in a woods, near the edge of a clearing.  He was arguing with Mornsong and Hargrim.  She pulled the focus of the scrying back, and got a more scenic view of their location.  "J'Mira, can you call one of your wolves or your eagle and have them find that place?"

"Better!"  J'Mira focused through the gold band and made contact with Eldritch.  She looked through his eyes and scanned the countryside from on high.  She almost lost herself in the exhileration of true, unfettered flight.  But then she spotted the wood and the clearing and even a few flashes that might be Galliard's bright red cloak.  She called the eagle to her, and then the wolves as well.  Then she retreated back into the cramped confines of her own body.  She pointed in that direction.  "That way." 

Kitsune and Foxglove took her at her word.

Foxglove looked in the mirror again, and returned its gaze to Sir Justin.  Her face softened for a moment as she watched him pound away at a point with Hargrim.  She could almost hear him say, "Would they just up and leave us, Vargrimson?"

Then she heard the Dwarf whine, "Because Foxglove's a thief, y'idjit!  She Steals!  That's what she does!  And she has ALL our STUFF!  She even ripped off my Belt of Strength right in front of your eyes, making my hammer Useless!  And she has those two other bitches in her pocket!  But you're gonna trust her to hunt around and FIND us, aren't you?"

"Which is exactly my point - she has to find us first!  She must-"

Foxglove interrupted this by saying into the glass, "Awww, Justin!  I didn't know that you cared!"

Justin whipped his head around, looking for her.  "Foxglove!  Stop playing around!  Show yourself!"

"Sorry, sweetie!  Can't!  I'm not really there!  It's a magic thing!  But J'Mira, Kitsune, Mirabelle, Karl and I got out unscathed.  Tell Avalyn to expect her dragonet soon, it's on its way.  We have a location for you, expect us in-" she looked at J'Mira.  J'Mira gestured.  "Figure about two hours, give or take.  Oh, and tell Toadwart that I heard what he said.  Byyyiiieee!"  With that, she finished by kissing Justin's reflection.  The Paladin reacted as if he'd been kissed.  Foxglove stifled a wandering whim as to what else she could do to him from afar with the mirror.  She gestured the splinter party forward, and the went on.

*****

"You did WHAT?" screamed the Dwarf.

"And here we thought that we had a monopoly on that phrase in regards to him," Foxglove said in an aside to J'mira, who stifled a laugh.  Then, directly to the Dwarf, she continued.  "As I was saying to our Cleric, I left a purse of about a hundred Gold Pieces, and oh, three small emeralds, two middling rubies and a great honking diamond with the village curate, to help pay for the repairs.  He's still pretty damn steamed, TinyTerror."

"Oh, well, at least it was out of your treasure, and Not Mine!" grumped Hargrim.

"That's what Youthink," Foxglove purred and grinned.  "Remember, I helped pack your stuff!  And if you didn't want me to know where you kept your pretty-shinies, then why did you leave them in such an obvious hiding place as a false panel in your weapons-cleaning kit, hmmm?  And speaking of pretty-shinies..."  Foxglove grabbed him by the braid of his beard, lifted him again off of his feet and carried him over to his backback.  She picked up the backpack, shook it measuringly, undid one compartment and then upended it, dropping a pile of gold Holy Symbols, sacrimental chalices, candlesticks and other precious bits of sacred regalia.  "All this will have to go back, Spudwad."

The Dwarf looked up at her in bewilderment.  "But it's Treasure..." he whined.

"Theocles, Justin, it's your Church.  What do you think?"

Theocles struck an authoritive pose, with Justin sternly backing him up.  "Vargrimson, that will go back with Hermod.  Foxglove, tell your fellow Mages to finish up reading those scrolls - they go back with Hermod as well."

Hargrim pulled at the braids on his beard and staggered around, screaming in outrage.

*****

With that over, Foxglove approached the other mages with the air of one who has just done a good deed.  Avalyn and Zohar were industriously pouring over a couple of scrolls from the archive, while Avon aimlessly strummed at his harp.  She put a hand on the scroll that Avalyn was reading.  "Y'know, the Butler did it!"

"Shush!  We may have found the key to the solution to Zohar's problem."

"Oh?  What's it gonna be?  Prozac, or a lobotomy?"

Zohar replied to the gibe with only a withering glance.  "According to this," he held up a scroll marked with a stylized dragon's head on the End-tab, "there is a dragon-like creature called a Drakylon, which creates a pearl-like sphere that contains, and I quote, 'The veriest heart of its innermost fires',and is supposed to be a sovereign component for the creation of all kinds of talismans."

Foxglove bit her lower lip.  "Hmmm...I can't really see Theocles okaying yet another side quest just to find one of these...Drakklyings-"

"Draklyon."

"Whatever - we can't just go snooping around for one.  We are on something of a schedule here - if the Thaumaturge is beefing up his forces with zombies, it follows that he's planning something soon.  So, unless you happen to oh, so conveniently know where one is nesting-"

"Ask the three Weird Sisters," Avon offered from out of nowhere.  "According to the Vampire sorceress' 'diary', they consulted with them before they headed into this area.  In legend, Heroes like Perseus wouldn't happen to know the location of the object of their quest, so they'd ask three strange beings often referred to as 'sisters'.  Not the Fates, though the mistake is often made.  In the Perseus myth, they're called the Graiae, in other tales they're called different things.  But they always know these deep dark mysteries - it's what they do."

Score One for the Drama Major!

But the good Doctor wasn't so thrilled.  "But the scroll refers to them as 'Hags'.  Hags are usually very evil, very magically powerful monsters-"

Avalyn wasn't letting him put down her side.  "Oh, Piffle!  That 'Evil Hag' nonsense was just the Catholic church's way of attacking the Old Faith by discrediting the Faith's most beloved representatives among the common people - the herb wives and wise women!  The 'Hag' is nothing more than a slanderous twisting of the 'Crone' aspect of the Three-fold Goddess-"

Avon interrupted without missing a beat on his harp.  "Sorry, MiLady - but the legends of the 'Hag' as a threat to children predate Christianity by many centuries.  The word 'Hag' comes from an Old English word, Hagge, which means 'demon'.  To be 'Hag-ridden' is to be pursued by invisible and malevolent forces that wear one's spirit and endurance down to nothing.  While I agree that the Church probably did use the image of the Hag to discredit both the Crone and the wise-women, they didn't invent it from whole cloth - they used the resemblance between the Hag and Crone to associate the Old Faith with baby-eating monsters that peddle poisons and misery.  But back to the point - even in Perseus' day, Hags were major-league bad news.  They may know where the Drakylon is, but the knowledge won't be cheap."

J'Mira was coming back from a recon sweep as they were debating how to find the 'Sisters'.  She sat down next to Avon and scrunched in close.  "You say that those Vamp-nasties visited these old skags?  While we were checking the northern edge of this forest, Angela here", she ruffled the she-wolf's fur, "smelled the track of something dead that wasn't staying still.  When I checked, I found a set of week old-tracks of - guess what? - three shod horses, and two ox-pulled wagons, with no spoor what-so-fucking-ever!  If those Vamps checked in with the Ghastly Trio, then either one direction or the other will lead to their place, won't it?"

Score One for the Rookie!

 

They took their plan to the nominal leader, Theocles.  Theocles thought it was a good idea, and proceeded to plan out loud the best ways to torture the truth out of the Hags.  Avalyn was aghast, and they started the True Faith vs. the Old Faith, round oh-who-gives-a-damn?  Foxglove gave a shrill whistle.

"Okay!  Let's split the difference!  Avalyn, since you're so hot to give these biddies the benefit of a doubt, You go in, with...  Avon - if they're really Old Faith, having a Bard along can't hurt, and you can use that sword, can't you Galliard?  And...J'Mira.  Sorry, Jam-pot, but they're gonna need a decent fighter if things get nasty.  If we send in Justin, they'll get all huffy, and would you send Hargrim out to pick up a bag of groceries?  You three go in.  Kitsune and I will be your close support, if things get nasty.  The rest will be around the bend to come in charging if needed.  If they are a bunch of Seers of the Old Faith, fine - you ask the question, we do the side quest, we get the location of the Drakylon.  If not, Kit and I keep the bitches busy while the Seventh Cavalry comes riding in, and then Theocles can start up the Spanish Inquisition..."

"And Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" Hargrim chimed in.  He was roundly pelted by small objects.

CHAPTER SEVEN

An NPC Encounter of the Third Kind

The Path to True Wisdom is supposed to be long and winding, taking you through strange and wondrous places.  The path to the hut of the Wyrdling Three was long, winding, strange...and badly needed a new decorator.  After all, how many spooky trees with moaning faces can you have, before it becomes Old Hat?

Finally, Lady Mornsong, J'Mira and the bard broke through the trees into a clearing.  In the middle of the clearing was a three story half-timbered house with a tall peaked roof of thatch, and towering chimneys.  It was surrounded by a porch over a fieldstone basement, with wide windows that opened into the first floor, and a shaggy dog sleeping on the step.  Along the slope of the hillock was a lovely herb-garden, and a covered well.  As she walked up the path, Avalyn breathed a sigh of relief.  After that ugly patch of woods, she had been beginning to worry that that pushy bitch Foxypants would be right.  But the place absolutely breathed of the Great Mother's gentle love.  The house was simple, but well-built, well-kept, and in perfect harmony with its environment.

As they came up to the gate, the dog began to bark.  Not a 'Get away from here, intruder!' bark, but a 'Hey, everybody, there's someone here!' bark.  J'Mira sent Huey and Angela back into the woods.  There was no sense antagonizing the dog - for good or ill, there was undoubtedly more to the pooch than there was at first sight.  As a precaution, Zohar and Avalyn had switched familiars, using their mystic links with them to keep in touch.  Zohar's black cat was curled up on Avalyn's shoulder, but sprang up, arched its back and hissed at the dog when the faithful guardian started barking.  Avalyn shushed the stupid cat.  Why can't people just get along?  Magic folk should know better!

From inside the house a girl dressed in homespun came out, with a mop over her shoulder.  She looked to be about fouteen, and was just beginning to blossom into an absolutely gorgeous young woman.  Promising suggestions of breasts poked through the peasant blouse.  Her hair was the color of butter, and pulled back in by a scarf.  Large crystal blue eyes considered them over cheeks dappled with freckles.  Her wide expressive mouth quirked to one side, and then she said, "Well, are you coming in or not?"

That was enough for Avon, who was through the gate, up the path and at her side in a trice.  The girl called over her shoulder, "Ma!  Gran'!  Visitors!  One is of the Craft, by the look o' her!"

A mature, matronly woman of a regal mein that would suggest ermine more than homespun, yet strangely right in it as well, appeared at the door.  She was handsome, in a Junoesque way, with a head of roan-red hair that fell in waves to her shoulders.  She was a domestic goddess, a diva in earthtones, and an empress of the kitchen, who ruled with a wooden spoon rather than a scepter.  "Well, it's about time you got here!  We've been expecting you!"

"Oh, don't frighten them, dear!  They've come a long way and they have questions to ask, don't you Elf-child?" came from behind the matronly woman.  The voice was gentle and sweet, yet wise and strong for all that.  The old woman to whom that voice belonged fit it perfectly.  She was short and frail, dressed in dark grays.  Age had taken the beauty of her youth, but left her a mein stern yet just, and wise in things that younger, tenderer souls simply cannot bear.  "We have sommmat a-boil in the kitchen; what say we speak there?"

The six of them walked through a cozy living room, made all the more livable for its lack of ostentation and the few hand-carved bits of decoration that were worked into the furniture and mantle.  But most of the real living was obviously done in the kitchen, which centered around the great stonework fireplace.  There was a large iron pot suspended over a low fire by a swinging iron arm, from which delicious hearty aromas came.  Next to the fireplace was the iron door of an oven.  There was a long table, attended by benches, a round table piled with roots and vegetables.  There were counters set against the walls, just under the windows, with a large lump of dough on it.  The Matron tied her russet hair into a knot and began to knead the dough.  The Elder settled into a rocking chair, as the Maiden took up a position just behind her, and the dog settled at her feet.

The Elder took up her knitting and regarded Avalyn over the clicking needles.  "Well, Alfar Noble, ask your questions!  I can't answer a question until you've made words for it, to take it from Infinite Possibility to Defined Reality, now can I?"

Avalyn was hesitant, so Avon took over the questioning.  "Learned Mother, before we go any further, there is an indelicate matter that I must broach - a few weeks ago, a powerful group of the Undead came here to consult with you.  What was the nature of that visit?"

"You answer your own question ere y'ask it, Skald.  They came here to consult with us.  Our position here is to be parilous neutral.  As long as they do no harm in our environs, the very way of our post as advisors keeps us from judging as to those who would consult us.  We can bar None from the Well of Lore.  To naysay one set of seekers would be to set ourselves up as the voices of destiny, to make choices best left to the Fates.  So, they come, they meet our price, they ask their questions, and they leave, whether we like them or no.  As I said, as long as they do not bring their filth into our domain, we cannot deny them wisdom.

"But that is not why y'came here."  It was not a question.

Avon cleared his throat.  "Ah, we have reason to believe that a creature called the 'Drakylon' has custody of a talisman that is of great interest to our cause.  But we have no way of knowing where this beast makes its lair, or any taboos or requirements about it.  All we know is its name and general description."

The Matron finished kneading the dough, put it on a wooden plate and stowed it in the oven.  "Ah, the Drakylon!  The Wyrd Drake!  'Tis that what you be seeking!"

Avalyn approached her.  "You know of the Drakylon?  I thought the Elder would-"

"Shush, child.  There be things the Maid knows, and things the Elder knows, and there be things that only the Matron alone knows.  'Tis the nature of the beast.  The where-ats of the Fate Wyrm isn't the sort of Dark Mystery to bother the Elder with.  But it's naught to go gaily frollicking about with, neither."  She pulled out the pot from the fireplace with a hook, and stirred the aromatic concoction.  "Care for a sip?"  She held out the ladle.

As Avalyn reached for the ladle, an arrow flew through the window, pinning the Matron's hand to the wall.  The Maiden reached forward, and seemed to hand something to the Elder.  Just as her hand reached her grandmother, a shuriken whirled in and knocked whatever it was out of the Maid's hand.

The dog started barking savagely, and Avalyn felt something scramble up her dress and onto her right sleeve.  Looking down, she saw Foxglove's imp reaching toward her hand.  Oh, NO!  That fool thiefling was going to ruin everything!

Scintilla managed to touch the ring and trigger the spell before Mornsong could grab her.  Avalyn felt the DISPEL kept in her Ring of Spell Storing activate.

The cozy country kitchen disappeared, its wooden floors replaced by filthy bare dirt.  The appearance of wholesomeness ran like watercolors in a rainstorm, revealing a dank lodge of bare timbers and sod, decorated in a scheme that Leatherface of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame would approve of heartily.  Instead of sausages, garlic ropes, and dried meats, bits and pieces of human bodies hung from the rafters.  The roots and vegetables heaped on the table were actually severed heads, feet and hands.  The hearty smells of bread, herbs and oils was really the reek of filth, decay and worse. 

The Matron dissolved from phantasmagory, revealing a dessicated eyeless, noseless corpse of a woman, blue with decay, wrapped in grimy rags, frantically trying to pry it's hand off the pinning arrow.  The 'Maiden' and the 'Elder' were no better - the former was a crow-nosed, snaggletoothed, also cyanotic, also eyeless scarecrow with a head of flyaway grisled hair, scrambling around on the floor trying to find what looked like a glass eye, and the latter was nothing but a wraith-like pool of smoke in the shape of a woman, with a dark talon clutching at air for what it was expecting.  The dog was a dark, cur-shaped thing that's eyes and mussle were limned in fire. 

Much of the lodge was taken up a racks of shelves, loaded with what seemed to be loaves of bread done up in the rough shape of men.  One corner of the lodge was taken up with a pile of corpses, in various stage of decomposition, from only a few days dead near the top, to tattered skeletons near the bottom.  Only the fireplace and the oven remained the same from the illusory scene of the homey kitchen, and even then, the kettle in the fireplace was not full of a savory broth, but the most noisome hell-brew that Mornsong could never have imagined - eyes, tongues, fingers, and worse bubbled in the slop.  The only thing that kept Avalyn from screaming in outrage was her need to keep from throwing up.

Kitsune and Foxglove came tumbling through the window, blades ready.  Avalyn wasn't sure what J'Mira was seeing, because the Ranger came at her two comrades with an ululating M'Jadji war-cry.  Kitsune blocked J'Mira's staff, and Foxglove threw a pinch of powder in her eyes.  J'Mira shuddered, as if waking up from a dream and looked around her in horrified disgust.

The 'Maiden'-Hag almost got the rolling eyeball, but Kitsune knocked it out of the way with her staff, like a field hockey ball.  Avon came at Foxglove with his sword, which she parried.  Avon was too good a fencer to give Foxglove the opening she needed to throw some powder in his eyes.  She plucked the pouch from her belt with her main gauche and chucked it toward Avalyn.  "It's Spell Dispelling Powder!  Throw a little in his eyes to lift the Seeming!"

With that, Foxglove was able to concentrate on her unwilling duel with the bard.  She distracted him by throwing her main gauche at his face, which he easily deflected.  With her left hand, she pulled her fighting chain off her shoulder and began whirling it.  She feinted him into a premature lunge, and wrapped the chain around his rapier.  With his sword bound, Foxglove forced Avon to the wall with her rapier.  "Mornsong!  Dust him!"

Avalyn took the pouch, measured out a pinch and flicked it in his eyes.  Avon shook his head, and his expression of thwarted rage changed to bewilderment as he seemed to see Foxglove for the first time.  His bewiderment turned to horror when he saw the Hags and rest of the house.

Kitsune and J'Mira were playing a field hockey version of 'monkey in the middle' with the 'Maiden'-Hag and the eyeball.  Each time the withered she-thing would try for the eye, one adventurere would tap it with her staff, passing it to the other.  The Hag would whirl around, and be tripped or struck from behind.  Giving up on trying to get the eye directly, the Hag spun around and leapt atop Kitsune's back, wrapping her taloned hands around the 'Monk's' neck.  "Give me the Eye, or I'll twist her head 'till she can see her own arse as I shove her head up it!" the Hag shrieked in a voice like nails on a chalkboard.

The 'Matron'-Hag pulled her hand free of the arrow, leaving quite a few bits of it behind, and grabbed a fireplace poker.  She ran about clanging at pots, containers and at the oven.  In a voice like a thousand creaking doors, she shouted, "Up and at them, Ye fetid pieces of offal!  Serve your mistresses better than you ever served yourselves!  The oven swung open, and a man-shaped form caked in half-baked dough staggered out.  Hands and arms crawled out of pots and jars, and advanced on J'Mira.

The 'dog' kept by its seated mistress, roaring flames at all who came near her.  The 'Elder'-Hag rose up from her stool and spreading her talon-like hands out wide, said in a voice like a chill wind through a graveyard at midnight, "Rouse the Champion, Sister!"

"But he's not near finished, Sister!"

"Rouse him!  We've marinated him long enow, he can earn his keep!"

The 'Matron'-Hag ran through the lodge, sightless, but certain of her mastery of the whereabouts of everything in the place.  Foxglove kicked a stool in her path, making her stumble.  Then Foxglove intercepted the dough-caked zombie, slicing through his near leg.  "Kit!  The oven!"

Kitsune left off trying to pry the 'Maiden'-Hag off her back, and executed a quick-fire series of back-flips in the direction of the open oven.  Right at the mouth of the oven, she jerked to a stop, spreading her arms to keep from flipping right into the fire.  The Hag on her back, shaken from its unexpected tumbling, flew back into the oven.  Foxglove quickly shut the door and rammed a panhandle into the oven handles, keeping the shrieking Hag that was banging at the oven door, inside.

Avalyn tried to get at the 'Elder'-Hag, but the hell-hound kept her at bay.  Looking through the horror, she finally found what looked to be a tub of water.  What might be soaking in it, she didn't want to know.  She pulled her Chalice from its sachel at her belt and ran to the tub.  Indeed, there was something soaking in the tub - a dead face looked up at her from under the water.  Keeping her gorge down, she filled her Chalice with water and turned to face the 'Elder'-Hag.  The hell-hound roared and snapped at her.  As it was in mid-lunge, Mornsong threw the contents of the Chalice into the devil-dog's face.  The blessed water doused the hound's fires, and reduced the menacing beast to a sniveling cur.  Avalyn drew her sickle, and advanced on the 'Elder' with a look of terrible justice on her face.

The 'Matron'-Hag struggled to her feet and began whacking at the shelves.  "Up, up, up, you laggards!  Get up, and prove that you are worth more dead than you were alive!"  The loaves shook, then burst, and crumb-covered bodies rose from them like butterflies from cocoons.  The 'Matron' moved along the shelves, rousing more of them to burst from the bread like horrific butterflies.

Foxglove called out, "J'Mira!  The Eye!"  J'Mira thought, well, if you want the ghastly thing, you can have it - just as long as I don't have to touch it!  She maneuvered the thing a bit with her staff and then expertly batted it past the dough-zombie and over to Foxglove.  Then she proceded to disassemble the zombie.  The thiefling deftly caught it, and closely examined it.  It wasn't glass, it wasn't crystal, it wasn't ceramic, and it wasn't metal.  It also most certainly wasn't an actual disembodied eye, thank you very much.  But it was very magical.

And then, suddenly, horribly, she was seeing through the Eye.  And the Eye saw everything - it saw every detail and every flaw in everything.  It even saw the basic mystic nature of things, and how they interacted.  It saw the innate magical hunger that drove the zombies, it saw the thirst for human suffering and pain that drove the Hags, it saw the great gaping, sucking void that was contained within the chest stored in the far corner of the lodge, which the 'Matron'-Hag was trying to get to - say what?

Foxglove snapped out of the mental snare created by the Eye.  The 'Matron' was working her way toward the corner, leaving a swarm of bread-zombies between her and the adventurers.  In the corner was a large iron-banded chest, something between a sea chest and a sarcophagus, with complex seals on the iron bands, and a kind of funnel device in the lid.  "Kitsune!  Stop that Hag from getting to that chest!  Double-Plus Ungood Undead inside!  J'Mira!  Avon!  Keep those zombies off her back!"  She hefted the Eye in her hand.  "And I have a few questions to ask Gran'maw over there."

Kitsune slipped through the grasping hands of the zombies like a breeze through the trees.  In the process, she shed her 'monk's' robes in their hands and revealed her ninja blacks.  She flipped the ringhead of her staff at the Hag, sending the chain between the harridan's legs.  Avon and J'Mira adopted a back to back posture, and spun in a clock-wise circle that gave the walking dead no blind side to attack.  Kitsune gave a keening war-cry and charged straight at the Hag with the naginata point of her staff extended.

Give the unliving bitch her due, she was quick!  She sidestepped the spear, grabbed its haft and threw the ninja at the wall.  Kitsune flipped in mid-air and had a double-handful of shuriken at the ready when she rebounded off the wall.  She exploded from the wall in a shower of edged steel.

Foxglove cooperated with Mornsong, and together they drove the 'Elder'-Hag back against the table and pinned her there.  Foxglove grabbed one of the many shackles laying around the 'kitchen' and bound one limb after another.  Once the Hag was secured - if shrieking like the Grandmother of all Storms - Foxglove turned to Avalyn and said, "We came here for information-" she held up the Eye, "and I intend to get it.  I'm going in, keep the Bits and Pieces off my back while I work."

"That's disgusting!  Why do I have to cope with all this creepy shit?" 

"Hey!  What goes on inside this," Foxglove pointed at the Eye, "and in there," she indicated the Hag, "makes what's going on out here," she swept her hand across the grisly lodge, "look like a Partridge Family Reunion.  You  wanna deal with it?"  She proferred the Eye to Mornsong.

"Eeeewwwww!" <gag!> "No!  But what am I supposed to do against Undead!  I'm a Witch!  I deal in LIFE, not Death!"

Foxglove had better - or worse - things to deal with than Mornsong's squeamishness.  "So - what do Bread and the Dead have in common?"  It didn't really mean anything to Foxglove, but at least the nonsense rhyme got the Elf off her back.  Foxglove focused on the Eye, and sent the Eye staring straight into the Hag.  _Where_Is_The_Drakylon, _You_Dessicated_Bitch?_"  Foxglove dug past the Filth, and Joy in Filth was part and parcel of the Hag.

Avalyn blinked.  Bread and the Dead?  What was that supposed to mean?  But the thief had gone into some kind of Vulcan Mind-Meld with the Hag, and wasn't responding.  Of all the rotten - Rotten!  Yes!  Mornsong batted an upstart disembodied hand off, and scampered over to the bread-counter.  Pointedly ignoring the noisome parts lying - or twitching - about, she searched for and found a large crock of yeast.  She reached in and felt the dried fungus.  Yes!  It was dormant, but still alive.  Even Hags can't bake bread with dead yeast!  She grabbed a heaping handful of the yeast and flung it around her, covering the disgusting kitchen in a thin layer of it.  As she flung it around, she called on the waxing flow of Life that is the blood of the Great Mother, and channeled it into the yeast.  She spun around dancing and chanting,

Breed and Grow and Die, sings our Great Mother
All dance their steps in their time and place,
Feed and Grow and Thrive, the dead are yours to cover
Now dance your steps, cleanse away the vile trace
Speed and Grow and Strive, warm children of the dark, my brothers!

Everywhere she threw some yeast, a film of mold grew, giving way to dark patches of Rust and Rot.  From these, cute mushrooms grew - there had to be cute mushrooms, that's the way that Morn-song's mind worked - and became devouring forests of pale domes.

Ignoring the rotten stench, Foxglove bored into the mind of the 'Elder'-Hag, which was even more rotten.  Never before had Foxglove understood the concept Just Plain Wrong so well.  Pushing aside the sickness, she finally found an image of the Drakylon, a chitinous dracoform wreathed in purple flame.  She saw an image of a pearl of great value and power.  She saw where it laired, a well surrounded by a ring of menhirs, located some fifty miles north by northwest from there.  There, the primary goal of this particular side-quest achieved.  Now to see if there's anything about what that nasty the 'Matron' was trying to get to...

The 'Matron' swung wildly with the fireplace poker, deflecting Kitsune's naginata more often than not, but was still being torn slowly to ribbons.  Kitsune forced the 'Matron' back against one of the shelves.  The Hag managed to bind the naginata with the hook of the poker, and forced the polearm to one side with her undead strength.  Kitsune expected the Hag to rake her with that taloned hand.  Instead, the Hag reached back and grabbed a handful of wet dough from one of the 'fresher' loafs.  She threw the dough at Kitsune's feet, effectively binding the ninja in her tracks.  Finally free of the ninja's onslaught, the skeletal Hag sprawled over to her objective.  She used the poker to break the seals on the iron bonds of the casket.  Then she clambered up on top and spoke into the funnel:

          Up and out, you lazy lout!
          We've fed ye enow through this spout!
          If it's chow ye need,
          get up and feed!
          To feed is what your about,
          so, get up and out!

The Hag just barely managed to scamper off the casket when it caved in on itself.  The wood and iron of the box disappeared into itself, and a tall, gaunt, rag-wrapped figure stepped out.  It turned to face the ninja.  It opened its mouth and stretched it wide.  Its mouth stretched so wide that it was three times as wide as its face, and the jaw literally dropped to the ground.  A long tentacular tongue crawled out and lashed out at Kitsune.  The ninja lashed at the tongue with her naginata, cutting it in two.  The tongue grew a new tip in scarcely less time than it would have taken to simply move it, and lashed around one of her ankles. 

Kitsune tried to anchor herself by wrapping the chain of her shinobi-zue around one of the 'shelves'.  The flimsy wooden bunks tore loose, and came crashing down on her.  The tongue loosened from around her ankle, wrapped itself around the wooden wrack, and pulled it into the gaping cavernous mouth.  The rail-thin man stolidly chewed the huge lump of wood in his overstuffed mouth and swallowed, but didn't look in the least sated.  He shambled a few steps forward, opened his mouth in the same Warner Brothers' cartoon way, and stretched that impossible tongue out again.  Kitsune bought a little time by pushing some more wood onto the tongue, but she knew that it wouldn't buy much.  Over her shoulder she called, "Hey, Guys, a little help would be vastly appreciated!"

J'Mira and Avon had taken in this disturbing tableau.  The man-shaped bottomless pit was still chewing, Kitsune was trying to upset another bunk, and the 'Matron'-Hag was creeping along the wall feeling around for something no doubt even nastier.  J'Mira looked around for inspiration, and her eye fell on the cauldron in the fireplace.  "Avon!  The pot!  If that slop won't make that thing sick to it's stomach, nothing will!"

Avon took a pole from over the fireplace, and J'Mira used her staff, and together they managed to lug the heavy cast-iron pot and its noisome contents off the fire and past the zombies.  Kitsune split her efforts between pruning GapeJaws questing tongue and using the chain on her shinobi-zue to trip the zombies that kept getting in Avon and J'Mira's way.

As GapeJaws' tongue lasted out another time, Avon and J'Mira placed the cauldron down squarely on it.  GapeJaws pulled the pot in, and grabbed it with both hands.  He chugged down the disgusting brew, and then licked the pot.  A smile almost crossed his grim face.  Avon and J'Mira looked at each other as their plan fell flat.  "Uh-Oh!  Mikey likes It!" Avon said.

While they were lugging the pot toward 'Mikey', Avalyn had been taking care of her own plan.  She had been filling up a bucket with water blessed by her Chalice of Purity.  If the cleansing power of the Great Mother wasn't needed here, then she was Pat Robertson!  She finally filled it up, and carried the wooden pail over.  "Mikey likes it?  Then here's the chaser!" 

She chucked the bucket at him.  He caught it and drank heavily from it. 

His enjoyment of the 'purified' water was plain, and if anything, he seemed more powerful than before.  He advanced toward Avalyn, who backed off flabberghasted.  The tongue came lashing out and snagged Mornsong by a hand.  Avon's sword arced through the air and cut the tongue, freeing Mornsong.

J'Mira tried to voice her thoughts, "Okay, poisoning this thing doesn't work, cutting it's tongue doesn't work, and we can't get close enough to strike it directly.  Foxy!  You're hip to this magic mumbo-jumbo, what's gonna kill this thing?"

Foxglove pulled out of the Hag's mind, and shook her head to shake some of the filth out of it.  Don't want any of that crap sticking around - it might take root, like a fungus.  "Sorry!  My mind was somewhere vile!  What's the problem?"

In terse, and irritated terms, her companions filled her in on what was trying to swallow them.  Foxglove shrugged.  "Well, if the brew was a nutrient, and Avalyn's Chalice only strengthened it, then it must feed on life force, somehow.  The Undead are animated by a lack of life-force and the resultant hunger.  So, more lack of life force will sap the life-force it's fed on.  Why not feed it a couple of zombies, and see what happens?"

Kitsune, J'Mira and Avon looked at each other.  It was so obvious that it never occured to them!  Even if it didn't kill GapeJaws, they would have a little time to think of something better, and they'd be better off for a few few zombies.  Kitsuen and J'Mira used their staves to leverage a few zombies into the yawning void.  GapeJaws swallowed them up and chewed on them, but it was plain that he didn't like it. 

As the girls looked for seconds and thirds, Avon spotted the 'Matron'-Hag pulling phials of something off a wall-rack.  Sword out, he leaped over the gruesome bits and pieces to intercept her.  He pierced her shoulder with his blade.  She shrieked, dropped the phial she was grabbing, and tried to pull the sword out of her.  Keeping safely behind her, Avon forced her away from the wall and pushed her toward GapeJaws' questing tongue.

As 'Mikey' sourly munched on a few more fungus encrusted zombies, Avon presented the Hag to Kitsune and J'Mira.  "If he doesn't like them, maybe she will be more to his taste!"

The Hag let out an ear-shattering scream of panic and tried to escape.  J'Mira and Kitsune forced her to the ground with their staves.  "I'll take that as a ringing vote of approval!" smirked Avon.

When GapeJaws mouth was clear again, the girls sent the Hag flying in.  The Hag's parting scream was lost, as though falling down a long, long hole.  GapeJaws chewed, and had the look of a five-year-old choking down liver.

"Good idea, Avon!" cried Foxglove as she and Mornsong pushed the table with the 'Elder' shacked to it toward them.  "Here's seconds!"

Kitsune fed GapeJaws a few more zombies, and when they were down the hole, J'Mira and Avon pushed the entire table at him.  As the 'Elder's' shrieks faded, Foxglove turned to Mornsong.  "Avalyn, I need you to mojo up some more cure-water."

"But it only makes that thing stronger!"

 

"True, but in the spirit of Aikido, I intend to use that strength to my advantage!"

As Kitsune and J'Mira fed the last of the zombies into GapeJaws' mournful mouth, Avalyn filled another bucket with Blessed Water.  She handed it to Foxglove, who said, "Good!  Avon, Mornsong - out the window!  Kitsune, J'Mira - up in the rafters!  Mama's hungry little bay-bee is mine!"  With that she cast a CLOUD OF CONCEALMENT spell, to cover the others' moves.

GapeJaws came shambling through the gloom, it's tongue reaching forward, and swept up what mobile pieces of animated tissue it could.  Foxglove splashed a little Blessed water just in front of the tongue.  It eagerly lapped up the magical vigor of the water, and just as eagerly went slapping around for more.  Splashing just enough to get his interest, Foxglove steered him so that she was just between him and the oven, where she could still hear the 'Maiden'-Hag banging away at the inside of the door.

She splashed the oven door, pulled out the pan that was keeping the oven closed, and shouted, "Kit!  J'Mira!  Double-Kick - NOW!"

They swung down from the rafters in unison, and kicked him squarely in the back as his tongue went flying forward.  The door burst open and the Hag came screaming out, half consumed by the fire.  She was knocked back into the oven by the darting tongue, and dragged it back with her.  Kitsune gave GapeJaws a powerful hand-spring kick in the posterior, sending him flying.  Foxglove helped him into the oven with the flat of the pan.  He went in with a spurt of flames, and Foxglove replaced the pan in the oven's handles.  She made a 'I clean my hands of it' gesture, and said, "Well, if eating that third Hag doesn't kill him, it will definitely weaken him enough so that the fire will!"

As Mornsong and Avon climbed back into the revolting house, Foxglove noted something strange on the floors.  Besides the wriggling severed fingers.  The spots on the dirt floor caused by dropping the Blessed water had discolored the soil.  She was about to examine it more closely, when Kitsune gave a shout.

"Lookie what I found!" Kitsune called.  Behind a patchwork curtain, was a strange set of knight's armor.  The armor was matte black chainmail, and beside it were a tabard and standard bearing a set of scales.  Set next to them was a large brass set of scales and coiled next to that was a long black whip.

Mornsong looked at the tabard and standard.  "Okay, the black armor and whip I can understand, if the Hags were going to outfit their 'Champion' with it.  But why would an anti-paladin take the Scales of Justice as his symbol?"  She reached for the brazen scales.

"Don't touch them," Avon said from out of left field.  "They aren't the Scales of Justice.  Look at them."

Avalyn took a closer look.  The scales did look strange.  There was only one dish, and it looked badly off-kilter.  Instead of a counter-dish, there was a set of weights in the shape of brazen ears of grain.  On the tabard and standard, its representations had the dish spilling grain into nothingness.

Avon explained, "They are the Scales of Famine.  They weren't trying to create an anti-paladin - they were trying to create the Second Horseman."

"Second Horseman?" J'Mira asked.

Foxglove answered hollowly, "As in the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  I thought that vampiric anti-paladin looked a little off."

J'Mira waved a hand.  "Okay, I admit it, I fell asleep in Sunday School.  What's with this Four Horsemen crap?"

Avon strummed his harp.  "According to the Book of Revelation by St. John, there is a book that no man is worthy to look upon, neither on the Earth nor under it, sealed with Seven Seals.  When the seals on that book are opened, various miseries strike the Earth.  When the Third Seal is opened, four riders come forth and wreck havoc.  Their description and sequence varies with the interpretation - and agenda of the interpreter - but there is usually a rider on a red horse bearing a sword, i.e., our vampiric anti-paladin, who is generally agreed to be the personification of War.  Another rider, on a black horse and bearing a scales, our friend baking in the oven, is generally agreed to be the personification of Famine, or economic turmoil."

Foxglove raised an eyebrow.  "They're trying to cause the End of the World?"

J'Mira quirked her mouth.  "More likely, they're trying to create an illusion of being the End of the World.  Fear is always a primo weapon for a conqueror."

Avon hit a discordant note on his harp.  "Then the next stage of their logical progression should be a real hoot.  The next rider, by most interpretations, rides a yellow horse and bears a bow, and is generally agreed to be the personification of Plague and Contagion."

Foxglove waved an irritated hand.  "Enough of that - let's search the place, and get out of this charnel house."  That annoying not-quite-a-worry skittered across the back of her mind again.  There was something wrong here.

As they searched, Mornsong filled her Chalice with water and sprinkled it about, singing a song of purification.  Foxglove had found a cache of scrolls and devices, when the ground began to shake.  "Oh, _Now_ what?"

Standing in the center of the lodge, Avon began to sink into the ground.  He cried out, "It's Alive!  The floor, the ground, the entire house!  It's Alive!"

Foxglove looked around, and noticed Mornsong with her chalice.  "Avalyn, you Idiot!  You're bringing the house to Life with your chalice!  Everyone!  Use your most damaging attacks on everything in the house, before it swallows us all!"

Avon continued to sink into the ground.  He called to the ninja, "Kitsune!  Your Spear!"  She tossed the shinobi-zue to him just as he sank down to his waist.  He spun the naginata-tip downwards.  "Mornsong!  Protection Spell!"  He accepted the fairy-dust sprinkling and let himself be sucked under.

All was quiet for a few minutes.  Foxglove piled the box of scrolls into Mornsong's arms and helped her to the window.  Just as Avalyn was at the window, there was a gush of black blood that erupted from the floor where Galliard had been sucked under, and the entire house spasmed.  It shook and twisted, and then settled.  The roof and rafters sagged, and the structure of the windows lost their rigidity.

The tip of the naginata came tearing out of the ground, and J'Mira and Kitsune helped Avon out.  His normally immaculate clothes were absolutely blood-soaked, but he was shining in triumph.  "I figured that if Mornsong's chalice was bringing it to life, then there must be more to it than just the house.  Probably the hill.  If it was alive, it must have some kind of organs, so I just kept poking around with this-" he tossed the gore-soaked shinobi-zue back to Kitsune, "until I found it's heart.  Instant heart attack."

Then the door of the lodge came crashing in.  Hargim came screaming in, hammer swinging at empty air, with Sir Justin and Theocles right behind him, weapons at the ready.

Foxglove looked disgustedly at Mornsong.  "Is that just like a Man?  When you really need him, he's nowhere to be found.  But when you finally have everything under control, then he shows up!"

CHAPTER EIGHT

But It Says Right Here...

As the house - or Gardinel, as Avon insisted they call it - burned, Avalyn watched with tears in her eyes.  She turned from the flames, and walked through the woods.  The trees, freed from the Hags' influence, had lost their mournful expression.  Which was a pity, because Mornsong could have used a little appropriate background at the moment.

"Tears for the Gardinel?"  Avon appeared as if out of nowhere.  Somehow, the gore that had caked him had vanished.  Someone's general cleanup spell, no doubt.  "Don't waste your tears on that monstrosity.  Even before the Hags came along, it was probably the source of unknowable misery."

Avalyn wrapped her arms around herself.  "No, not for that thing - it's just it wouldn't have swallowed you-"

"Avalyn, there's no telling what that thing's exact relationship with the Hags was - you could have woken it up.  Or it could have been under the Hags' thumbs, and was just grabbing what food it could at the first opportunity.  Or it could have been a willing ally in their evil, and was taking revenge for their deaths.  There are too many potential answers, and no real reason to determine exactly which-"

Avalyn held up a dainty hand.  "Please!  Avon!  I...I...I feel contaminated!  Their illusion - it was perfect!  Somehow, those vile things were able to spin a fantasy...  It was just so right!"  Pain filled her exquisite features.  "It was everything I ever wanted!  The Sister...the Mother...the Grandmother...  Even the house!  I could have spent my life in that house!  Coming into that house - It was like coming Home, Avon!  Not just the place you grew up in, but the place that your Soul calls Home!

"But it was a Lie!  A candy-coated Lie!  _All_just_a_fantasy_!"  Mornsong started to break down and cry.

Avon took her in his arms.  "And you're afraid that that's all it will ever be?"  She nodded her head from the crook of his arm.  Her Drakeling familiar, SweetEmber, crooned and nuzzled her cheek.  "Avalyn, by their very nature, those Hags couldn't come up with anything like that on their own.  The only way they could whistle up anything that moving, that true, would be if they had seen something just like it, and copied it exactly."

Avalyn snapped her head up, and looked at him with pleading eyes.  "You mean...they must have known of a trio of Witches just like the ones that they were pretending to be?  That these True White Witches must be out there somewhere?"

Avon smiled and nodded.  "And no doubt, waiting patiently for you."  Mornsong swept him up in a big hug, and skipped back to the rest of the party, with SweetEmber trilling gaily after her.

Avon gave a big sigh and rubbed his face with both hands.  He laughed softly to himself, half in amusement, half in dismay.  He ran his hands though his long blonde hair as he turned.  There, standing in the shadows, almost blending into the bark of the tree stood J'Mira, her features studiously blank.  He walked over to her, looked her straight in the eyes and said, "Y'know, J'Mira, I think I just got over something."  Then he took her face in both hands and kissed her passionately.  J'Mira sighed and wrapped her arms around him and squeezed tight.

Up above them, high in the branches, Foxglove turned to Kitsune and said, "Well, waddya know?  There might be something to the Renaissance Pimp, after all!"

*****

The 'well' was a large hole set flush into the ground, paved with well-cut stones, and surrounded by a circle of nine menhirs.  The large standing stones were marked with strange characters cut into the very stone.  Mornsong took a long look at them.

"Well, Avalyn, what do they say?"

"Keep Out.  Trespassers Will Be Eaten."

Hargrim peered over the edge and down into the retreating depths.  "I never heard of a Dragon living at the bottom of a well.  Castles, towers, caves, lakes, and mountain-tops, yes.  Wells, no.  I mean, how is the damn thing s'pozed to get out and chow down?"

Doctor Zohar unrolled a scroll and double-checked a passage.  "First of all, Vargrimson, it's not a Dragon.  It's a magical dragon-like creature called a Drakylon.  Secondly, it isn't constrained by the normal physical considerations-"

"Y'mean, swords and such won't hurt it?" Hargrim asked, suddenly concerned.

Zohar checked the scroll again.  "It doesn't say.  But that doesn't matter.  Once I have the Drakylon's Pearl, I should be able to control the beast."

The entire rest of the party stopped and took a long hard look at Zohar.  Theocles came over and looked him hard in the eye.  "And exactly how do you figure that?"

Zohar pointed to a passage about three-quarters toward the end of the scroll.  "It says right here, 'Whosoever holds the Drakylon's Pearl, is proof against the Wyrd-Drake's ire, and the rage of the beast is theirs to command'.  There are many legends of creatures that store the heart of their magical power outside themselves, usually well hidden.  This Drakylon beast must be so magical that whoever has physical possession of that 'pearl' can completely control it."

Theocles still wasn't convinced.  "And we're all supposed to go down that hole, just so that You can have control over the next best thing to a Dragon."

Foxglove and Kitsune looked down the well.  Foxglove shook her head.  "NO Way we can get all of you down that thing.  It'll have to be Kit and me alone."

Theocles felt a trifle better about it.  "Okay, so the thief and the 'monk' go down and fetch this pearl.  What usually happens next is that the critter comes screaming after the thieves.  What if this thing gets to us before you get your hands on the pearl?"

Zohar held up the brass Scales of Famine.  "According to the scryings that I conducted over these, the Hags that were brewing up the Horseman of Famine wanted to exploit his consuming nature.  These scales drain magical energy from a source and add it to the wielder's reserves.  Between us all and the power of these scales, we should be able to hold the Drakylon until the Pearl is in my hand."

"Not you," Sir Justin said.  He pointed at Mornsong.  "Her.  You are getting too much power from this little side-jaunt.  It will take a Magicker to use it, and Foxglove is going down that hole, so it has to be Avalyn.  Besides, you'll want to have both your hands free for that pearl when it comes, right?"

Zohar didn't like it much, but he did see the need to concentrate on mastering the pearl as quickly as possible.  He handed the Scales of Famine over to Mornsong, who held them as if she might catch something from them.

Sir Justin mounted Thunder, and had Brother Theocles bless the lance.  All the others girded themselves for battle as best they could.  Kitsune and Foxglove looked at each other, sighed in unison and dropped down the wellshaft together.

Long, expectant minutes ran into the better part of an hour.  Then, there was a distant roar, and the thin sound of screams.  There was a faint scrambling sound that grew louder.  Foxglove and Kitsune shot out of the well like rockets, followed by a gush of violet flame.  Foxglove glided to the ground panting, and passed a lambent pale purple orb about the size of a soccer ball to Zohar.  "Quick!  Before-"

A long sinuous figure poured up out of the well.  It looked like something out of H.R. Geiger's nightmares.  It was dark and chitinos, more an abstract rendering of a dragon than a real beast, all wreathed in violet fire.  The wings had mere suggestions of membrane between the skeletal fingerlets, its teeth were more jagged serrations of the jaw than teeth, and its tail ended in a scimitar-like blade.  It rose up so high that it blotted out the sun for a moment, and then came down in a screaming power dive.  It made a hawk-like pass at Foxglove, who put everything she had into dodging it, and still wound up with a slashed cape.

As the Drakylon came in for a second pass, Sir Justin spurred Thunder onward, and tried to intercept it at the point where he thought the beast's swoop would bring it closest to the ground.  The Drakylon pulled up short, and breathed a gust of illnatural fire at Justin.  The Paladin's shield protected both him and his mount, but not his blessed lance, which was charred to ashes.

Lady Mornsong was furiously trying to figure out how to use the Scales of Famine.  It had no obvious patterns, switches or instructions.  There was only that motherless sense of Hunger.  Hold ON!  The Hunger!  Of course!  She grabbed the brass 'ears of wheat' counter-weights, and aimed the dish at the faux-dragon as it crested its climb.  She forced the hunger up at the Drakylon.  It lanced out and tore a jagged gap in the thing's firey aura.  The Drakylon screamed, but continued into a dive at Foxglove.

Theocles and Hargrim had stationed themselves as guards for Doctor Zohar, who was intently studying the Pearl.  He touched the Pearl to his Dragon-staff, and felt the power flow into the staff.  The Pearl was acting as a recharging agent, as he'd hoped.  But maybe there was more to it than that.  If the 'rage of the beast was his to command', might he not be able to control the patently unnatural creature with the Pearl?

Foxglove cooperated with Kitsune and J'Mira in laying a trap with their chain weapons, which the Drakylon fell neatly into.  Unfortunately, the trap did more damage to them than it did to the stupid critter.

Zohar finally managed to synchronize his energies with those of the Pearl.  His form glowed with the violet power of the pearl.  He pushed Hargrim and Theocles aside and held the Pearl high to address the Drakylon.

"DRAKYLON!  Hear Me, Fey Beast!  I hold the Pearl, which is the true unbeating heart of your magical power!  I am proof against your power!  Your Power Is Mine!  You Cannot Attack Me!  You Are Powerless Against Me!  You MUST Obey Me!  You Are My Slave!"

The Drakyon hovered near him.

No, I Am Not.  The Beast opened his maw and breathed flame at him.  Theocles and Hargrim ducked for cover, but Dr. Zohar stood his ground.  The flames only merged into the aura of violet power around him.

"HA!  Behold the Truth, Beast!  It is written in the Scroll, 'Who soever holds the Drakylon's Pearl, is proof against the Wyrd-Drake's ire, and the rage of the beast is theirs to command'."

Really.  The Drakylon lashed out with its scimitar-tail, and neatly bisected Zohar's torso.

He dropped the Pearl and looked down in horror.  "But it says right in the Scroll..."  He dropped.

It must have been a transcriber's error.  The Drakylon dropped to the ground and reached for the Pearl.  Foxglove dashed in, grabbed the Pearl and ran like she was going for a touchdown.  The enraged Draklyon spat fire at her, but it did no more harm to her than it had to Zohar.  She ran into the nearest stand of trees.  Somehow the Drakylon managed to squeeze into the trees and pursue her.

"Kitsune!  Lateral pass!"  Foxglove threw the pearl out of the stand and as close to the ninja as she could.  But the Drakylon didn't change its course, and torched the trees.  Not only could the magical fires now hurt Foxglove, but they penned her in quite effectively.  She cast a JUMP spell and got out of the stand.

She called out, "JUSTIN!  Ready yourself another Lance!  MORNSONG!  Use those stupid scales to put out those fires!  THEOCLES!  Warm up the biggest Healing spell you've got, and use it on Zohar!"

The Drakylon rose up out of the stand of trees and began climbing into the sky.  As it crested its climb, Foxglove encanted, "PHANTASMAL FORCES!" but there was no immediate effect.

The Drakylon began its dive, but Foxglove made no attempt to evade.  The beast widened its wings in order to make a last second change in trajectory.  It stretched out its neck to tear her apart with it's beak.  It was right there, it could see her in every detail, and there was no way that she could duck free of its attack-

It piled into the ground at top speed a good five hundred feet ahead of Foxglove.  The impact drove its skull physically into the cavity of its chest and snapped both its forelegs.  It cartwheeled onto its back, snapping both its wings, and continued a good three hundred feet until it stopped.  Foxglove didn't even have to move a muscle.

Stunned, battered and broken, the Drakylon managed to struggle up onto its shattered limbs, just in time to be skewered by Sir Justin's new lance.

The Drakylon reared up and screamed, and with the scream appeared to give up the ghost.  The flames rose up, leaving the chitinous exoskeleton an empty husk.  The flames joined into a single body, which sped down to take up residence in the Pearl that Kitsune was holding.  The husk collapsed.

Foxglove sauntered back to the group with a 'that's right, I'm BAD!' swagger.  Kitsune walked up to her with an 'all right, I'll do it, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna like it!' look on her face.  "Okay, okay!  I have no pride!  I'll ask!"  She put on a saccarine mock-'doting fan-girl' expression and asked in a breathless Valley Girl voice, "Oh *Whaow!*  Like, how did you ever pull off that bitchin' stunt?"

Foxglove smirked.  "I just cast a Phantasmal Forces spell that made it look as if I - and the ground - were five hundred feet lower than we really were.  A variation of a computer hacker trick that people have been scared that terrorists will try someday."

Kitsune nodded, mugged a 'not bad, not bad at all' grimace and gave a thumbs up.

The two walked over to where the others were clustered around the body of Doctor Zohar.  "Okay, how bad it is?" Foxglove asked unconcernedly.

Mornsong looked up with a stricked look on her face.  "He's Dead!  Nothing works!  Not Theocles' Clerical Healing Spells, not my Druidic Healing Spells, not Healing potions, not even my Chalice of Purity!"

Sir Justin stood up, exhausted from trying to Lay Hands on Zohar.  He looked at Foxglove.  "The Damned Thing evicerated him.  Blood's not flowing, and he isn't responding to anything!"

"_So_?  Use up one of your Raise Dead, or Ressurection, or Lazarus Miracle, or whatever Bring-Back-The-Dead spells you have in your repertoire!"

"We don't _have_ any spells like that," Theocles said in a small voice.  "He's just plain _dead_."

That skittering something/nothing that occasionally annoyed Foxglove grabbed her by the head and shook it mightily, but couldn't quite manage to get completely through.  But one thing was abundantly clear.  "Something is very Wrong here," she said to the empty air.

*****

TO BE CONTINUED . . .