It was not, technically, a fortress. It was, rather, an ex-fortress. It had ceased to be. Its fortifications and fields of fire were now only of interest to archaeologists. Stone walls had crumbled, ivy had grown and overgrown what remained, and the mortar resembled soft sand more than anything else. On the plus side, the throne room got much better light now, and had a much more aesthetically pleasing all-natural green carpet. And, heck, if you had a good enough grasp of the arcane arts, you could toss up barriers a lot more effective than your average stone wall and much more resistant to itinerant siege engines. The being who called himself Rothschild Damane had taken this latter option, carving runes and trenches into the earth to turn the ruined keep into a personal stronghold, and putting a small bed of begonias to one side of the throne room. (No, they weren't man-eating begonias, he just liked the color.) Of course, in addition to the magical protections the keep was heavily patrolled, both by the usual sub-humanoids and the occasional ambulatory piece of vegetation. And at the only door still intact to the old throne room, two mecha-orogs stood guard - mostly for stylistic purposes, as the walls around the arched doorway had collapsed some time ago. It had taken considerable effort to augment the orogs with the meager facilities available, but the being who called himself Damane was quite proud of them. They were massive. They had enough armor and weapons to singlehandedly take down a detachment of knights. They looked about as sociable as a porcupine with a hangover. They were wrapped up in tendrils of ivy and pinioned against the crumbling walls in a matter of seconds. Damane (or so he seemed to be) blinked, and straightened up from where he had been pruning his begonias. A small figure in a cape strode through the doorway, and Damane extended his more mystical senses to attempt to get a feel for its power. Well. _This_ was surprising... ================================================================================ -_-/ , ,, (_ / _ ; ' _ || || (_ --_ < \, \\/\ \\ \\/\\ / \\ =||= ||/\\ _-_ --_ ) /-|| || | || || || || || || || || || \\ _/ )) (( || || | || || || || || || || || ||/ (_-_- \/\\ \\/ \\ \\ \\ \\_-| \\, \\ |/ \\,/ / \ _/ '----` _ ___ - - /, /, ,, |\ - -_, )/ )/ ) || \\ ( ~/|| _ _ ' )__)__) /'\\ ,._-_ || / \\ ( / || / \\ < \, \\ \\/\\ ~)__)__) || || || || || || \/==|| || || /-|| || || || ) ) ) || || || || || || /_ _|| || || (( || || || || /-_/-_/ \\,/ \\, \\ \\/ ( - \\, \\_-| \/\\ \\ \\ \\ / \ '----` Chapter 16: Build Two to Throw Away Impro started by Thomas Wilde This chapter by Glazius Falconar ================================================================================ Well. _This_ was surprising. Among the many things you do not expect to find upon your return to your fortress after your ignoble death is yourself. (Also in this category - a horde of mourners, a lynch mob targeted at the heroes, your trusted lieutenant lamenting your demise, and the Spanish Inquisition. Not in this category, oddly enough, the Tarbisian Bikini Team.) Rothschild Damane, currently sharing a subcompact-model body with another renter and the original owner, looked up at Rothschild Damane, wearing a pair of pants and some dirt-stained gardening gloves and little else. Both pointed at the other. "Identify yourself or die!" both screamed. Both blinked. "Damane?" said Damane's body. "Herald?" said Damane's soul. ******* Catherine tore through the outskirts of the Forest of Ort, which had not been as heavily petrified as the interior, trying to keep up with Mewly. Fortunately, pink was not a good color for camouflage. Unfortunately, Mewly could fit through spaces much smaller than she could. Fortunately, after a few moments and one near-impaling, Hans scooped her up and they made much better time. "Dangerous... terrain... princess," puffed Hans, steamrolling through the undergrowth. Branches and thorns were no match for a body hardened by years of battle and leather pants hardened by fifteen rounds of boiling, shaping, and powdered ramshorn. "Mewly's acting strange!" said Catherine, after getting her breath back from the sudden impact. Her eyes were starting to tear up. "Ve vill catch up... in time. Ze mountains are... not far ahead," said Hans, pushing himself a little faster. ******* When the fortress was still operational, this room had served it as a kitchen. Very few traces remained of its original purpose, unless you counted the rats' nest behind one of the still-intact walls. It had had a rather impressive stone countertop, hewn from a single piece of obsidian - for what reason nobody knew. Perhaps just for the effect, perhaps a temperamental chef, perhaps some superstition at the time that it would make food taste better or leach out any poisons. Whatever the reason, the countertop had survived the centuries since the fortress had fallen into disuse, and was now used as a planning table. Currently, only two people were standing around the table - Damane, on a stepstool, and the being Damane had called "Herald". (For the sake of clarity, that's the name he's going to be referred to by from here on in.) "So _you_ were what they told me about," said Damane. "'A herald to take your place and prepare the path for your rebirth.' Unless I miss my guess, they were a lot more... _literal_ than I'd thought. That's my body, isn't it?" Herald shrugged. "It is. It has a lot of potential, physical and mental. I can guess what my masters saw in it. But that _really_ doesn't explain _your_ current body." Damane smirked. "Your masters didn't see _this_, I can assure you. It was a little... contingency plan of mine, in case things started to go south. A few weeks of carving runes into the temple in secret, and then the first layer of enchantments..." ******* When the Forest of Ort started coming closer to the mountains that cut it off from the rest of the world, it began to fade off, leaving small clearings of grass and rocky soil bracketed by cliffsides at one end and the forest at another. Mewly had enough time to try - and fail - to climb one of the cliffs before Hans and Catherine burst out of the forest and tumbled to a rather ungraceful stop. "Mewly, don't run any more! Whatever's the matter we can help!" wailed Catherine. Mewly opened its mouth to speak, but suddenly convulsed, waves rippling through its body. Catherine ran forward, but Hans put one hand on her shoulder and the other on the hilt of his sword. Catherine tried to break free, without much success. "Hans, you can't! Mewly's my friend!" Hans nodded, sadly. "I know. Zat is vhy I am vaitink. Somezing is happenink, but vhat I do not know." Mewly, as it has already been noted, was a sorceror's familiar and, as such, developed along with its sorceror. His premature calcification at a young age had left Mewly at rather a young age as well. But now there were a few more mature minds sharing the sorceror's skull, and as such the link was dumping a massive amount of information into Mewly, at a much faster pace than natural growth could ever have allowed. It was a bit disconcerting and more than a bit painful. Muscles grew, bones broke and reknitted, skin stretched and extended, organs rearranged themselves and entirely new ones sprung up. When the tremors stopped, Mewly unfolded itself from the foetal ball it had curled into. Catherine gasped. Hans drew his sword. Mewly was now, vaguely, humanoid, and nearly as tall as Hans, though built much slighter. Arms and reverse-jointed legs tapered to slender hands and feet and long, black claws. Fur shifted from bright pink to an uneven rust-brown. Mewly's face looked vaguely vulpine now, as its snout had extended to accomodate a rather large number of white, pointy teeth. "Sssstop," Mewly growled. "I... I'm still in... in control... barely..." One eyelid twitched as Mewly spoke, and its muscles spasmed. "Mewly... what happened to you?" asked Catherine, still shocked. Mewly looked up into the sky, body twitching as it thought. "Masssster," it finally said. "Something'sss... happened to Massster. He was... sssstone. For a very long time, but now... he'ssss older... shouldn't... shouldn't be...." "Hans? Catherine?" called Julian as he stepped from the aperture in the brush Hans had made, Arica right behind him. "Where did you-" He was cut off by a primal, tortured howl from Mewly, which dropped to all fours and barreled toward him. Catherine ripped herself out of Hans's grasp, trying to fling herself in Mewly's path, but it leapt over her head without breaking stride. Julian's sword was out quickly, but he never had the chance to use it - a few feet away, Mewly flung itself violently to one side, tumbling across the sparse grass and fetching up against a tree trunk. "NNnnnnOOOO!" it roared. "Ssssuch... such hatred... I can't... ssstop..." Mewly slumped to the ground, clutching its head as its teeth and claws slowly lengthened. Julian shuddered a bit at the close call, then brought the sword up into a guard position. "What... what _is_ that thing?" "Vould you belieff, Mewly?" said Hans, unlimbering his own massive blade. Catherine picked herself up, wiping away a few tears. "Mewly isn't evil! I... I don't know what's happened, but Mewly wouldn't ever hurt us!" She set herself in front of Julian and Hans, spreading her arms wide, a determined look on her face. "Princessss..." hissed Mewly, between clenched teeth. "I... wish..." It spasmed, nails lengthening further. "Wish I... could sssstop...." Mewly shuddered a final time, and two crackling red blades of energy shot out from its shoulderblades. "I... mussst go... before I prove you... wrong...." "Mewly, no!" shouted Catherine, and she could swear she saw a tear in Mewly's eyes as it gathered itself and leapt. The energy blades left a faint red contrail as Mewly - or whatever it was now - soared over the mountaintops and away. ******* Herald slowly clapped his hands together after Damane had finished. "Impressive," he said. "I can see why my masters chose you. More fools they for assuming the end of your life was truly the end of your existence." Damane pounded one tiny fist on the table, then winced and cradled it gently as he spoke. "So why didn't you leave when they withdrew their support? That screwed up the incantation something fierce." Herald spread his arms wide and shrugged. "Part of the arrangement. I was bound into this body to serve at your side for eternity. When my masters left you, they left me as well. Perhaps I should stop calling them my masters." He thought about that for a moment, then shrugged again. "I _did_ manage to get rid of that Tyler boy, for all the good it does you now." Damane chuckled bitterly. "I was taken down by veteran adventurers, herald. They left quite the trail behind them the last time." His fists suddenly clenched and his eyes screwed shut. "They _stole_ my MEWLY!" Herald raised an eyebrow at Damane, who was slowly blinking his eyes and unclenching his fists. Damane coughed a few times. "Aheh. One of the side effects. The spell gathered up everyone who'd been wronged by the forces who defeated me - I was counting on that boy being the one, but I've got some company in this body. A wizard those veterans took down before and a little boy who bears some sort of silly grudge against them-" Damane screwed his eyes shut again. "It's not silly! THEY STOLE MY MEWLY!" he screamed, then staggered a bit. "What, or who, is Mewly?" asked Herald. After he'd regained control again, Damane shrugged. "Just some familiar. Kid had way too much power for his own good, locked himself as a statue, and the familiar ran off with the veterans. He'll get it back soon enough, the wizard and I amplified the calling spell. But enough about that. We need to get on with plotting a little... revenge." ******* Darrow picked a bit of reddish fuzz out of the tree trunk, sniffed at it, and sighed. "Everything I can tell you, Julian, you probably know already." Julian had run back to their campsite to get Darrow - Arica and Hans stayed at the clearing to try to comfort Catherine, which was not proving to be an easy task. "Humor me, Darrow. Please?" asked Julian. "Even if you're not practicing magic anymore, you've probably forgotten more about familiars and the like than most of us ever bothered to learn." Darrow raised an eyebrow. "Flattery gets you nowhere, Julian. But as nearly as I can figure, there are two possibilities. "First, Mewly's original master - Jerry, was it? - somehow managed to bring himself back to life, but the process aged him a bit, and he hates you, Julian, for some reason. Maybe he was conscious while he was in that statue?" "Er," said Julian. ~~~~~~~ "Are you sure that's such a good idea, Julian?" asked Arica. Julian looked up from his sword-sharpening and ran the blade along the statue's arm again. "This stone is nearly indestructable, we found that much out. And half the stuff we fought out there is probably this kid's fault anyway. It's only fair. "Besides," he continued, honing the flat of the blade on the statue's leg, "it's not like he can feel any of this anyway." ~~~~~~~ "What's the other possibility, Darrow?" asked Julian, quickly. Darrow raised an eyebrow but continued. "The other possibility is that some other force - which also hates you, by the way - brought Jerry's body back to life and is either controlling his body directly or riding along in his mind, making his apparent mental age larger and causing that change in Mewly. "From what I got to see of Simon, that one's a little more likely - it seems like, if he knew how to bring himself back, it wouldn't take 2500 years to do it." Darrow rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Neither one bodes very well for you, Julian. If he was as powerful as the people who wrote about him made him out to be...." Julian sighed, looking back at Catherine, who was in tears despite Arica's and Hans's efforts. "All this time I wanted to get rid of Mewly... I never thought it'd happen like this." Darrow laughed mirthlessly. "Wish I could say I'd miss the little fuzzball, though really I-" "MEWLY!" screamed Catherine, cutting Darrow off. She flung her head back and wailed, then collapsed against Hans. crying. Darrow shuddered. "Darrow? Are you alright?" asked Julian. "...a wave of power," said Darrow. "I just felt..." ******* The classical theory on the topic of conjuration, or the summoning of monsters, holds that the monsters themselves occupy an entirely different dimension. The conjurer, or summoner, uses their innate magical power to pierce this dimension and contact a monster - either to shanghai it into service or to ask it for help. Actual beings, the theory holds, cannot be summoned because summoning links one world to another, not the same world to itself. Mewly, as a familiar, was dual-natured, having a long-term presence in the physical world while being drawn from the world of monsters. It felt the pull of Catherine's call as it flew over the ocean, and wished that the pull from its master's spell weren't so strong, for it could not turn back. Then, Catherine screamed, sending out a wave of power in a desparate attempt to summon the physical, and Mewly faltered a bit in mid-air, feeling the magic delve into its spirit, pulling, twisting... And then the sensation was gone, and Mewly continued happily onward. Finally, it would get to see its master again... ******* Darrow was a student of the classical theories, or at least he had been. He recognized the wave from an attempt a fellow student had made to summon a thing that really existed, claiming the warnings their instructors had given were just part of a conspiracy. When Darrow had last seen his classmate, he was staring happily at a spot on the ceiling and quite cheerily introduced Darrow to the invisible plaid beagles who fetched his slippers and taught him to count colors. The strain was too great, or the power ill-suited, and those who tried ended up failing at best, imploding at worst, and ending up like Darrow's old classmate in between. So he was worried, a bit, about Catherine when he felt the wave spread from her, and was more surprised than anyone when a pinkish humanoid figure materialized out of thin air. Hans lifted Catherine's face away from his chest and slowly spun her around, and for a moment Darrow was almost ready to set the big man's loincloth on fire, just like the old days. But he noticed something different between the way Mewly looked now and the way Julian had described her. What fangs Mewly had now were short and more rounded, and were far from overcrowding its mouth. Its nails were more clipped, and the "wings" growing out of its back were a very faint gold. Catherine didn't notice any of that. All she noticed was that Mewly was back, and it picked her up in a big hug while Darrow began the long and involving process of putting two and two together, trying to figure how in the world Catherine had managed to come up with five. ****** "...and then, we complete the circle, bring my masters here, and give those adventurers who killed you a sampling of their true power! Then, with the interlopers soundly defeated, we can rule the world!" Herald smiled as he jabbed a finger at the last of many sheets of paper on the countertop. The plan, he felt, was as good as any he had ever made. It had been looked at from every angle, covered every contingency, and accounted for every conceivable action the heroes might take. It was caught up in a lick of flame that danced across the countertop and burned to ashes in about five seconds. "Very nice," said Damane, returning his hands to a neutral position from their current arcane gesture. "But you misunderstand the true targets of my revenge." "...but who else is there?" asked Herald, confused. "The wizard and I were talking, y'see," said Damane. "You know why those adventurers beat him? Because a bulk of his power was tied up in the circle to bring his master to earth. And you know why they beat me?" "Because... you were still unused to your new, glorious powers?" ventured Herald. "...hmm. Perhaps," said Damane. "I'd venture, though, that it was because those modular lifeforms your masters spoke so highly of sucked most of those new, glorious powers right out of my body. A thousand times worse than leeches. "The key thing, here," continued Damane, "is that both the wizard and I would have put up a much better fight if our 'masters' hadn't wanted us to weaken ourselves. _They_ are our targets for revenge, and I believe, with two magical traditions combined in this powerful body, we can pull it off." Herald gaped, wide-eyed, stunned. "Betray my masters?" he asked when he regained control of himself. "Why not?" asked Damane. "They betrayed _you_. They left you here to _rot_." "But, but... we're surely not powerful enough to defeat them!" exclaimed Herald. "Ah," said Damane. "Therein lies the _other_ half of the revenge." ******* "A summoned monster?" asked Mewly, and scratched its head. They had gone back to the camp near the Aqua Terror, and Aquila had come out of her ship to see what all the fuss was about. The professor was still inside attempting to explain to his ElectroMangulator that there was a time for bizarre unnatural love and a time for wreaking mindless destruction and that now was one of the latter times. Harold was currently helping him on pain of being the ElectroMangulator's first target. "As nearly as I can figure," replied Darrow. "It explains many things. The different fur color, the less threatening appearance, the absence of intense homicidal rage directed at Julian...." "I knew you'd come back to me, Mewly!" said Catherine, and hugged Mewly. Again. A slight indentation was beginning to form in Mewly's chest fur. Mewly took the hugging in stride. "So, that also means... I have an evil twin?" Darrow leaned back on his tree stump. "I'd say, given the circumstances, you're more like the good twin. You're more of the emotional part, the consciousness that resides in the realm of summoned monsters, and whatever other Mewly is out there is more of a physical shell. "There is one drawback." Darrow pointed at Catherine, who was half-asleep in Mewly's lap. "Because you're a summoned monster, it takes energy from her to keep you active." Catherine jerked her head up, startled awake. "But... Mewly just got back! I don't want her to go away ever, ever again!" Mewly ran a hand through Catherine's hair. "It's alright, Princess. You can talk to me any time you want, I'll always answer. But I'm not much good to you if you're asleep all the time." Catherine sighed and pouted, but nodded, hesitantly, and Mewly slowly turned transparent before vanishing in a sudden burst of light. An atmosphere of calm, peace, sorrow, and comfort pervaded the camp for all of thirty seconds before the professor was flung screaming out the hatch of the Aqua Terror and skidded to an ungraceful halt on the grass. Harold peeked over the lip of the hatch and then ambled down the gangplank. "Not goink vell, is it?" asked Hans. Harold shook his head, then turned to the massive barbarian. "Er, right before they threw him out, they gave us this." He handed Hans a metal plate scored with letters. Hans looked at the plate, turning it over several times. "Hmm. Vas varning sign on one side, and on other side is... 'Vhen ze engine room's rockin', don't come knockin'.'" There was a pause as everyone except Harold and Catherine looked at the Aqua Terror and shuddered, and then they began the process of clearing a campsite for the night. ******* "And _then_, we complete the circle, and send the adventurers to the dimensional phase space where we've already called our previous 'masters'. One of those groups is sure to give the other some heavy damage before it's destroyed, and then whichever is left will be easy pickings for _us_. And _either_ way, one of our problems is gone forever." Damane grinned as he traced the final figure in the rather crude chalk drawing on the countertop. "And... _then_ we rule the world?" asked Herald, scratching its head. "I could work in some world-ruling there, yes," said Damane. He smiled, then laughed, then flung his head back and let rip a truly maniacal cackle. Herald joined him. The patrols stayed _well_ clear of the old kitchen that night. ******* Caera, as has already been noted, is threatened with devastation at the hands of some cataclysm or other on the average of once a week. There are many other stories than the first one of Julian and Arica, or than this one, also of Julian and Arica. By their nature, some of them become the same story, as one group of heroes chasing one villain's lieutenant comes across another chasing the villain himself, or as a villain pits two groups of heroes against each other and they fight for a good fifteen seconds before combining forces against the man behind the curtain. By their nature, some of them remain forever separate, as evil plans arise separated by oceans, mountains, several thousand years, or perhaps merely scale. The War of the Ants is chronicled in no history book, yet if the Winged Queen had gained, as she sought, total psychic control over all antkind, it certainly _would_ be. Some of them to tend to bump shoulders now and again as they pass through the halls of justice, perhaps on the way to the water cooler of justice. But seldom does either group realize what the other truly is. Let's take a look at some, shall we? ******* Her name is Zura Marinas. At the age of eight, when she was out swimming during one of her family's trips to the beach, she was caught by a wave and pulled to the bottom of the sea. Hers would be just another tragic story, except that the wave involved had four distinct fingers, wore a large gold bracelet around its wrist, and was not, in fact, a wave, but the hand of Nephreed, 53rd king of the undersea kingdom of Meraqua. Meraqua, he explained, was in danger. The necklace she wore, he explained, was an ancient charm of the Meraquan royalty, pulled from the deeps by a fisherman's net long, long ago. She, he explained, was now the destined savior of the Meraquan people and it lay in her hands to save the tiny undersea kingdom and all its majesty and wonder from the evil Dark Manta. Was there any way, he asked, that she could rise to meet this challenge? There was. _Oh_ how there was. Zura swam through colorful seascapes with the greatest of ease, met hundreds of sea creatures who loved her and a significant few who didn't, commanded sharks and blowfish and narwhals on the field of undersea combat, and generally had the greatest summer of any eight-year-old _ever_. (With the possible exception of little Tommy Sorrowbrook, who was left behind in Lord Karn's Sword Kingdom and raised by performers for the three months it took his family to realize he was missing and track him down.) When all was said and done, though, she still missed her mother and father, and so she left her newfound friends behind and returned to the surface. It took some time to find her family, as they were obviously no longer at the beach, and when asked "Where on earth have you been?" the consequences of a truthful answer didn't immediately occur to her. This being Caera, the story she had to tell was taken, perhaps, with a metaphorical grain of salt, but still believed, and the Marinas family soon gained a nanny in the employ of the Heroes' Guild. Many years passed. Zura grew into a fine figure of a young woman thanks to her daily (and quite heavily supervised) swim in the river. She still cut a bit of a tomboyish figure, but managed to gain a small host of admirers, as well as an intense dislike for the phrase "no, Nanny, I'm not trying to command the creatures of the sea". She had actually been looking forward to the annual harvest dance this year, but something had intervened, and that something was little Mora. Mora was an eel, and had been one of Zura's closest friends during her adventure in Meraqua. She swam upriver one day to talk to Zura, despite the pain of the fresh water, and had relayed that some force was threatening Meraqua again, and it would really be appreciated if she'd come back and help. Zura tried to explain Nanny, but realized about halfway through that she didn't think what the woman was doing was a very good idea _either_. So she had snuck away one night. Upon finding that her heirloom necklace allowed sea creatures to breathe air the same way it let her breathe water, she gained a new, stylish eelskin boa with a few extra accessories - to wit, the rest of the eel - and went off to the nearest port town to charter a ship to take her to the stretch of ocean where she remembered Meraqua being. It wasn't hard. Even if some people were skeptical, the talking eel was enough to convince them that she really _was_ the Zura Marinas who had saved Meraqua, and many sailors were on good enough terms with King Nephreed to have heard of her. One captain agreed to take her on board his vessel, the _Evening Mist_, in the middle of the night so as not to be spotted, and gave her one of the best cabins of the ship - but still unfit for so great a hero, he had said. For a few days, it looked as though Zura would be back among her old friends soon enough. Then, disaster struck. The captain sighted a Heroes' Guild ship off the starboard bow and tried to outmaneuver it, but the other vessel was manned by some very able seamen and quickly pulled alongside, firing barbed harpoons to ensure that the _Evening Mist_ couldn't make a clean getaway. The captain had warned her to stay in her cabin while he and his men did their best to fight off the Heroes' Guild ship, but after hearing the swordplay outside for a few minutes she had decided it would be best if she gave herself up without a fight. She didn't want anyone dying because of her. Zura emerged on deck to see a rather odd sight. The captain of the _Evening Mist_ was talking with a man in rather ragged clothes, who she could only assume was the captain of the other vessel. He was carrying a cage with a parrot in it. "Look," said the man, waving the cage around. "I'll try this one more time. We're _not_ from the Heroes' Guild. We are, in fact, pirates, as our jaunty skull-and-crossbones headwear, ragged clothing, artificial limbs, and ship's parrot would seem to indicate." "Rawk! Swab the decks, yebastards, or it's the plank! Rawk!" said the parrot. "We have _stolen_ this Heroes' Guild ship," continued the man, "because we _are_, in fact, pirates, and stealing things happens to be in our general job description." "Rawk! Everything that ain't nailed down, melads! Rawk!" said the parrot. "You're... _sure_ you're pirates?" asked the captain, hesitantly. "YES!" roared the man. "Oh, thank the gods!" said the captain. "Men, you can stand down, they're just pirates!" General sheathing of swords ensued, but the ragged man drew his. "Listen here, mister, we're _pirates_. Vicious, bloodthirsty scoundrels here to pillage your hold, scuttle your boat, and cut you up for sharkbait!" "Yes," said the captain, "and you have no idea how _relieved_ that makes me." Zura was more than a little puzzled, but she was saved from having to wonder what to do next whem Mora spoke up. "You'd better not scuttle this ship! King Nephreed doesn't like it when people drop ships on Meraqua!" Zura tried to slink away as the ragged man glanced around, but the captain and crew of the _Evening Mist_ all moved neatly aside, giving him a clear line of sight to her. She essayed a hesitant wave, and he came storming up to her. "Alright, missie, who are you ta talk about King Nephreed like that, eh?" he said, leaning towards her and assailing her nostrils with the aroma of dead fish with a slight undercurrent of lime. "Only person your age who could even dream of it is-" "Zura Marinas!" said Mora, uncoiling a bit from the necklace. "And don't you talk to her like that!" "Bah, right," said the ragged man, not seeming to notice the eel at first. "The gel could talk to the creatures of the-" He blinked, and noticed Zura's rather animated neck ornament. "And she was wearin' the-" He blinked again, and noticed the necklace _under_ the neck ornament. "But you can't be her, she got locked away in some little house by the-" He stopped, and looked back at the Heroes' Guild flag snapping in the sea breeze atop the mainmast of his captured ship. "Well. Fancy that," said the man, setting his birdcage down on the deck with shaking hands. "Zura Marinas. Piratin' brings you in touch with all sorts o' people, it does." He knelt on the deck. "Obadiah Stormalong, ma'am. Atcher service." "Uh," said Zura. "You... can get up, it's kind of embarassing." "Ah, right, right!" said Obadiah, scrambling to his feet. "And... could you _not_ pillage this ship? It's taking me back to Meraqua, there's some danger there again and that's why I ran away from home..." "Oh, sure, sure!" exclaimed Obadiah. "Nasty way to repay a favor and everything, really...." He sighed. "Sorry about this, ma'am, it's just that we're a crew without a captain these days an' it ain't easy gettin' by without her. She got captured by the Guild on account o' she started heroin' herself, an' the ship she was on got pulled clean under. Me an' the lads have been lookin' for her ever since." "Uh..." Zura thought for a few minutes. "I suppose I could ask King Nephreed if she drow.... er, if he's seen her. What was her name?" "Heh. Aquila Clearwater," said Obadiah. At this, a murmur spread among the crew of the _Evening Mist_. Zura could make out, on occasion, the words "scourge", "hero", and "about damn time". "Rawk! That was a new jacket, ye malodorous, motheaten, motherlovin' bastard! Rawk!" said the parrot. "I'll just get back to me ship, then," said Obadiah, picking up the birdcage. "You an' your escort can get on with your journey. An' do ask after the Captain, me an' the lads miss 'er terribly." Zura essayed a hesitant wave, and Obadiah walked back across the grapple lines to his ship, mumbling to himself. "First Kestrel an' now this... I needs ta get meself an autograph book one o' these days..." ******* In the course of her journey, Zura was rescued from a squadron of Devil Mantas by an odd undersea ship with a little creature that ran along the metallic bands ringing the ship's corridor and chirred at her occasionally. She did go on to save Meraqua, of course. That's what heroes do. Even if she did get a bit of unexpected help. ******* His name is Treylin Nassa, "Trey" to his friends, which on the tiny island of Sisfu was just about everybody. Sisfu is a nice enough island. Many different sorts of fish swim in its waters, and many sorts of seashells wash up on its beaches, and there's a rather large demand on the mainland for both. Trey worked in the island's only restaurant, along with a couple of people he'd grown up with - but to be honest, on Sisfu, that included just about everybody his age. The people of Sisfu wore mostly seashells, in rather the same way that people who grow up in cattle country tend to wear a decent amount of leather. Trey had grown up to be rather slight and willowy, so most of the seashells he wore weren't very large. Kerr Chiton, on the other hand, wore rather large seashells. Trey wasn't sure how Kerr had gotten to be as big as he was, given that they'd both started out about the same size. They had a rather interesting rivalry going as children - Kerr's strength and stamina against Trey's hastily developed speed and natural quick wit. Kerr worked as a bouncer for the restaurant, and he and Trey got along fairly well. Coquina Rose _also_ wore rather large seashells, but for an entirely different reason than Kerr. She sang on stage at the restaurant. _Boy_, did she ever sing. She was the darling of the island, and everybody except Kerr was utterly smitten with her, which made many of the island girls insanely jealous. Except, of course, for Kerr's girlfriend. Sisfu was a rather quiet island. Not much happened on it. ...well, not much _had_ happened. But one day, an odd little man had washed up on shore and immediately started screaming at everyone, using words that nobody could really understand, like "royal mandate" and "eminent domain" and "droit de signeur" and "give me a boat". To be honest, most people _did_ understand that last one, but give him a boat? A boat, on Sisfu, was your livelihood, made by your own hands and attuned to the waters where you fished and the weight of your own body. Give him a boat? As well give him your hands, or your legs, or your heart. He didn't seem to understand this, though, so they occasionally pelted him with fish to get him to shut up. It became something between a sport and a chore, and it was a bit of excitement. But then he had started digging up sand and mud to throw back at them, and uncovered... Trey's father had told him about the gauntlet. The box it was in shifted randomly about the island, which is why none of their huts had a basement or even deep holes for a foundation - when a storm blew up, they loaded their possessions into their boats and waited it out on the open sea, using a bit of water magic to keep the boats from capsizing. The gauntlet, it was said, would grant great power, but also magnify your own greatest desire until it overran everything you did. People had tried to get rid of it, but it either took control of them or somehow managed to wind up back on Sisfu again. The gauntlet grafted itself eagerly onto the newcomer's arm, but still he continued to speak in words no one understood. "Restraining order", which brought chains up from the earth to bind the people of the island. "Summary trial", which was yelled loud enough to bring almost everybody out of their huts and out of the bar. "Capital punishment". Trey was in a three-man boat now, traveling across the open sea, pouring his own power into the boat's mearstone core to meld with Coquina's and Kerr's. He was going to track down this man and bring back the gauntlet, because the elders were burying the few dead. Because Trey, as a boy, had heard about the gauntlet by his father's deathbed many years ago, and heard of his duty to protect it. Mostly, though, because Coquina's mother had been throwing fish at the newcomer that day and she was still young enough for the "big, sad, soulful eyes" look to melt anyone's heart, let alone Trey's. Kerr worked the tiller as they skimmed the ocean's surface. The newcomer had left a trail - whales and dolphins with gummed paper stuck over their blowholes, assuing them of doing 15 knots in a 10-knot zone. A shark cut into bloody pieces, none of which any other shark would even come near. At times, Trey felt like turning back, but if he didn't stop this man, who would? The trail eventually led him to a port town. He and Kerr and Coquina climbed out of their boat and looked around for anything extraordinary. Circumstances did not disappoint. There was the newcomer, outside a bar, chains wrapped around a rather motley group of people - a woman dressed like a pirate, a short man in a sigil-covered robe, a man nearly the size of Kerr with a huge sword, a little girl with a blob of water tugging on her chains, and a rather ordinary-looking man and woman. Coquina fretted. Kerr drew his fishing spear from a sling. And Trey thought faster than he had ever had to think before... ================================================================================ __ __ __ |__ _ _ / _ _ _ |_| _|_ /\ _ _ _ _ |_ _ _| (_ _ _ _ _ . |(_)(_|_|_) \__)(_||_|| )|_|(-|_ /--\|_|(_)|||(-| )|_(-(_| __)(-\/(-| | ). _/ _ _ __ __ ____ ___ __ __ _____ ____ | | / \\ \ / // ___||_ _|\ \ / /| ____|| _ \ | | / _ \\ \ /\ / /| | _ | | \ \ / / | _| | |_) | | |___ / ___ \\ V V / | |_| | | | \ V / | |___ | _ < |_____|/_/ \_\\_/\_/ \____||___| \_/ |_____||_| \_\ ================================================================================ Julian strained to work free of the chains, but it was no use. Hans wasn't even managing to bend them, Darrow couldn't get to his acids, and even if Mewly could use its claws for lockpicks Catherine had been playing around with her new Aqua Manta and was in no condition to conjure another spirit. He felt a sudden chill as Severn descended from the air, an odd-looking gauntlet of leather and bone wrapped around one hand. "It ends," said Severn, in an uncharacteristically resonant voice. "The law has caught you at last, and for your crimes there is only one recourse." Severn drew back one hand, energy gathering into a bone-handled sword with a disturbingly black blade. "CAPITAL-" "STOP! THIEF!" The voice was unfamiliar, young, and Julian grimaced. Some boy was going to try to be a hero... Severn looked around, the executioner's sword dissipating into thin air. For some odd reason, Julian felt a sudden surge of relief as three oddly dressed people walked cautiously into the square. A man nearly the size of Hans in seashell-mail armor, holding a wicked-looking barbed spear. A young boy, slightly built, in the same sort of armor, weaponless. A girl wearing- Julian quickly returned to the process of struggling against his chains and making a show of checking to see if Arica was alright. "Thief?" asked Severn, making a show of glancing to the farthest corners of the square. "The law has captured all thieves, boy, and unless you wish to face the fury of obstructed justice, I suggest you-" "_You're_ the thief," sad the boy, crossing his arms over his chest, a rather confident look on his face. "You currently... er, currently have in your possession a... valuable cultural treasure of the... the sovereign island of Sisfu!" Darrow's eyes suddenly shot wide open, and he leaned as far over to Julian and Arica as the chains would allow. "Play along," he hissed to Julian. "Play along?" said Arica, quietly. "But-" "Play. Along," hissed Darrow. "If that's what I think it is, it may just save our lives. "Yeah, _Severn_," he continued out loud. "Isn't wandering around digging up powerful artifacts what _heroes_ go and do? Isn't that what you _stop_?" "I... I..." said Severn, the resonant timbre leaving his voice for a moment, before returning full force. "It matters little now. I am... the law. I uphold justice. That is all that is important!" "Justice? You _kill_ people because you _want_ to," said the boy. "How's that justice?" "I... I was... assaulted by..." began Severn. "With _fish_!" said the boy. "And didn't you _eat_ some of them? Don't you owe us something for that? Fish don't come cheap." "CRIMES!" roared Severn, the gauntlet beginning to writhe on his arm. "Heinous, despicable, disorderly..." "Wasn't 'murder' on that list of charges you so lovingly read us, Severn?" asked Julian. "Brandomere was tossing _fireballs_ at us, but I guess those aren't as _dangerous_ as fish..." "I... mitigating circumstances... sovereign immunity..." mumbled Severn. The gauntlet began writhing more quickly. With a mighty pull, Hans snapped his chains, then began to work on snapping the others. "Return the... the artifact immediately to the people of Sis... of the sovereign island of Sisfu," said the boy. "...or else we will... we will press further charges!" "I... I..." began Severn, and then stiffened suddenly. "FOOL!" he roared in a thunderous, resonant voice. "SHORT-SIGHTED, WEAK-MINDED, HIDEBOUND FOOL! YOU HAVE _POWER_! POWER TO DO _ANYTHING_! _DESTROY THEM ALL_!" The gauntlet buckled on Severn's arm, leather and bone creeping about with a life of their own. Hans, Julian and Aquila drew their swords, and the tall man set his barbed spear. "Lawbreaker!" exclaimed the boy. "Thief, murderer, vandal, conspirator-" "I... must... go back... surrender myself..." said Severn. "Justice... justice must... prevail..." Head thrown back in a silent scream, Severn lifted off the ground and shot over the ocean, arcing through the sky. One of his arms was flailing about madly. The boy placed one hand over his heart and then dropped to his knees on the cobbles of the square, breathing heavily. Julian was about to go over and shake his hand, but the girl with him suddenly tackled him the rest of the way to the ground. Julian settled, instead, for abashedly shaking the hand of the large man with the spear, and nearly getting his fingers crushed in the process. Hans clapped the large man on the back. "Come! You and your friends, I buy you all round of celebration drinks! Such a day this is today!" "This isn't going to get us to Kossos any quicker, Hans," said Darrow, who winced when Julian clapped a hand on his shoulder. "I think Hans has the right idea, Darrow," said Julian. "Finding out about Damane isn't as much of a worry anymore... and whoever these people are, we do owe them at least some thanks..." "Remind you of anyone, Julian?" asked Arica. The boy was a bit flustered as he pushed himself up into a sitting position, and blushed when he took the girl's hand to help himself stand. Julian chuckled. "Maybe. _May_be. We'll find out their life story over a few ales, probably, and I wouldn't be surprised a bit if he _did_." ******* When Trey came back home again, he was chased for a few weeks by most of the other boys in the village after they saw the ribbon braided in Coquina's hair. The restaurant did a fairly good business in candlelit dinners for a few months afterward, and many pockets were emptied to appease many slighted young women. The gauntlet was buried again, as deeply as Trey could dig, though he knew the box would work its way back near the surface eventually. Kerr told the story of their adventure to the mainland many times, and always worked in a little more of him stabbing and a little less of him steering. The newcomer - Severn, did they call him? - was never seen again. The elders told Trey that after he had given up the gauntlet, a couple of armored men wearing the same coat-of-arms that Severn had on his surcoat showed up in one of the mainlanders' ungainly boats. They had all gone away together. Trey had two sons and two daughters, and made sure to tell all of them about the gauntlet, and life on Sisfu continued along peacefully. That is, of course, until one day... ******* /\ || ' =||= \\ \\/\\ || || || || || || || || \\, \\ \\ \\ ******* OMAKE! OMAKE! OMAKE! OMAKE! OMAKE! OMAKE! OMAKE! OMAKE! OMAKE! OMAKE! OMAKE! ******* [HAROLD walks onto an empty stage, lugging a blackboard along with him.] HAROLD: And there goes part 16. Whee. The author wants me to thank Thomas Wilde for coming up with this and the FIGlet program for the nifty title art. [HAROLD gestures with the chalk at the chalkboard.] HAROLD: And now, the other thing the author wants me to do - a little Saving The World Again recap. A lot of stuff has happened, and much to my surprise it didn't all happen to me. Let's start with Damane. [HAROLD writes Damane's name on the chalkboard. Tak-tak-tak-tak-tak. He does this with all the names he's going to mention.] HAROLD: You might say he's the reason for all this. See, the author found out he didn't make clear in the last part that whoever it was who tossed a tornado at Tyler was working on the surface _while_ we were all fighting that mecha-thing underground. So now that's tied up. Sorta. I just hope I never get a scene with Herald, we'll never be able to get past the terrible puns. [HAROLD draws a line between the name "Herald" and the name "Damane". He's going to be doing a lot of line-drawing and name-writing, like the good little chalk-monkey he is.] HAROLD: I can hear that, you know, the fourth wall's down. [Nyah to you too, chicken-boy.] HAROLD: _ANY_way, Damane is really Damane, and whatever's in Damane's body is the Herald, and you can be sure they've got some evil plan in the works. [HAROLD moves to a clear space and keeps writing.] HAROLD: Dafydd and, oddly, Tyler, are next. Dafydd's got the tree that grew over the spot where Tyler's body now rests, and he's making a bow and arrows out of it. Is he going to turn on Damane? Is Julian going to pick up the bow and become the first RPG protagonist to use a bow as a major weapon? Well, there's Valkyrie... mmm, Valkyrie... but the bow was more of an alternate, and she started out with a sword... [HAROLD chalks some question marks around Dafydd and Tyler's names.] HAROLD: Or will he be stopped by another as-yet-not-appearing lieutenant of Damane's, or is this just another red herring? I dunno. [HAROLD moves to another clear spot.] HAROLD: And then there's the main party. They're all in some undefined port city, not at Kossos yet, maybe not going to Kossos anymore. Nothing's changed much about Julian, Arica, Hans, or Darrow, though Darrow might be letting the alchemist persona slip a little as the party keeps running up against magical threats. Aquila presumably has her ship back, and it can move underseas, and that cute little spider and the ElectroMangulator and probably the professor's engine did all sorts of weird kinky stuff that I _really_ don't want to think about to give it an upgrade. Catherine has two new summon monsters - the Aqua Manta, and Mewly, and it's possible that one or both of them can evolve like her Fire Parrot. [HAROLD draws a line back over to Damane.] HAROLD: Evil Mewly, of course, is probably with Damane right now. And what does Jerry think of this? Well, if you were an eight-year-old boy and you suddenly found yourself with an engine of mass destruction with wicked cool laser wings for a pet, how would _you_ react? [HAROLD shudders.] HAROLD: I'd hide under the bed until it went away, but nobody's ever called me normal. [HAROLD moves over to another blank space.] HAROLD: Now where is the professor, and where am I? We probably wouldn't have gone out to a pub even if we were with the main party, so we could still be tagging along... though to be honest, _I'd_ like to tag along and you can leave the professor back in the forest studying Ortean culture and talking to Sir Zertivex, who is only slightly less insane. [HAROLD tries to find another blank space on the chalkboard.] HAROLD: Aquila's men might be out on the seas looking for her, or might be with her in town, but either way, I think, she at least knows they're trying to find her. As for Severn, he may be sent out on the heroes' trail again or he may be retired, in favor of another less obsessed investigator. Or perhaps in favor of a _more_ obsessed investigator. [HAROLD moves to another blank space.] HAROLD: The title of this chapter is "Build Two To Throw Away". It's an odd takeoff on a chapter in a book the author recently read, but it also describes what the latest characters are. [HAROLD draws a line from "Obadiah" to "Zura" to "Aquila" and "Catherine".] HAROLD: Zura got a message from Aquila's men to her, and maybe Catherine got a new animal spirit from helping her out. [HAROLD draws a line from "Severn" to "Trey" to "Julian" and "Arica".] HAROLD: Trey showed Severn gunning back after the heroes again, and managed to trip him up just like any true hero would. "Nassa", by the way, is a sort of shell, as are "chiton" and "coquina". [HAROLD draws a swooping line from "Zertivex" through "Zura" and "Trey" to the party.] HAROLD: And together, they both showed the heroes getting back into the Aqua Terror and back onto the mainland. But! But! [HAROLD draws two lines arcing off the edge of the chalkboard.] HAROLD: That's all the involvement the author wants them to have. They had their own great heroic quests, and now they're done, and since the quests didn't really involve Damane they can stay out of the story. This was just an attempt at a little bit of color. Besides... [HAROLD steps back to show a chalkboard that's a mess of lines and letters.] HAROLD: Aren't things complicated enough already? [HAROLD begins pushing the chalkboard offstage, then stops.] HAROLD: Oh! One more thing. If we go to Tarbis, can I get to be oil boy for the Tarbisian Bikini Team? [The stage lights snap off.] HAROLD: Nuts.