--- THaB Part BEGIN! --- Rahve Lissken is a hard, hard woman. She has to be. She's a private dick, if you'll pardon the expression. She's faced down angry gangsters, hitmen, jilted husbands, murderers, and watchmen. Each of whom have given way before her haughty manner and general ass-kicking-ness. However, nowhere in the job description did it say that she had to face the angry, deposed deities of days of yore. -------- To Hell and Back A little morality tale about finding one's way in a world of madmen and terror. Created by Steven Scougall. Story currently at the tender mercies of the Black Snotling. -------- The group had become separated during their flight from the angry idol. Waj, Caemryn, and Rahve were together in one wing of the temple, and Tao, Treisal, and Iryien were in another. This was against Iryien's better judgement, who not only was a diligent adventuring student, but read horror novels. In their mad flight they had been very lucky. They had managed to avoid spiky, flaming, puncturing death from any of the temple's traps, but the scattered assortment of spent spears, darts and ceiling tiles meant that their path was easily marked. And Caemryn's "Blind" spell was due to wear off soon. -------- "Tao..." Treisal said. "In case we don't get out of here..." "Yes?" "I'd like to say-" "KILL THE INFIDEL!" "Why, Treisal," Tao said. "I'm not an-" "That wasn't me!" he said. "That was-" "You two!" Iryien said. "Come on! We have to get going! The cultists-" Tao stood firm. "No." "What?" Tao sighed. "Iryien. Treisal. We've been running for too long, now. I'm tired, and I am weary. Iryien, you're a fighter, and Treisal, you're... you're..." "Handsome, good looking, and brave?" "I was going to say very lucky, but, that'll do. I suggest we fight." Trei was not happy. Bad enough that they were trapped, but, to have Tao flipping out on them... He stood back a bit, outside of Tao's aura, and rolled up his sleeves. This could be messy. -------- "We're cornered," Caemryn said. "Waj, you're more celestial than any of us. Any ideas?" "This thing is a bit before my time, er, Sayemrin..." "We're not around Tao any longer," Rahve pointed out. "Why can't we just blast it?" "I'd like to have a backup plan," Caemryn said, "and my magic is mostly geared towards things other than making stuff blow up. Waj, you can't summon any hellish allies?" "No. Even if I wasn't cut off from my nature, I was a Demon of Farming. I could have mulched his garden, maybe trimmed the weeds..." "I'm no magic expert," Rahve said, "but isn't there a whole bunch of lore surrounding True Names?" "I do know that he can be repelled by a certain sign," Waj said. "Whole pantheon problem." "If you could remember it in the next ten seconds," Caemryn said, "that would be nice." -------- The Grand and Exalted Caliph of the Latverian Isles was in a meeting when he sensed Ezekeial. The meeting was about various civic works. Personally, he found this sort of thing very very boring. But, it kept his subjects happy. And keeping his subjects happy was his current divine mandate. So he sat through these meetings. Then the subject of the Temple of the Lost Gods came up. "You know," he suggested to the board, "I think we should take an inspection team out there. Its high time we did something." "But the expense..." a toady said. All good civic councils have them. They sit around, drawing a public wage, and complaining to the newspapers. The Caliph kept his around to throw to the wolves. Not very angelic, he thought, but necessary. And it kept the wolves fed. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Wouldn't do to Fall. "We can just survey it, at least. I think I'll go along, too. Make a public appearance, a couple of speeches, you know. Grand Exalted Caliph things." Besides, he thought, the traitor wouldn't, couldn't dare to try anything in a crowd. He made a note to get in touch with Heaven. They needed to be kept abridge of developments. -------- Ezekial, too, knew what the Caliph was up to. He used to have a name. Hrillwynd, or something. Then he got a Word, became the Angel of Public Works, ran for office, and kind of settled down. As far as he knew, Hell didn't have any demons-in-residence there. He was on his own. Fine. He could do this. He had a band of surrogate pirates, after all. -------- Where is that mysterious benefactor of ours? Mordecai thought. I owe him a good beating. Then he promptly forgot all of this and had another beer. Fortunately, he was sober enough to get the crew to hide when the Caliph's survey team, body guard, and interested onlookers arrived. -------- The idol of the Banished Gods stepped into the cavern where his prey were hiding, ready to do some heavy-duty peon smashing. However, just as he lifted his mighty arm to crush the puny sorceress, someone jumped on his stone back and wrapped a sheet over his eyes. He was not amused. -------- "Now, Caemryn!" Rahve Lisskin jumped down from the idol's shoulder into Waj's arms. They both fell to the ground, and rolled to one side. Meanwhile, the pirate's wife had stamped down hard on a loose piece of stone, and likewise decided to hug the cavern walls. The stone was connected to an ancient and lever, which in turn pulled a cam shaft which activated another rod, this one running towards the ceiling where a trapdoor holding back a small river opened and dumped its contents into a bucket on a pulley, which lowered, releasing the Everlasting Immortal Monkey to jump on a trampoline which started the mouse running in a cage, which powered the engine which released a ten-ton boulder, much in the manner of a certain famous architect of the region, one Rude Goldberg, at his time the undefeated trap champion with 150 dungeons under his belt. All this was irrelevant to the host of the idol, which was smashed into a thousand pieces. The boulder went on to jam into the entrance to the cavern, but Caemryn had a Thunder scroll handy. "I didn't think that went too badly," Waj commented to the two humans. "Not really," Rahve said. "Just, next time, watch where your hand go, OK?" "Say, I hate to break up this lovely couple moment-" the other two glared at Caemryn- "but, where did the kids get to?" -------- Author's Notes: Kill all workplaces. You, as a reader, might have thought "Hey, this part is kind of skimpy. It lacks a lot of character development. It's thin and two-dimensional. Who pre-read this? Surely someone must've been able to point this out." Nobody. That's who. Sor-wy. So, in lieu of any actual clever writing, I simply pulled out the Sledgehammer of Plot (TM Weisenheimer Productions ltd) and incorporated a truckload of angelic/demonic concepts from Steve Jackson Games' "In Nomine," which you shall all go and look at because I said so. Nyar! Next up is the Wilde, Wilde Thomas. He's an Author-type Pokemon, and is strong against Fanfic types. As such, he'll be whoopin' the hell out of THaB, whose "Convoluted Storyline" attack will be no match for his "Subtle Plotting" technique. The Black Snotling --- THaB part END! ---