Adv Log, Session 32: The End of the Breathstealer, and Shadowing Zorion Clemens

General Summary

Jyprasday, Leafturn 1, 879 AFE, evening
Taid was worried. They were so close to getting the Breathstealer. “I was wondering…every time we tried to approach this thing it took off, right? So we can’t do it that way. Maybe we can draw it in, draw it into the box, or trick it somehow.”
Almë replied, “We can’t draw it in. There’s no way that we can draw it in. We need to open the box and catch it like a mantrap plant catches, well, a man.” He made a clapping motion with his hands as if snatching a bug out of the air.
“Fine, but we also can’t sneak up on it,” Elitheris said.
“No, no, we can’t,” Almë agreed. “So that means we need to be stealthy, which is why I am suggesting that Eykit catches the wraith from the bush. From as close as possible. Because last time, we were too scared to wait in the bush that was right next to the Breathstealer. We waited one bush over. Since we can’t beat it with speed, I say we try stealth.”
“Can we set the box down, open it up beneath the window, under the spot where it’s going to sneak up?” Elitheris asked.
Almë’s forehead creased in thought. “No, it would see it and just go away. I’m saying Eykit in the bush, me casting the spell of Plant Growth to make the hiding spot better, we put the darkness strip over the box. Eykit just waits until it’s back, and then opens the box and grabs it.
“You know,” Taid said, “now that we know it’s a wraith, maybe we should just inquire how you capture a wraith? Instead of guessing a hundred different ways.”
“We know that this is how to do it. We just need to execute on it.”
“How do we know?”
“Because that’s what the shaman said.”
Taid looked unconvinced.
“Just trust me,” Almë said. Probably the most frightening three words Taid had ever heard uttered at the same time. “Don’t worry about it.”
“The shaman said we just have to capture it with the box?” Taid had a point. The shaman hadn’t actually said how to capture it. He had only recounted what he had done to capture it in the first place. Taid was right to question their plans.
“That’s what the story says. I think that’s the right way. Just trying it is probably faster than talking about ten different options.”
Eykit looked at the box. It was still glowing, faintly. The runes on one side of the box were slightly brighter than the others. It was still out there.
“We should go back to the house, and maybe it will come back,” Almë said. “It hasn’t fed yet, so it must be hungry. It’s got to come back sometime.” They all agreed, and trudged back into town, Eykit glancing at the box every now and then to keep track of the Breathstealer. It wouldn’t do to have it sneak around them and kill the baby before they got there.
The cottage was how they left it. The front of it was much bushier than it had been the day before, the result of Almë’s plant magic. The bush the wraith had used for cover while feeding on the baby inside was pretty sparse, so the Elven mage worked his magic on the plant, making it fill out enough to hide Eykit.
Eykit wrapped the box in the darkness strip. It wasn’t easy. The strip’s darkness field sprang up at ninety degrees from the orientation of the cloth strip, so simply wrapping the box with it would only cause the darkness to spray out in all directions, instead of hiding the box. He had to wrap and rewrap it several times before he got it oriented in such a way as to hide the glowing casket.
Almë re-explained the plan. “Eykit hides in the bush. The Breathstealer comes back, feeds on the baby, when the baby starts crying, Eykit snaps the box around the wraith. I think that’s the only way we can do it without having to go back to Port Karn and get some magic or whatever.”
Eykit got into position in the bush. Elitheris got back up in the tree to act as lookout. The rest found their spots in the other bushes. And they waited. They didn’t think it would come back that evening, but it was better that they didn’t give it the window of opportunity to feed.
Dawn came before the Breathstealer did. It had apparently given up on its current victim, at least for the night.
Validay, Leafturn 2, 879 AFE
They woke Mira, who had again fallen asleep in the rocking chair, and let her know that they would be back the next evening. Then it was off to the Blue Violet Inn for some sleep.
As they passed the Cracked Keg, Taid’s stomach growled, letting him know that with all the excitement, he hadn’t eaten since the day before. And once his stomach made its presence known, every one else’s did too. Sleep could wait. Breakfast couldn’t.
Breakfast was simple fare: bread, cheese, oatmeal, and small beer. But the bread was warm and fresh, right out of the oven, the cheese was local, and the beer was a good, if not exceptional, brew. The oatmeal was at least filling. After eating, they walked across the street to the inn, where they collapsed into their beds for several hours.

The bells tolling the hours didn’t wake them, and neither did Almë. His recurrent night terrors didn’t manifest, and he got a good six or so hours of sleep, along with everyone else. They awoke shortly after the beginning of the third sixth of the day, during the midafternoon.
The town had the typical services of a town that size, with a blacksmith, chandlery, alchemist, and general store, plus an inn, tavern, and stables. Taid wanted to go shopping, in case there was something at the general store that caught his eye. There wasn’t, not really.
But Almë saw some ceramic jars of brined pickles, likely transferred from large barrels into smaller, more convenient containers. He bought a couple of jars. “Stakeout pickles,” he explained.
Elitheris and Taid both bought some local jerky to supplement their rations. Taid asked the proprietor if there was an alchemist shop in town.
“Less of a shop,” the shopkeeper said, “he works out of his home. Alchemy takes a long time to brew, apparently, and he usually sells out as soon as any of his elixirs are finished. He can’t even keep up with the healing potions needed, let alone anything else. But he might have a few things on hand. His place is the fourth house on the right side of the street that is the second left going that way.” He pointed down the street.
“Thanks,” Taid replied.
Taid was also trying to figure out how to keep the bones in the box. With Almë running around with the box open, it was only a matter of luck (and perhaps some divine provenance) that kept the bones where they belonged, and not scattered all over Mira’s yard.
A piece of cloth, some nails, a hammer, and some glue were all it took to pin the bones into the box behind a piece of cloth attached to the inside of the box all around its perimeter. They didn’t, of course, tell the shopkeeper what it was all for.
“That would have been a nice conversation,” Almë joked. “Hey, general store guy! Can we get some nails and a hammer to nail some baby bones into this extremely weird chest with a skull on it? It’s glowing, but it’s definitely not bad, and thank you!” He laughed. The others saw the humor in it and laughed along with him.
“Yeah!” Taid said, pretending he was talking to the proprietor. “This is a restoration project! That’s what this is!”
After a few moments of mirth, and they managed to control themselves again.
They only had to wait a few hours before the sun started going down, the sky darkening slowly, fading from blue to black. They had spent the time at the Cracked Keg tavern, eating and drinking. Ruby spent the time eating, eating, drinking, and then eating again.
Eykit had noticed that his pocket had some beeswax votives in it. He didn’t remember buying them, or stealing them. He assumed they had come from the chandlery when he had sent the kid in there to hide from what he thought was the Breathstealer. He grinned, shrugged to himself, and left them in his pocket.
They went back to Mira’s house, to wait for the Breathstealer.
Eykit had the box. Almë modified the bush that the Breathstealer had hid under. That was where they wanted Eykit to hid with the box, but without Almë’s magic, it wouldn’t have been able to hid Eykit. After Almë was done shaping and growing the bush into the shape and density that he wanted, Eykit got into position.
“Is there any chance we can have Eykit in the bush with the box open,” Taid wondered, “and then somehow chase it or direct it into Eykit? Instead of trying to follow it?”
“It should go into the bush, right?” Almë said. “So Eykit can just snap it when it’s going in there, or when it’s in the bush feeding on the baby. So Eykit should be very close already. And with the darkness strip around the box he shouldn’t be seen.”
Ruby went inside, with both dogs. Taid went a few houses down, on the opposite side of the street. He crouched at a corner for cover. He wanted to see where it went if it bolted again. Elitheris went back up into the tree, to get eyes on the Breathstealer early to give proper warning. Her first call was to indicate that it was coming. A second was for when it was close. Almë hid in the bush on the other side of the doorway from the bush Eykit was in. He was close enough to support Eykit, if required. Although he figured that it would happen too quickly for him to be more than moral support.
“Wait until the baby starts crying,” Almë told Eykit. “We want the Breathstealer too busy feeding to notice you.”
About two hours later, Taid saw a flicker of blue light. He chirped out a bird call, sort of reminiscent of a crow with a lung disease.
Elitheris heard Taid’s noise. She shook her head, a wry grin on her face. He was going to need a lot more practice. She licked her lips; she knew the Breathstealer was nearing, and peered in Taid’s direction trying to spot it. A moment later, she saw the blue glow flitting from shrub to bush to tree.
The Elven woman whistled her first signal, and it sounded exactly like a Keltyn’s Jay, a rad and black diurnal bird with a characteristic “terr-weet” call. But Eykit, Almë, Ruby heard it just fine, and got ready.
It was one house away, and coming closer. Taid watched it approach his friends, hiding in Mira’s yard. Eykit could see the blue light as it approached.
The wraith stopped at the corner of the house, in the clump of tall grass. It was wary. The last time it had tried to feed, it had been interrupted, and forced to flee. It didn’t notice any movement, not that its senses were all that great, being preborn.
It sat there for an hour. It wanted to be sure there wasn’t anything there to attack it again. But nothing seemed to move, and it couldn’t detect anything in the dimness. It moved closer, moving slowly, just in case.
It moved up against the wall, sliding along the base of the wall to where the bush was. It could sense the baby—its prey—on the other side of the wall. It started draining the life force from the newborn, its primitive defenses no match for it.
Eykit was being patient. He was waiting for the baby to make some indication that it was having difficulties. He wanted the Breathstealer stealing breath before he moved. He waited, letting the wraith get comfortable.
About four or five minutes later, Eykit heard the baby cough.
Ruby had heard the bird calls, even Taid’s weird one. An hour went by, perhaps more, and then the baby coughed, and spit up all over Mira’s breast. Ruby moved quietly, her finger to her lips, and put her hand comfortingly on Mira’s shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she whispered into Mira’s ear in words barely above breath, “my friends will take care of it.”
Mira looked at the Hobbit mage with wide, scared eyes. But seeing Ruby’s calm face, she took a deep breath and cleaned up the mess on herself with a rag.
Ruby looked out the window, but couldn’t see anything through the oiled paper.
Eykit crept out from his bushy hiding place, moving slowly and quietly. It didn’t seem to realize Eykit was there.

Eykit opened the box, moved it around the Breathstealer and closed it around it in one quick motion before it could get out of the way.
Eykit didn’t believe it, and he didn’t move. He crouched there, arms outstretched holding the closed, non-glowing box, unmoving. “Guys? Guys?”
Almë burst out of the bushes at the sound of the box clapping closed. He wasn’t sure he believed it was in there either. But he didn’t see the blue glow anywhere, and the box wasn’t shedding its customary magenta light.
Inside, the baby latched back onto its mother, sucking greedily.
“So, now we have a super ghost weapon!” Almë said. “Let’s make sure it stays closed. Rope or something.”
“Can you grow something around it?” Ruby asked, coming out of the house with the dogs. “Like vines or roots or something?”
“Might be a good idea,” Almë agreed. He started looking at the bushes in the front yard, contemplating them.
Taid was running back to the group. He had a spool of twine, which he immediately started wrapping around the box. He used a lot of twine. With several knots. He didn’t want anyone casually opening it.
Almë wanted to add it to his souvenir collection. “It might be useful in the future!” he said. “I wonder how smart it is? Maybe we can talk to it and convince it to attack our foes. Maybe we can feed it and make it bigger!”
“Okay, Almë,” Elitheris stated, “you need to stop. Just stop.”
“Why? It’s such a great idea!”
“No, it is not a great idea.”
“Maybe we can put this in a museum,” Taid said, “or give it to some mages.”
“Let’s keep it!” Almë said.
“We are not keeping it!” Taid stated firmly. Eykit and Elitheris nodded. Even Ruby was looking at Almë with an odd look. Elitheris, Eykit, and Taid were very glad Almë hadn’t been with them when they took on the Servitor. He would have said something like, “Oh, let’s see what happens when we remove the crystal and let it go!” Eykit shuddered at the thought.
“Maybe we can give it to Baroness Walters?” Ruby offered.
“Here’s a dead baby,” Almë said, laughing, miming handing over a box, “have fun with it!”
“Maybe she can take care of it. Also we can earn some trust that we can solve problems in her barony.”
“For the record, we’re not in Walters’ Barony. Were in Undrite’s Barony. But giving it to the local baroness would be funny! Here, your husband is infertile, but here is a dead baby in a box! Maybe it will be helpful!”
Ruby shrugged; she didn’t care whose barony it was. It would make the most political sense to appease/impress Baroness Walters. There was little chance of impressing Baronet Undrite, not with the results of their last meeting so recent.
“Maybe we should take it to a mage guild,” Elitheris said. “Maybe they have a warehouse of doom where they put these kinds of things. Or a vault.”
“We’ve gotta make money off of this, though.” Taid said. “We haven’t been making much money for all our efforts.”
“Well,” asked Elitheris, “was there a reward offered on that original flyer? Or were they just begging for help?”
“I would say it’s a three step process,” Almë said. “We go to the local count and say we took care of it. He promised us the bat poop shipment. Then we go back to the Rural Watch board and collect a few coins. And then,” he grinned, “we can have an auction for the dead baby box and sell it to the highest bidder!”
“An auction? For the dead baby box?” Eykit was incredulous. That would have been negligent at best, and premeditated death, destruction, and pain at worst. Not to mention a wraith running around killing more newborns.
“No!” Taid said.
“Step three is discussable,” Almë said contritely. “Got any better ideas?”
“We’ve spent a lot of time making sure people didn’t make a bunch of dead bodies,” Taid said. “Cultists, Goblin cultists, necromancers. And now you want to put a baby killer up for auction? It would be like auctioning that servitor beast.”
“We have good connections with the Everyman Jacks,” Almë said. “Maybe they need a baby wraith!”
“Oh that would be just great,” Eykit said, “sell the baby box to the Jacks. Just what we need.”
“Well, hey, we can set up our own rescue operation. We just go to the next town, release it, and—“
“Oh my gods!” Eykit exclaimed. “Become a traveling charlatan that kills newborns?”
“Yes! Yes! But we wouldn’t be charlatans because it’s real! We’re not faking it. And then we solve the problem. For a price!” He chuckled. He pitched his voice differently, and said “I hear you have a dead baby problem, how much are you willing to pay to get it taken care of?”
“Well, we do need to go back to the Baronet and get our shipment arranged,” Taid said. “The only problem is that we have no way to prove it, without opening the box. And that’s a big no from me.”
Almë came back down to earth. “We can bring the mother and her baby to testify.”
“That’s true,” Elitheris said. “That’s not a bad idea.”
“She would have heard the clap of the box closing too,” Eykit said. It certainly had sounded pretty loud in his ears. “She could say that as soon as she heard the clap, things started calming down.” The windows had all been oiled paper; and didn’t really keep noises out very well.
It was almost midnight. They would need to go visit the Baronet, but that could wait until morning. Arriving in the wee hours of the night wouldn’t go very well. They made their way through town, walking the four blocks or so to the Blue Violet Inn, and their rooms. Elitheris took the twine-encased box with her into the room she shared with Ruby and the two dogs. She didn’t want Almë anywhere near it. Who knew what would happen to it, and the countryside, if he got a hold of it.
She wasn’t sure what to make of him. He seemed rather charming, in a clumsy sort of way, most of the time, and his heart was in the right place, most of the time. But there was some streak of darkness in him, a sense of chaos unbound, held in check by the slenderest of threads.
She shook her head as she got ready for bed. Figuring out her fellow Elf’s mental state was beyond her understanding. She had a hard enough time figuring her own mind out and dealing with her own demons. No need to borrow any from the mercurial Elf.
She held the box in her hands, as she looked around trying to find a place to put it. “Ruby, I don’t suppose you have a Magelock spell, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” Ruby replied. It wasn’t something that she really needed in court. Although she could think of some useful things to do with it, and the Lockmaster spell would actually be more useful. She figured she’d be trying to get in to more places than keeping people out.
“You don’t think it will bounce and rattle around as the wraith tries to get out, do you?”
Ruby looked at the box, shrugged a shoulder. “It’s not moving now.”
Elitheris took that as a good sign, but placed the box on the floor next to the bed.
Ralsday, Leafturn 3, 879 AFE
They all woke shortly after dawn. Even Eykit, the most nocturnal of them all, was glad to be back to a more normal sleeping schedule.
Elitheris woke with a start, and immediately checked the box. It was still not glowing, and it was still wrapped with what seemed to be two kilometers of twine. It hadn’t moved, and after examining it, didn’t think it had been tampered with. Almë hadn’t messed with it.
Her heartbeat slowed and became normal again. She didn’t need that baby wraith out and about again. There was little chance of catching it again. She dressed, her nose wrinkling at the sour sweaty smell her gambeson was emitting. Her companions’ clothes and armor were probably just as bad. She put it on anyway, making a note to herself to wash it when this was all done.
“Breakfast first,” Ruby said, her stomach rumbling. She hadn’t eaten since the day before, and she was behind on her meal plans. There was a lot to do, so she would have to combine breakfast and second breakfast. She hated doing that, but it was necessary.
They all traipsed across the street to the Cracked Keg tavern. They could smell the odors of cheese, bacon, and porridge. It was still fairly early, and had no problem finding seats on the long benches. A few farmers were there, beating the rush after the night shift got off work, which was going to be soon.
Breakfast was a combination of cheese, bread, apples, peaches, mangos, and porridge, along with some rashers of bacon. A golden ale and a pale lager were the beverages available. The group set to, the hard, dangerous part of the job finished and done with.
Ruby, of course, had seconds, avoiding the bacon and focusing more on the porridge, to which she added the fruit, cut into small pieces. She asked for, and got, a handful of walnuts, which she cracked, adding the nut meat to the porridge along with the fruit.
While she was eating her second breakfast, Elitheris and Eykit went to Mira’s house, and asked her to come with them as a witness.
“Just a moment,” she said, and she retreated back into her bedroom. A few minutes later, she came back out, wearing what must have been her nicest dress. It was still a peasant dress, but it was clean, and the deep maroon fabric had no worn spots or tears. “Okay, I’m ready now.” She picked up Berne from his cradle and followed them back to the Cracked Keg.
Ruby was just finishing when they walked back in the doors. The place was getting crowded, as more off shift workers came to get fed.
They started the long walk to Baronet Felson Undrite’s manor house. It was about eight kilometers, but most of the walk was on a fully metaled roadway. They shared the roadway with wagons and carts, mostly filled with produce from the farms, but two of them had the guano fertilizer. Oiled tarps covered the back of the wagons, and while they helped with the stench, the odor of ammonia and feces was still evident. They wrinkled their noses and walked faster, trying to outpace the wagons as quickly as they could.
“Ugh,” said Eykit, “I was hoping never to have to smell that again!”
“You’ll be smelling it again when we get our shipment of it,” Almë stated.
“I’m not the farmer. I’ll be in the house. You’ll be smelling it.”
After a couple of kilometers, Elitheris dropped back to walk with Mira, who had been shifting the baby from arm to arm. She was clearly tiring. Newborns, small as they were, always seemed to be filled with lead.
“I’ll carry Berne, if you like,” Elitheris offered. “Give you a bit of a rest.”
Mira smiled shyly. “Thank you, ser,” she said, handing the sleeping bundle to the Elf woman. She shook her arms at her sides, trying to relieve the fatigue.
“Not ser,” Elitheris said. “Just Elitheris. I’m a commoner, like you. The others,” she indicated her four friends, “might be higher born, at least now. But I don’t know, really. Of all of them, I think only Ruby really might warrant it. The rest are just jumped up peasants.” The smile on her face cut the sting of the words.
The morning was relatively cool; the subtropical summer heat hadn’t yet started baking them, and a southerly breeze kept them both cool and filled their lungs with the scent of a thousand species of plants.
They turned off the road at the dirt road marked by the sign that said “Undrite Manor”, and walked the last kilometer to the manor itself.
They walked up to the gates to the property. Behind the wrought iron they could see the row of cherry trees, flanked on either side by the native jungle plants that the previous manor owners had never cut down and turned into farmland. The walls of greenery provided something of a privacy screen. The manor house itself was at the far end of the row of trees that marched in a line down the center of the aisle between the jungle plants.
Almë was even able to see, mostly hidden in the jungle shadows, a man-trap plant like his little pet, except much larger. He also saw, on nearby tree trunks, some splashes of red paint, likely as a warning to casual strollers who might blunder into it. Surely it would look bad if Baronet Undrite’s guests turned into some carnivorous plant’s meal.
They were seen approaching the gates by half a dozen guards in the livery of Baronet Felson Undrite. The guard captain stepped forward. He addressed Taid, who was in front, and carrying a twine-wrapped box. “And you are here for what reason?”
“We have captured the wraith of Rhades!” Taid said. “The baby killer.”
The guard looked unconvinced. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“And how do We know this?” They could hear the capital W in his voice. He was using the royal “we”.
“We have brought the mother.” He turned to Mira, who held Berne in her arms. She nodded.
“So, what happened was, we set up a trap. This is the box of baby bones, and that we learned from the spirit of the shaman who had trapped it in the past. And we used this box to capture the wraith.”
The guard captain squinted in the late morning sunlight. “Go on,” he commanded.
“The wraith approached the house and started consuming little Berne’s life, through the wall and Mira could see that the baby was starting to struggle and have problems and things like that, just like the other babies in this area had before they died.”
He looked at his Goblin friend. “And then our trusty, stealthy Eykit here captured the wraith in the box with a ‘snap’, and as soon as we did that Berne over there went back to being normal.” He paused, and looked a little sheepish. “It, uh, took us three attempts to catch this thing. It’s very fast, and it only shows up at night.”
“Ah,” the guard captain said, mulling over what the group in front of him said. He’d been watching their reactions as the Dwarf told his tale, and even the woman and child seemed to be in support of its truthfulness. “Come with us.”
With that, he turned to the gate, opening it. Two guards went in, followed by the captain. The other four guards waited until the visitors had filed through the gate, at which point they followed.
One of the guards came over to Ruby and Elitheris. “The dogs stay here,” he said. He reached into the doorway of the guard room and pulled out two leashes. “May I?” he asked the two women. Elitheris nodded, and he clipped the leash to Mister Wiggles’ collar.
He looked down at Ruby. “Your dog isn’t going to eat me, is he?”
She smiled wickedly. “Probably not,” she answered.
With trepidation, he clipped the leash onto Norolind’s collar. The massive mastiff turned to look at him, and Ruby, then chuffed out a breath. The guard knew that if the big beast wanted to go somewhere, there was little chance of him being able to stop it.
The rest of them walked toward the manor house, leaving the solitary guard behind with the two animals.
The guard in front of the procession opened the front door and went inside, as did his partner and the guard captain. Two others stood at attention just outside the doors, while the last guard started back to the front gates.
“Enter,” the guard captain said, and the motley group of people walked into the foyer.
It was high ceilinged, with plaster walls that were painted in mostly abstract murals. A pair of curving staircases rose up to a mezzanine level that overlooked the foyer. Closed doors led off to other rooms or hallways. Skylights let in the midday sun, illuminating the room with a bright glow. There were a pair of nicely carved side tables, one on each side. Each had candelabra on them.
Eykit kept his hands in his pockets. The guards watched them with rapt attention. The guard captain spoke softly to one of the guards, who went up the stairs and disappeared. A few moments later, he came back, leading the manor’s reeve and seneschal.
At the moment, the man was acting more as the Manor’s reeve than he was as the house seneschal. In this case, the Manor was the whole barony, not just the house and grounds. But he provided both functions for the Baronet.
“I’ve been told you have captured something,” Christopher the Reeve said.
“We have,” Taid replied. He turned to Eykit. “I’ll let my associate here explain.”
Eykit started to open his mouth, but the reeve held up his hand, saying, “I’m going to stop you right there.” He turned to the guard who had fetched him. “Go get Aram.”
“Yes, ser,” the guard said, and quickly walked through the door on the right. Before it closed again, Eykit could see that it led to a hallway. He didn’t get much of a look, however.
About a minute later, the guard came back, followed by a bearded man in nice clothing. He carried a staff. He saw Christopher, and stepped up to him. “What can I do for you, ser?”
“These people have apparently caught something, and I want to make sure they are telling the truth.”
“Okay. No problem. Which one of you is going to be telling us a story?” He looked at the six people who were capable of intelligible speech.
“I will, ser,” Eykit said.
Aram the mage said a couple of words and made a quick gesture.
Eykit didn’t feel anything. He figured that some kind of truth spell was being cast upon him, and this was one of the few times that the truth was what he was planning on saying.
He waited a moment, and the mage nodded to the seneschal.
Christopher spoke. “Okay, tell me happened?”
Eykit said, “Where do you want me to start?”
“At the beginning. Continue on until you get to the end, and then stop.”
Eykit shrugged. “I was born in Port Karn—“
The reeve sighed and put up his hands. “You know what I mean. How about at the beginning of your investigation?”
As Eykit started over, he found himself unable to lie. It hadn’t been a spell that sensed the truth, it was one that compelled it. He couldn’t lie to save his life. And it might come down to that, if the wrong questions were asked. Every time he tried to even shade the truth a bit, his mouth veered back to full truthfulness. And he couldn’t stop it.
He continued, “We came to town to investigate the issue with the babies dying. We attempted a few different paths, some of which were abject failures where we felt completely incompetent.” His eyes got wide, feeling he had said too much. But he couldn’t help it.”
Every now and again, while Eykit spoke, the mage nodded. Christopher listened, quietly.
“Then we went to a lady who got us in contact with a shaman, who gave us some clues about where we could go next. He led us to a box that he had made that could trap the Breathstealer. It was in the caves of the guano mine. We had to move through the poop, and we had to buy clothes that we will only ever wear once. And I’m still kind of salty about it!”
Eykit’s recital of the story was very robotic, as if each word was either carefully chosen or pulled out of him reluctantly. Perhaps, it was both.
“Then we proceeded to have the luckiest choice of pathways through the poop ever, and we found the box with bits of bone in it, which we then carry out of the mine.”
Christopher spoke up. “What kind of bones were they?”
“Baby bones,” Eykit answered, and the mage nodded. “The box was filled with bits of small bones which the shaman told us were that of a dead baby. We had been informed that the box is where the wraith had been previously trapped, and had somehow gotten out to once again wreak havoc on the countryside. And we needed to get it back into the box. This is what we needed to get the spirit back into.”
His delivery was still stilted, and lacking any of Eykit’s usual charm, panache, and cleverness. But it was all true.
He continued. “But we didn’t know how to do that, and in fact, our first couple of attempts involved us running headlong across the countryside, with the box, chasing this blue glowy thing, looking like idiots. Pretty much. Not effective. At all.”
“Okay,” Christopher said.
“Then we decided to meet it where it was causing immediate problems, which was at the home of Mira and her baby. And we found the wraith.”
Mira nodded.
“It was sitting there, well, not sitting, but you know, still, outside of the home and clearly doing something to the baby as it was struggling to breathe as long as the wraith was sitting there across the wall from each other.”
“Opposite sides, right?” asked the reeve.
Eykit nodded. “Right. So, once again, we attempted to go after the thing with he box, which resulted in us yet again chasing it, with the box having no effect whatsoever other than to make us look and feel dumb.” Not being able to embellish the tale was killing him. This isn’t how stories should be told! They need excitement, derring do, daring escapes and triumphant successes. But this? Pure truth? It was boring. But his thoughts didn’t change the fact that the words being pulled out of his brain were the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
“So,” he said, continuing on with the story, “the second time chasing it failed, so we decided to focus on stealth. And we have a plant mage who fast-grew the bushes around the home so that we could hide more effectively. I was able to hide in a bush very close to where the Breathstealer was sitting and sucking the life force out of the baby. And with careful planning, I was able to quickly snap the box around the thing and then the glyphs, which had been glowing, stopped glowing.”
The mage looked more closely at the box, wrapped in twine. There was so much twine on it that he had a hard time seeing many of the details, but he could at least see that the box was carved wood, with sigils on it. None of which, of course, were glowing.
Eykit kept going. “They were glowing, and now they’re not. So our response was to quickly tie all of our twine about it, to keep it from coming open.” He glanced at the box, still held by Taid. “It does look like a wrapped package, because the last thing we want to do is open it. We don’t want to open it. But as soon as we closed the box, the baby stopped crying. And Ruby can attest to the fact that the baby calmed down immediately. We couldn’t see the baby. We could only hear the baby.”
Eykit took a breath. “But according to Ruby and Mira, the baby, Berne, calmed right down.”
The reeve asked several questions, such as “what did it look like?”, “Where did it come from?”, “When did you first see it?” Who did what during the times you interacted with it,” and other such questions to nail down the details. The question and answer session lasted for half an hour, and by the end of it, the mage, who’d been maintaining the spell every five minutes, was getting tired.

Eykit answered all of the questions, even the ones he he didn’t know the answers to. Then the mage cast the spell on Mira, and Christopher asked her to tell him her version of the story. It was much less detailed, as she really didn’t see much, but she was able to tell him what she experienced during the whole event.
But her story corroborated Eykit’s. Christopher had Aram cast his spell of Compel Truth on a couple of the other members of their merry band, getting two more versions of the story that corroborated the Goblin’s. After a bit more questioning to extract as much information as possible, the reeve seemed satisfied.
“So,” he said, his eyes going from person to person, and ending on Taid’s, “what is your plan for that box?”
“We want money,” Eykit said before he could stop himself. He was still under the effects of the spell cast upon him.
Almë answered, “We will bring it back to Port Karn to one of the mage guilds there.” He glanced at Eykit.
The reeve sighed, looking at Eykit. “Of course you do.”
“What I mean,” Eykit tried again, “is that we want money. Shit!” Again, the spell modified his answer to his embarrassment. “I mean, we want a reward. In cash. Shit!”
Taid said to Eykit, “Let me remind you, our reward was the shipment of fertilizer.”
“I don’t want poop!” Eykit responded. He couldn’t do much with bat poop.
Taid turned to the reeve. “We are going to dispose of the box using means we aren’t certain of yet. But we will make sure it’s all taken care of.”
“We may have Almë here use Shape Earth to bury it very deep in some out of the way place where no one can find it.” Eykit didn’t want this thing loose either. The only problem is that Almë would know where it was. The Goblin wouldn’t put it past the Elf to dig it back up again and do something everyone would regret. But he kept his mouth shut about that. There was absolutely no need to let the reeve know anything about Almë’s predilection to chaos and borderline sociopathy.
“I we if we bury it with Shape Earth,” Almë said, “deep on our own ground, we can just make sure that nobody digs in the forest or something, right? Because we own the land, nobody's going to build a mine on our land without us knowing. So we can just hide it there.”
Taid chuckled. “Maybe it will fertilize our peaches, or something. We could bury it beneath the peach orchard.”
“Yeah, sounds like a good idea.”
Christopher and Aram stood there, listening to their visitors’ plans. Burying it in a spot where no one would find it sounded pretty good to them, as long as it was far away from Undrite Barony. Neither could think of any better way to get rid of it, and both figured that simply destroying the box would only let whatever was inside loose.
“Well,” the reeve stated, “you have apparently fulfilled your side of the bargain. Where would you like the wagonload of fertilizer delivered?”
Eykit gave him the location of their manor, and how to best reach it. Their job they’re complete and resolved, they headed back to Sairina Tarwar, a trip that would take most of the rest of the day.
The long hike back to their Manor was uneventful. As they walked between the fields, they could see people working in them, clearing weeds.
Almë wandered over to where a pair of workers were using hoes to remove the thick, clustered weeds. “Good evening,” he said to Felgrat and Gubu. He looked around, seeing that they had cleared several square meters of ground. “How is it going?”
“Just started not too long ago,” Felgrat said. “So far, so good. This place has seen better days. Pretty much everyone else is in the peach orchard, trying to save as much fruit as possible.”
“How long has it been like this?” Gubu asked, meaning the state of the Manor.
“Years, I think. It was derelict for a while, which is why we have it now.” Almë didn’t go into further detail.
“Oh,” Felgrat said. “Akoth said he saw some wild animal or something in the jungle behind the house. He couldn’t tell what it was, but it wasn’t very big.”
“Great,” Almë said. He had an inkling he knew what it was. “Thanks for letting me know.” He turned and followed his companions, who were filing into the gate to the courtyard around the manor house itself.
He entered the house during a discussion of what to do with the box.
“We should bury it in the peach orchard,” Almë said as he entered.
“Maybe we can bury it in the forest or something?” Ruby said. “Or we can bury it in our basement? Maybe we can bury it under our house in the hidden place?”
The floor in the basement was worked stone. Very tricky to use Shape Earth on, and very expensive in terms of mana.
Almë shook his head. “We should do it in the peach orchard. No one will dig there. So why is it safer below the house than below some trees?”
“Maybe there is an earthquake or something happens, like with the poop cave.”
“And then what? The earthquake would damage the house more than the orchard.”
“I think we should have it buried in the garden, near the house.”
“If we bury it in the garden,” said Taid, “we can get a little baby statue and put it on top of it. The ‘Unknown Baby’.”
“Like a baby memorial,” Elitheris said.
“And it will help remind us where we buried the damned thing. Right here!”
Elitheris nodded, “That’s a good idea.”
“It would be like a garden statue,” Taid added, “and that way Almë would get his souvenir. It’ll be buried, and close by.”
There were plenty of garden spaces to choose from. The kitchen garden had been set up, but Almë hadn’t gotten to any of the other garden beds yet. They were still all weedy and overgrown. He would likely have to do some work cleansing the soil of seeds before he could actually plant anything in them. Or just get new dirt, and start from scratch.
Fonzug, the worker Almë had hired as overseer, came into the house. “Sers?” he said. “I just wanted you to know that some kind of wild creature has been seen running around out here. No one is sure what it is, no one’s gotten a good look at it.”
Almë nodded. “Felgrat told me the same thing, out in the fields.”
Fonzug nodded. “Whatever it is, it’s not big. But it’s fast.”
“No signs of tracks or behavior or scat?” Elitheris asked.
“No scat, and while there have been marks on the ground, there were no tracks anyone could identify.”
“A bit of territorial spirit action going on?” Taid surmised.
“I’d like to see these tracks,” Elitheris said.
“Sure,” Fonzug said, “over this way.” He led her towards the edge of the courtyard, on the jungle side. The rest followed, curious as well. The Orc overseer stopped at one of the planting areas within the courtyard. It was weedy, like almost all of the others, but he pointed at a section that seemed to have some depressions in it.
Elitheris knelt, examining the marks. She shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.” She pointed, showing the others the trail of tracks. They just looked like clusters of points, very unlike any animal tracks she’d seen before. “I can’t even tell which direction they went. The tracks don’t seem to have a recognizable front and back.”
“Is it that stupid zombie cat we left here?” Almë asked.
“Zombie cat?” Ruby asked.
“Yeah, we never killed the zombie cat. I feel this is going to haunt us.” He turned to Ruby. “It jumped onto my back once, and I grabbed it and threw it off, and it ran off into the jungle.”
Ruby looked around. “Hey guys? What is this zombie cat? What happened here?”
Almë told the story. “So, there was this guy in the house before us before he left, kind of by accident.”
Ruby knew enough about people to know that “by accident” was a euphemism for something much darker.
“And he had a zombified cat for some reason. We had hoped it would just leave, but, apparently, it didn’t leave.”

“Elitheris,” Taid asked, “do you think these are zombie cat tracks?”
She shrugged. “It could very well be.” The tracks were old, and time had eroded away the fine details. But a skeletal, zombified cat could have produced markings like the ones she stared down at. “Well, we don’t have else much to go on. It’s a curiosity that we’ll have to keep an eye out for.”
Almë turned to Ruby. “Could Norolind sniff it out? Because zombie cats probably stink.” He chuckled. “Depending upon how old the zombie is.”
Traditional zombies came in several different kinds; it was dependent upon the condition of the body. Fresh, preserved bodies became mummies. Unpreserved recently dead bodies became zombies, and older bodies were skeletons. Over time, all zombies, if they survived long enough, became skeletons as their flesh rotted away.
Boots the zombie cat was a different kind of zombie altogether. It was a Shardzombie, the first one ever created. Shards did interesting things to tissue, when properly prepared. The crystals, when imbedded into the flesh, somehow activated the flesh and not only caused it to move, but also to shift around, as if the Shard was rearranging the body into something more effective.
According to Nathan the toymaker and demonologist, the Shards were rearranging the body to be more useful…for the Shards. But that was only his opinion, and presupposed that the Shards were intelligent, or had some sentience of some kind. There was no evidence for this, so no one believed him.
“We could leave out a bowl of zombie milk,” Taid quipped.
Neither of the dogs had much training in following scents, but dogs followed scents all the time. The tricky part was getting them to follow the right scent, stick to it, and let the handler know when they’ve found something. Elitheris and Ruby maneuvered their canines into sniffing the tracks, hoping that the scent would be interesting enough for them to track.
Elitheris had little luck getting Mr. Wiggles to be interested in the tracks. He seemed more interested in chasing a squirrel that chattered away up in the branches of a tree.
Ruby had more success with Nori. He sniffed at the tracks, then started sniffing around the area. Within a few moments, he headed out into the jungle, nose to the ground. Ruby ran forward with a “Hey-up!” and leaped onto Norri’s back, settling herself into the saddle.
Everyone else followed on foot, fighting their way through the undergrowth between tree trunks. As was typical, the edges of the jungle growth were the thickest, as the plants strove for the light. After several meters, however, it thinned out a bit as the darkness of the jungle increased. The heady moist smell of vegetation was all around them, as was the myriad sounds of the jungle in early evening. Bugs and birds, with the occasional rustling of something moving in the branches, assailed their ears.
https://www.google.com/search?channel=fenc&client=firefox-b-1-d&q=sound+of+the+jungle#fpstate=ive&vhid=PsF0kIp4E8_S5M&vld=cid:fea78348,vid:q1PlNww4c20,st:0 https://www.google.com/search?channel=fenc&client=firefox-b-1-d&q=sound+of+the+jungle#fpstate=ive&vhid=PsF0kIp4E8_S5M&vld=cid:fea78348,vid:q1PlNww4c20,st:0
Norri, with Ruby along for the ride, sniffed along, going around tree trunks and through bushes, Ruby having to fight to stay in the saddle and not be knocked off by the forest full of branches that threatened to beat her to death. Taid had his short sword out, using it as a machete to cut his way through the tangled growth.

After a while, Norri sniffed entirely around a tree, then up the trunk, until he stood on his back legs, forelimbs on the trunk. The dog stared up, into the darkness, tiny points of blue light shining through the tree canopies, the sky of early evening darkening. He whined. Ruby rode leaning far forward, along his back, trying to keep from sliding out of the saddle.
The Hobbit looked up, into the tree. She couldn’t see anything besides branches and leaves.
The others chopped their way through the brush, and saw that Norolind had apparently cornered something up in the tree.
Almë got his staff ready, as he got closer to the tree. He wanted to be prepared this time, before the damned cat jumped on him again.
“The tracks are days old,” Elitheris reminded them. “Who knows if it’s still up there.”
“Maybe it lives up in the tree,” Almë suggested. As far as he, or anyone, could tell it wasn’t there now. But then, they could only see about as far as the first canopy. There was a lot of jungle above those branches that they couldn’t see.
Almë cast the spell of Plant Vision. That spell would allow him to see through all of the undergrowth and branches, exposing whatever might be hiding in them. He said a few words, and flicked his fingers, and tiny points of magenta light visible only to mages coalesced around his eyes, changing color to a blend of magenta and green.
The effect radiated outward from him, branches and leaves turning transparent in an outgoing wave. At about fifty meters, the effect stopped. The jungle plants all appeared to be made of glass, highlighted by the darkening blue sky. Squirrels and small monkeys floated in the air, supported by nothing. Colorful birds were everywhere. Various kinds of small animals crouched on the ground, hidden by underbrush that Almë could now see through. He even saw a small jungle hydra, no more than a meter long, slither stealthily, its several heads looking in all directions. Small moving things he couldn’t name squirmed all over everything, the uncountable number of insects making everything seem like it was moving.
One area was devoid of monkeys, birds, squirrels, and anything else larger than a bug. At the center of that area was Boots, laying on a branch forty five meters away, and about ten meters up.

Boots didn’t really look much like a cat. It was vaguely cat-like, but not really. It was proportioned more like a greyhound, with longer legs, and an emaciated body. The whole thing looked to be made up of strings and loops of tissue, each moving of its own accord. Judging from the position of the other animals, they didn’t want to get too close to it.
Almë pointed at it. “Shh,” he told the others. “The zombie cat is over there, on a branch about ten meters up and forty some-odd meters that way.”
“Was this zombie cat aggressive—,” Ruby asked.
Almë barked out a quiet laugh. “Yep.”
“—or more shy?” she finished.
Almë started to make his way through the jungle towards the cat-thing. Taid and the others followed.
“Should we sneak up on it, so it doesn’t run away, or if we just go there, will it fight us?” No one really knew how skittish it might be. Ruby took out a dog treat from her bag, and have it to Norri, along with some pets and a soft “Good boy.” The treat disappeared in an instant.
Taid cocked his crossbow, and loaded a bolt onto it. Maggie, long as she was, couldn’t reach a target ten meters up. There were enough animal and insect noises to hide the sound of the cocking mechanism.
“What’s our intention here?” Elitheris asked.
“To kill this damned thing,” Taid responded.
“Do we know how to kill zombie cats?”
“Hit it,” Almë said, a slight questioning tone in his voice, although it wasn’t really a question.
“Well,” Taid said, “before it was just chop them into pieces. I’m hoping I can hit him with a bolt and knock him out of the tree.”
“Maybe burning it down will help or something?” Ruby asked.
Both Almë and Elitheris looked alarmed. “N-n-no! Don’t burn down our forest, please!” Almë pleaded.
Elitheris shuddered, seeing a wall of flame in her mind’s eye and hearing the remembered screams in her mind’s ear. She took several deep breaths, trying to get her heart rate back down. While she wouldn’t have been directly responsible this time, forest fires always tended to be triggers for her. Even after most of a century.
Ruby shrugged. “Okay, okay,” she said soothingly.
“I’ve got a spell of Tanglefoot, and Tangled Growth,” Almë said. “So I might be able to make it trip and fall out of the tree.”
Ruby considered using her spell of Beast Summoning, but it wasn’t really an animal any more, but a zombie of some kind. And she wasn’t a necromancer. Then she thought of a better idea. “Maybe I can glue it to the branch?”
“Oh yeah,” Almë said. “That’s also a possibility. It’s an even better idea than Tanglefoot, I guess.” He was right; evolving in an environment suffused with magic game creatures a sort of immune system response to it. Casting a spell on something was often not successful. On the other hand, casting it on the environment around it was often much easier, because it bypassed that inherent defense.
The spell of Tanglefoot needed to be cast on a subject. Glue, which had similar effects in practice, was cast on the ground under a subject.
“I can make a sticky tree!” Ruby said. She would need to get closer to the zombie cat, it was high up in a tree, and it would be very difficult casting any spells from that range. Getting closer wouldn’t be a problem as a hawk, but she couldn’t be a hawk and cast the spell. She would have to fly into the tree, change back to Hobbit, then cast the spell.
“So, do we want to own this cat?” Almë asked. “Do we want to trap it? Do we want to make it our house cat?”
“No,” said Elitheris.
“No?”
“I don’t think we’d be able to control it, right?” Elitheris didn’t know of any friendly necromancers that might be able to teach them how to control zombies. And the thought sickened her anyway. The dead should be laid to rest, peacefully. Not reanimated by some foreign spirit, their bodies used as a puppet.
“We can’t control it right now,” Almë admitted, “but we could just put it in a cage or something. I mean, we don’t know what we might need in the future.”
Nobody besides Almë wanted to trap the zombie cat. Eykit looked disgusted at the thought, and figured that a cage wouldn’t contain it anyway, not if it could rearrange its body. It would probably turn into meat noodles and flow out of it.
“Almë, you’re a hoarder,” Elitheris said.
“That cat tried to kill you, man!” Taid said.
“I mean,” Almë said in a rush, “we could build a big box and put the box with the baby in it and then the box with the zombie cat in it and then bury it because it’s living forever, right? It’s not like it needs to eat or breathe or something.” He looked at his companions, looking for support. “And if somebody, for some reason, in a thousand years opens this box, the cat will probably prevent them from opening the baby box. Or they will at least think twice about opening the second box after they found the zombie cat in the first box. Right?”
Support was not forthcoming. He tried again. “Or, we could just let it loose or something on somebody if they’re annoying. We could got to Kallia and just let it loose in her territory. Just for funzies.” He mimed throwing something. “We could just throw it at somebody. Like, take that, motherfucker!”
Elitheris said, “Well, you’re certainly full of ideas.” Her tone of voice was filled with “Ew, no.” Besides, Kallia was a necromancer. She’d probably just go, “Thank you”, take control of the zombie cat, and use it against them. They’d just be handing her one more weapon to attack them with.
“So do we want to catch it or don’t we?” Almë tried, one last time.
“No,” Eykit said, “I think we just want to get rid of it.”
“Okay, seems like a missed opportunity, but I’m okay with that.” But he had his own plans, and kept them to himself.
Elitheris just shook her head at the taller Elf.
They moved towards the cat-thing’s position as quietly as they could, with Almë in front, since he was the only one who could actually see it. They were able to get to within about ten meters from the tree trunk that Boots was perched in.
Ruby looked around, seeking a spot on a neighboring tree that she could land on. It had to be big enough to hold her weight in Hobbit form, be close enough to cast the spell without too much trouble, and be far enough away to be as safe as possible. From where they stood, Boots was still hidden by the branches and leaves.
She located two branches that might serve her purpose. One was a branch on the same tree as the cat-thing. It was about a quarter of the way around from Boots’ branch, and about three meters higher. The second was a branch on a neighboring tree, putting her about seven meters away.
The branch on the neighboring tree would be marginally safer; the zombie cat would likely be able to get to either place, but being slightly farther away might give Ruby a bit more time to react to it.
Ruby told the others, “I will turn into a falcon and fly up to that branch there.” She pointed at the branch in the tree next to the one that Boots was perched upon. “From there, I will cast the Glue spell, which should stick him in place. You guys can support me from the ground, so if something happens, you have my back.”
The others crept forward, taking up positions at the trunks of neighboring trees. No one wanted to be under the zombie cat.
Ruby cast her spell of Shapeshifting, but she must have been too nervous to properly focus her mind. She tried again, and she felt her body parts shift into those of a bird of prey. It had been disturbing at first, but after a while, she got used to the feeling of things shifting around inside of her. She was exhausted; the two casts had completely drained her. Fighting to stay conscious, she hopped onto her staff, which was strapped to her dog, refilling her mana from its reserved.
Filled with new energy, she took to the air, dodging around the branches and trying to get a glimpse of the zombie cat. When she saw it, she cried out involuntarily, and her wingbeats faltered.
She had been expecting to see something like a dead cat, animated again via necromantic powers. She wasn’t prepared for what she actually saw. It was less an animated cat, and more of an animated stringy mass of wet meat. Strings of its flesh, like the tendrils of a vining plant, anchored it to the tree in several directions. Its limbs were lengthened, the tibias of the legs shifted forward to form a third joint and making the legs about 40% longer. Its tail had shortened, the hips effectively moving away from the ribcage, which itself was barely recognizable. Most of the ribs had moved around, and they now stuck out in all directions like some kind of spiky armor.
It gazed around, seemingly unconcerned with what was happening down below. Its gaze tracked her for a moment, then moved on. Every now and again one of its tendrils of flesh would release its hold on a branch and shift to a different one. Taid’s plan to knock it off the branch would probably not work.
Taid aimed at the cat on the tree limb, but held off shooting it for a few seconds. Elitheris drew a few arrows out of her quiver, nocking one and holding the rest in her bow hand. Both of them knew that the piercing attacks from their weapons were not terribly effective against the homogeneous flesh of the zombie. But they figured they could at least pen it in or even pin it in place.
But both waited for Ruby to Glue it in place, and would see what happened after that.
Eykit got his knives out, but wasn’t bothering with his throwing knives.
Ruby landed on the branch she had picked out, and she could see down onto the branch Boots was sitting on. She transformed back into a Hobbit.
The undead thing swiveled its head, and looked at Ruby, appearing to gauge the distance between it and the branch where Ruby perched.
She started casting, and it stood up. A haze of subliminal magenta light coalesced around the tree branch before appearing to be sucked into it. Boots jumped. Or, at least it tried to, but found that all four of its feet were stuck to the wood. It caterwauled in shock and anger, the sound nothing like any cat anyone had ever heard before.
“It’s stuck!” Ruby called down to her friends.
Almë started running to the tree.
Taid shot his crossbow, and the bolt flew true, imbedding itself into its torso. The zombie cat thing squalled, affronted by this strike to its bodily autonomy.
Almë reached the tree. The closest branch was five meters up.
Ruby saw Almë run up to the tree. “Hey guys! What are we going to do?” The consensus had been to kill it, but besides that first crossbow bolt and Almë running for the tree, no one else was attacking the helpless undead kitty.
Almë was grabbing gear from his pack. “I’m trying to capture it!”
Everyone else was shouting to kill it. Almë was doing his own thing.
“Don’t kill it!” Almë shouted up to her. It would take him a while to scale the tree, several minutes, most likely.
It was sort of a moot point; Ruby didn’t have any spells that would be useful in harming the zombie cat anyway. She watched Almë scale the tree.
He got out a hammer and spike, and pounded it into the tree. That gave him a foothold. He put a second spike at about head level. He put his pack back on, then maneuvered the staff over his shoulder, between his back and the backpack.
Getting out some rope, he passed it around the tree trunk, then around his back.
The others had heard the exchange between Almë and Ruby. Almë was going rogue. Again. Taid said softy, “This isn’t going to end well.”
“Should we try to stop him?” Elitheris asked.
“Would it do any good?” Eykit asked.
Taid shook his head. “Probably not. We made ourselves clear. He’s not listening. If he captures it, we could always kill it. Maggie has definite opinions about that damned thing.”
Elitheris chuckled. “I could always put an arrow in him. A shot through both ears would be effective.”
“Would it, though?” Eykit said. “Are you sure?”
“Good point,” Elitheris said, smiling. Then the smile dropped. “That idiot had better know what he’s doing.”
The idiot in question had made it up to his second foothold. He had one foot on his spike, and the rope around the trunk and his back kept him from falling off. He pounded in another spike a half meter higher that the one he was standing on. He flicked the rope up and leaned back, then got his free foot up onto the spike he’d just pounded into the tree.
And up he went, eventually getting to the branch. He stepped out of the loop of rope.
He extricated his staff. He could see the cat-thing on the branch, struggling, but as he finally finished pulling his staff all of the way out of the backpack straps, it managed to move outward on the branch before getting stuck again. Ruby had made an area of Glue large enough to make it difficult for Boots to escape.
Now that he was on that first large branch, Almë could climb up the tree without using gear. He climbed up farther, until he could touch the branch Boots was on with the end of his staff.
Almë started casting the spell of Plant Shaping.
It had been a while, and the zombie cat was at the edge of the Glue area. Ruby cast the Glue spell again, extending the stickiness along the branch, so that if it managed to get loose and move, it would just be in more glue.
Almë’s spell allowed him to manipulate the wood as if it were clay. He plunged his staff into the base of the tree, making a hole in the wood. He did this repeatedly, making hole after hole, trying to cut the branch off at the base. As he worked the staff in and out of the claylike wood, he figured it likely would have been faster to climb up a bit farther and use his hands to dig away the material.
Boots saw what he was doing, and redoubled its efforts to escape. It managed to pull free of the sticky magical field, and move another meter or so down the branch. But there was Glue there, too, and it got stuck again. It hissed defiance as it found itself stuck again.
A little while later, and Almë’s efforts to weaken the branch finally came to fruition, and the weight of the branch and the cat, made it sag downward with a cracking sound as the wood gave way. It folded downward, still held in place by wood fibers. It hung down against the side of the trunk.
Almë poked at the “hinge” of wood that held the branch onto the trunk. A few thrusts of his staff, and the branch fell in a leafy crash to the ground, the severed end sliding around the trunk to land onto the undergrowth.
The zombie cat was still stuck to the branch. Ruby and Almë started climbing down.
Taid started running towards the fallen branch and the cat thing adhered to it. Maggie was hungry. He held Maggie ready, but didn’t strike.
Almë got down from the tree. He waited for Ruby to climb down, which took another minute or so. She wasn’t much of a climber, and her short limbs made reaching the branches difficult.
“Can you put a sleeping spell on it?” he asked her.
“Why?” she replied.
“I want to bury it with the baby box. And I want to encase it in the branch,” Almë replied.
“If you put its feet in the branch, it cannot protect the baby box.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Ruby shook her head, giving in. But she was exhausted. The Glue spells had taken a lot out of her, and she could barely move after the climb down from the tree. She went to Norolind, and got her staff out of its holding loops on his saddle. She tapped into its stored energy, and she felt mana flood back into her. But it was now only about a third full; she hoped that she would have some time to refill it before she needed to draw from it again.
Again at full power, Ruby cast a Sleep spell upon the undead cat-thing. It didn’t seem to do anything. After all, it was a zombie, and they don’t need sleep.
“I could cut his head off,” Taid said. “That would put it to sleep.”
Eykit and Elitheris had come closer. “I vote for taking its head off,” Eykit said. He did not buy into Almë’s plan, considering it risky, dangerous, stupid, and unnecessary.
Almë asked Ruby, “Got anything else that might work?”
“Loyalty, maybe?” Ruby replied. “I could try that. Why not?”
She cast that spell with a bit of finger waggling and a few words of power. The cat-thing seemed unfazed.
Almë started walking around the branch. He was thinking about using Shape Plant on the branch again in order to form the wood up around its feet, trapping it. He got behind it, and at that moment the creature finally managed to get ifs forelimbs free. It reared back on its still-stuck hindlimbs. It spit and hissed, twisting this way and that, trying to free its other pair of legs. Tendrils of flesh flailed about around it, staying clear of the branch.
“Let me know when you want to go to Plan B, Almë,” Taid called, his polearm poised to attack. “It’s your call. I’ll give you this one, but I’m not going to heal you if you get hurt.”
Ruby, standing over by her dog Norri, said, “We can just kill it, then.”
Almë sighed. He’d really hoped that he would be able to get it alive, or at least as alive as it was. But there was no safe way of getting it any more captured than it already was. “Okay, everyone just surround it and pound away at the fucking cat.”
Maggie came crashing down onto the zombie cat, which was still stuck to the branch by its back legs.
“Just saying,” Almë said, “that in every situation where we could use a distraction, I will now say ‘if we only had a zombie cat to distract them’ and wonder what happened to that poor cat.”
The blade of the polearm sliced through the right rear leg of the cat-thing, severing it. It remained stuck to the branch. The gyrating creature’s body fell away from it, no longer held in balance on top of the branch. But now it had a bit more maneuverability, only being held by a single point. It could now pivot around that hip. At the moment, its forelegs were straddling the branch, not touching it, as it tried to free its leg.
“For Mister Wiggles!” Almë cried, as he swung his staff down, remembering how the dog had rushed to his aid when he was stuck in the Glue during the ambush by the Everyman Jacks, and getting stuck himself.
He hit the branch; the thing had moved out of the way, pivoting on its single stuck leg.
Eykit stepped up behind it, rondels ready, and stabbed at the twisting form. Two quick stabs, but only one connected, sliding into the where the ribcage would be in the fleshy, fibrous form. Eykit was disappointed in the lack of blood, but zombies didn’t really bleed anyway.
The creature’s tail whipped around, striking at Almë. The tall Elf ducked and stepped to the side, and the bony, spiky-looking tail whipped past him. He could feel the air of its passage on the back of his neck.
Almë spun his staff, aiming for its head. It was time for it to just die. The staff connected with a loud crack! And the body rotated about its stuck leg, slamming into the branch and bouncing off, coming to rest lying next to it. While the body didn’t move, the flesh that it was made of still squirmed, in that ropy, wormlike way of the Shardzombie.
He hit it again, just to make sure it was dead. He didn’t trust it. Especially since he could see the tendrils of flesh squirming towards the severed leg, which was still attached to the branch, like a time-lapse view of slime mold.
That odd and disturbing movement would cease when they removed the controlling Shard from the back of its neck. Almë looked, but no crystal was obviously apparent. There was a small hump on the back of its neck, however, and he pulled out his trusty working knife. He started digging the Shard out by poking at the hump with his knife. The body just got pushed around; it was too light and he’d need to brace the body to actually cut the Shard out of it.
He really didn’t want to touch it, he’d done that before, and it felt horrible, like a handful of spastic worms. He stepped on its back, pushing the body into the jungle floor debris, then dug out the Shard. About minute later, and the chunk of crystal was in his gloved hand, the strings of flesh no longer quivering with unlife.
The Glue spell gave out, and the two pieces of the zombie cat fell to either side of the downed branch.
“You know,” Taid said to Almë, “I figured that you would be all ‘kill this thing’ in order to get another Shard.”
Almë shrugged. “Shards aren’t that expensive. We can just go buy Shards if we want.”
“Yeah, but these Shards are special. We know they reanimate things.”
“Do we?”
“We don’t know that every Shard will reanimate something.”
“It reanimated the cat,” Elitheris added, “so we do know that.”
“Okay,” Almë said, and to the horror of everyone, dropped it into the pouch of Shards he carried.
Fortunately, nothing happened. It wasn’t a Shard that would pair with any of the other four that he carried.
The others glared at him. What he had done was extremely risky and dangerous, in their eyes.
He saw their looks. “I only had four Shards. Nothing was going to happen.”
Elitheris rounded on him. “You don’t know that!”
Almë lifted a shoulder. “If something had happened, it would have been fun. Eykit has most of the Shards, and Taid has several. The chance of anything happening with the Shards I have is very limited.”
“Do we want to try and connect it to other ones?” Elitheris asked the group. “Or are we afraid?”
“Well, we’ve checked for matches on all of our Shards, save the one that was in Boots,” Eykit mentioned. “We can check that one later.”
Almë was casting the spell of Earth Shaping, creating a deep shaft about eight meters deep. In the shaft was a network of roots from the nearby trees.
Eykit eyed the hole, then glanced at the twine-wound box lying nearby, ready for burial. “Twine rots,” he said. “And there are no latches or locks on it.”
Almë ceased his excavation. “You’re right. We need to put a latch on it.”
Taid kicked the two parts of Boots into the hole, and they fell in, trailing tendrils. It got hung up on the roots about two meters down. He used the butt of his halberd to knock it loose, and it slithered past the roots and fell with a soft thump at the bottom of the shaft.
Almë refilled the hole with as much loose fill would fit. There was a pile left over, which he left there. “Let’s go to town and put a lock on it.”
Taid had the smithing skills to do it, but he lacked the tools. Fortunately, just about any blacksmith would be able to handle it.
“Iron bands would be better than locks,” Taid said. “Locks can be picked.” Eykit nodded. “So we’ll band it.”
It was almost midnight, on the day they had spent traveling. They were tired, their feet hurt, and the adrenaline rush of the fight was gone, leaving them with a nervous fatigue. The blacksmith would have to wait until the next day.
They went back to the house. Fortunately, it was a relatively short walk. Ruby had the necklace out that Taid had cast the light spell on. It still glowed, bright as daylight, and would for a few more days at least. It gave her plenty of light to see by.
They got back to the manor house, and went to their rooms. In each bed were several people, sleeping. It was their farm workers.
The manor had no furniture, except for the bedrooms that Herbert had kept in use for himself and his staff of mummies. Now those beds were filled with people of all ages, and some people lay at the foot of the bed, wrapped in blankets and using their wadded up shirts as pillows.
None of the farm workers or refugees had had bedrolls, and the workers’ quarters hadn’t been repaired yet. They had just found places to sleep until their employers got their act together and furnished the manor and repaired the farm houses.
The group went to the living room, and spread out their bedrolls there. It was better than camping. But they really would have preferred beds.
Unlike most nights, Almë slept through the night, unafflicted by night terrors. He woke very refreshed, and while he didn’t remember the details of the dreams he had that evening, he did feel like they were pleasant.
Starsday, Leafturn 4, 879 AFE


When told about the fact that he had such a good night’s sleep, Taid said, “It was like you and zombie cat bouncing through the fields.” He grinned through his white beard.
Almë laughed, and mimed skipping, “La la la la la!” Maybe there was a sense of closure with the whole Boots thing, now that the zombie cat was dead. He was just happy he had some nice dreams, for a change.
“So,” he said, “you guys want to go to town and I will find a nice tree where we can bury the baby box?”
“Sure,” Taid said.
“I’ll prepare the bury site and whatever.”
“Yep, I’ll go into town.” He dumped the stuff he had in his pack, and put the box inside. Then it was off to find a blacksmith. Ruby went with him, at least as far as town. She had her own task, and when Taid went to the smithy, she continued on into town.
It actually didn’t take too long for Taid to find the blacksmith; he wasn’t being picky, and this was simple work. A few questions to the locals, and he found a small smithy in the southern part of Port Karn, only a few blocks in from the fields.
The smithy was a smallish building, open fronted, with a smith and an apprentice. The apprentice was stepping on the bellows treadle as the smith heated up some metal stock. The smith looked up at Taid’s approach.
“Take a break, Fredric,” he told his apprentice. Fredric nodded, and went over to a worktable that was covered in tools, parts, and miscellaneous objects. He started tidying and sorting.
The smith turned to Taid. “What can I do for you today, ser?”
“Hello,” Taid replied, and dug the box out of his pack, displaying it to the smith. “I don’t want this box opened again. Ever. And it’s made of wood, so the wood may actually fail over some time. So what can you do to encase this box? How much would it cost to encase it in some kind of metal box?”
The smith looked at the box, decorated with carved runes. “I could weld some bands around it. Wouldn’t cost more than thirty marks.”
Taid thought about it. It had been sitting in moist guano for centuries, and that didn’t seem to affect the wood at all. So maybe the wood wouldn’t rot. He shrugged. “That will do.”
“Great. I’ll get to work. Fredric!” The apprentice looked up from his labors. “Time to do some more high steppin’!” The apprentice in question stepped onto the treadles again, and pumped the bellows. The coals in the forge glowed a bright red, then orange, then yellow as Fredric worked.
The smith got three strips of sheet steel and tossed them into the coals, using tongs to settle them into the hot glowing embers. While he waited for the metal to heat up, he measured the box, making notations on a chalk board. He set up a set calipers to the lengths he desired. Then he grabbed the first piece of metal with the tongs, laid it on the anvil, and grabbed his hammer.
A few blows later, and the metal was bent into a right angle. He did it 5 more times, occasionally having to reheat the metal in the forge. Quenching it, he set it aside, and did another just like it. Then he did a third, with different proportions. He made sure they fit around the box. The similar pair he put around the short dimension of the box; while the larger went around it lengthwise. They were formed such that they had tabs on the edges for him to heat and anneal together. He couldn’t do a lap joint, not and keep the box in one piece.
He nodded to himself. He removed the bands, and set the tabs into the coals. Those parts were really the only parts he needed softened.
He used tongs to put the first band around the box, then pounded the tabs together, annealing them into one piece of metal. Then he did the same to the other two bands. The end result was two bands going around the shorter dimension of the box, with another one going around the long dimension. All welded together with steel bands four centimeters wide and three millimeters thick. It would take a lot of work to get that box open again.
The box sat on the workbench, now banded. “Would you mind punching some holes in those tabs?” Taid asked. “To tie rope to it.”
“Sure,” the smith said, and quickly punched a hole in each one with quick, sharp raps of his hammer on a chisel.
The smell of the forge and hot metal was, to Taid, almost like going home. He breathed deeply, eyes closed, savoring the odors of metal, charcoal, and oils. The hissing as the blacksmith dipped the hot tabs into the trough of oil and water to cool them broke him out of his reverie.
He handed the smith the thirty marks. “Careful,” the smith said, “the steel is still hot. I didn’t want to dip your box into the trough.” He rooted in a drawer in a workbench off to one side of the forge, pulling out a scuffed leather bag. “Here,” he said, offering the bag. “This should keep the hot metal from hurting you.”
Taid took the bag, and held it open while the smith slid the banded box into it. “Thanks,” Taid said, and he put the insulated package back into his pack.
Maybe I should visit the Rural Watch, he thought. We might be able to get a reward.
He knew that there was a Rural Watch office at the south edge of town. It was very conveniently located less than a kilometer away from the Manor lands. If they had problems, help might not be long coming.
The Rural Watch office only had a small room for visitors. The rest of it, barracks, training rooms, storage, and stables, extended back behind it quite a ways. The barracks, a three story building, housed up to thirty patrolmen. The stables had facilities for two dozen horses.
The room Taid entered was part of the administration building. Mostly, it was offices, file storage, and reference library. But one room was publicly accessible; it had a watch stander and the bounty board, and gave the public a way to alert the Rural Watch that they had a problem. The watch stander was a Human male, and he rose from his seat behind his desk when Taid entered.
“Hey,” he said, looking at Taid, who held the box in front of him. It wasn’t every day one saw a wooden box with welded iron bands around it. It was one of those things that tended to attract attention.
“Hey yourself,” Taid replied. “We took care of the blue baby thing.”
“You did? What was it?”
“It was a wraith.”
“Really?”
“We’re going to bury it.”
“Bury a wraith?” That didn’t make any sense, wraiths weren’t solid, they could go right through solid objects, such as dirt.
“Yes, we’ve locked it up good.” He raised the box. “It’s gone for good.”
The watch stander frowned. He wasn’t a mage, so it wasn’t obvious to him how the box kept the wraith inside, assuming that the Dwarf in front of him was implying that’s where this wraith was. “How do you bury a wraith?” he asked again. Some days, he just felt think. Maybe he needed another cup of tea.
“You just dig a really big hole and you can encase it in metal bands, with the wraith in its coffin along with the bones of the baby that spawned it. We’ll put it in a really deep hole and then put the dirt back on top of it.”
“Oh. Well. Thanks.”
“No one should be able to find it, dig it up, and open the box. And no, I’m not telling you where we are burying it. The fewer people that even know about it, the better.” He looked around. “I’m here to collect the reward.”
“Reward?”
“Yes.”
“There’s no reward for this.”
“No reward? That’s bullshit.”
“Sorry. No one put up any reward money.”
“Crap. Fine.” He looked at the bounty board. “Are there any jobs about anyone looking for help with necromancers and that kind of thing?”
“No,” the Human said. He saw that Taid looked like he could take care of himself, and favored a halberd as his weapon of choice. Perfect for killing vicious beasts like gryphons and manticores. He took a chance. “We do have openings for Rural Watchmen. We are always short handed.”
Taid shook his head. “No, I’m not in a position to do that job. Other obligations at the moment.” He checked the bounty board for anything about necromancy. He didn’t find anything. Apparently, they took care of the necromancers in the area before news of them got out to the public.
He turned and left, going back to the Manor.
Almë, meanwhile had headed off into the jungle to look for a likely tree, one by a large stone. He wandered around for a while, the birds and beasts making their usual morning racket. But, after a while, he found a suitable place to bury the box with the trapped wraith.

Then he got to work. He cast the spell of Earth Shaping, and molded the rock into a column with an Orc baby standing upon it. It took him a while; the spell was taxing, and he had to keep maintaining it for a long time while sculpting. He had to cast and sculpt, then rest, and then repeat the process. It took several hours, most of the time resting and just enjoying the screeches, bird song, and the wind in the trees.
The section of jungle was large enough to feel like he wasn’t in the middle of a settled, agricultural area, but too small to support any large, dangerous predators. There were small ones, like hydra and raptors, but those tended to avoid large prey that might be dangerous to them.
But he eventually finished, walking around the sculpture to make sure there wasn’t anything else he wanted to adjust.

Ruby and Norolind made their way up Third Street, past New Square and into the older, walled part of town. The streets, as were usual during daylight hours, were filled with people of all kinds. Were she walking, it would be overwhelming. But she was riding her immense mastiff, and somehow there always seemed to be some space around her.
She’d eaten before she and Taid had left, but that had only been first breakfast. She spotted a street vendor grilling ears of corn, slathered with butter and a bit of salt and pepper. She purchased two of them, along with some grilled potato slices.
She veered into the Merchant’s Heath district, heading for the office of Artem, Tennant, and Tricola. She was still on the hunt for Zorion Clemens, the guildmaster. It had been a few days, and she wondered if he had come back yet.
As she approached the mage guild’s building, she glanced over at the cafe across the street where she had spent a great deal of time eating and surveilling the guild. It was crowded with midmorning patrons, and almost all of the outside tables were full, despite the rising heat of the day.
She slid off of Norolind, and had him wait next to a doorway two buildings down from the guild office. No need to draw attention. She casually walked the rest of the way to the building. On her way past, she looked through the barred window that was set in Clemens’ office.
No one was in the office, but the things on the desk had been moved about. Someone had used the office since the last time she had been there.
She ducked into an alley, and crouched behind a barrel to get out of view. There, she removed her ring. Her face changed, from an attractive Hobbit woman to someone no one would look twice at.
Then she walked back to the street, and entered the lobby of Artem, Tennant, and Tricola.
Ruby opened the door to the building and walked in. She looked around at the small lobby, with its two chairs by the wall in front of the window and the single desk with a receptionist behind it. She recognized Mick from Almë’s description of him. It wouldn’t have been hard, the guy had his feet up on his desk and he seemed to be drowsing. Just like he had been when Almë had asked for his tour.
Mick heard the door open and dropped his feet from the desktop. “Hello, ma’am,” he greeted. “How can we help you today?”
“Hello,” Ruby said, and made a show of looking at the nameplate on the desk, “Mick.” She gave him a smile, but he seemed less than impressed. She obviously wasn’t his type. “I’d like to talk to Mr. Clemens.”
“He’s unavailable at this time.” The answer was so quick it seemed practiced.
“So, when is he available?”
“When will he be? Probably tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I think there are some openings in his schedule tomorrow. What is this in reference to?”
“Okay,” Ruby said, dismissing the man’s question. “That would be great. I would like to make an appointment.”
“Okay.” He flipped open a ledger and dipped his quill into an inkwell, ready to enter her name in information. “And what is this in reference to?” he asked again.
“At what time is he available tomorrow? I may have to think about it, if it’s possible to make it, because I am really busy. So what kind of appointments are free for tomorrow?”
Ruby’s odd diction and accent threw him off. “Uh, he has on shortly before lunch.”
“Shortly before lunch. Okay.”
Mick seemed to gather himself. “And who shall I say will be at this meeting?” He hadn’t written anything yet, and he didn’t even know the unpleasant-looking Hobbit’s name. Maybe she had some troll blood?
“So, yeah, I think it’s not possible for me to show up before lunch.” She paused, thinking. “You know what? I will come back later and make another appointment. Do you know how long he is here in town? Do you know how many days?”
“Uh, I don’t really know. I mean, he could be called away at any time.”
“Okay. Then yeah, sorry to interrupt you with your work. Sorry.” She turned and walked out, leaving Mick to puzzle out exactly what had just happened.
Ruby walked into an alley again, crouched behind a stack of crates and other, less identifiable garbage, and slipped the ring back on her finger. Her face changed back to the young, attractive woman. She walked back out and over to Norolind, who apparently hadn’t been bothered by anyone in her absence. Of course, anyone doing so would likely have regretted it.
She slipped a leg over him and sat in the saddle. “Up,” she said, squeezing his sides a bit with her feet. He rose, and she directed him down the street, heading for Sairina Tarwar Manor.
Taid had come back with the box, newly banded in steel. He gathered Eykit and Elitheris, in the process becoming aware that Almë was still out in the jungle preserve. “Well, let’s go find him,” he told the others. “Let’s get this box buried.” He tied some twine to the eyelets in the steel tabs. He would use that to lower the box into the hole.
“Where’s Ruby?” Eykit asked.
“Don’t know,” Taid replied. “We split up. She had something she needed to do, and I went to find the smith. She’s not back yet?”
“Nope.”
“Should we wait for her?” Elitheris asked.
“We don’t know when she’ll get back, and we have no idea what she’s even doing. She could be gone all day for all we know.”
“Let’s get this thing taken care of,” Taid said. He tucked the box under one arm and headed for the door.
They set off in search of the skinny Elf. He wasn’t immediately visible, but it wasn’t a large preserve of jungle, so shouting for him made it fairly easy to find where he was.
They found him putting the finishing touches on the Orc baby sculpture. It had taken several hours. He rested for a few minutes, getting some of his magic power back. He only needed a bit, just enough to excavate a hole.
He cast the spell of Earth Shaping one more time, and loosened earth started piling up next to a deep shaft. When Almë nodded, indicating that he was done, Taid lowered the box down into the pit, maneuvering it past the tree roots that crisscrossed the opening for the first two to three meters. It settled at the base of the shaft.
“Would you like to say some words?” Almë asked the others. “Does anyone want to make a speech?”
“Yeah,” Taid replied. “Goodbye, motherfucker!”
“Thank you, little poop baby,” Almë said, “for all of the bat poop we are getting for dealing with you.”
“You are out of our lives,” Taid said.
“Namárië, harwinimo, ” Elitheris said. Farewell, dwell here forever, little one.
Almë moved the dirt back into the hole. The Breathstealer was entombed. They went back to the manor house.
“Now what?” Almë asked. “Go after Kallia?”
“What are we?” Elitheris asked. It had been on her mind for months, ever since she met Taid and Eykit. “Are we mercenaries?” They certainly weren’t like any band of mercenaries she’d ever heard of. And if they were, she was certain they were doing it wrong.
Taid shrugged. “We got a bunch of poop out of it.” So, technically, they got paid for doing a service, and it did involve some combat, so, in Taid’s mind, yes, they were mercenaries.
“Okay, so we got poop, and we stole a house,” Elitheris said. “So, are we in this for the money? What are we doing? Because I’m just out there, surviving in the world.” She looked over at Almë. “We’re not chasing after your wife’s killers, or whatever is going on with you over there.” She didn’t feel like she had any direction; she was just being buffeted by the winds of fate. She could be buffeted out in the wilds just as easily, without living in a manor, or being close to a smelly city.
Almë answered, “We’re Elves. What’s the hurry? Follow the butterfly, see where it leads. It’s not like we are wasting any of our time. If I had more information about the mage guild that killed my wife, I’d go after them. But I know I’ll find the information eventually. I just hope I do it before those responsible die. Human lives can be so short.”
What the hell am I doing with these people? Elitheris thought. I don’t need them. I’m self-sufficient, and unlike some of them, I have a moral compass. And I’m not sure it aligns with theirs. Who am I kidding? I have my own feelings of guilt for the errors of my past. She rubbed her face, as if scrubbing away tears that had never come.
“When you have the ability to stop something, and you choose not to, you are effectively responsible for it.”
“What?” She had said it so softly that the tall Elf didn’t quite catch it.
“Sorry, just working through some issues. We just did a good thing and I feel good about myself, because we saved some people. But’s that’s done now. I could easily go off and do some hunting and gathering and work on my bow and other stuff.”
“But you know that there is still Kallia out there. There are people in the mountain towns and the zombies will be fighting them, and you’d probably like to prevent that.”
“Right. Okay, right. Is that who we’re going to be focusing on next? Kallia?” Elitheris wasn’t sure if her anxiety about her current lifestyle was simply due to habit, honed over seventy years, or because she missed being out in the wilds, away from the constraints of civilization.
“Well, yes. But I think we need to get all of our sheep into the barn before we leave.”
Eykit had kept his mouth shut while Elitheris vented, but he agreed with Almë. Oh gods, he thought, shocked and unnerved, I agree with Almë! “Getting a minimal, but functional staff that can run the Manor while we are gone should be our first priority. It shouldn’t take too long. And once we have that minimal staff, we can let them hire who they need and do all the hard work of managing this mess.”
“I’d like to see a chicken coop,” Taid said. “Fresh eggs for breakfast would be great.”
“So I think we need to get a loan,” Alme said, “so we can hire some people because this Kallia thing will take longer because she is far away, right? And we need a loan to hire people to work on the fields for the season. And we need to hire a senschal to run it.”
Eykit nodded, and Taid followed suit. Getting the day to day management off of their shoulders and onto someone professional would greatly open up their time.
“So, yeah,” Almë continued, “we need a loan and to hire up some people and then we can leave to hunt Kallia down.”
They emerged from the jungle and went into the courtyard through the back gate. Ruby was waiting for them, sitting on the edge of the stone planter box that housed the kitchen garden. She had a plate of roasted root vegetables and a piece of crusty bread with butter. She was having her elevenses, if a bit late, as it was almost lunchtime.
“Hi guys,” she greeted. “Do you remember the thing with Artem, Tennant, and Tricola? I figured out that the guy I’m looking for is back right now and he will be there tomorrow in the morning, or at noon. So I need some help. I will have to go there and maybe you would be willing to come with me.”
“What’s our plan there?” Almë asked.
“The plan is this guy is really, really bad. And this group is dealing with information, and at some point they will steal the information, very important information, and give it to bad guys, maybe Kallia or something. And I have to trap this guy and port him to some uh, kind of prison.”
“Port him? Can you teleport?” They’d seen Nathan do it, and it seemed pretty handy. But it was also a type of magic that wasn’t well known. Gate magics were only available to a small subset of mages. Like Metamagics, Gate magic required a certain level of talent that not all mages possessed.
“No,” she replied. “Not really. But I can do it to him.”
“Okay, so you want us to help you to infiltrate the mage guild to kidnap him? Can you port him from….Can we overwhelm him and port him from within the guild? Or do we need to extract him?”
Ruby nodded. “We can do it from there. Or we can follow him. We have to figure out a plan. He will be in his office and we will see him from the outside, and maybe I can make an appointment with him or some one of us.”
“We can’t just make an appointment because if we go into the room with him and then he is suddenly gone, it might be a little suspicious.”
Ruby was lost in thought.
“What’s our role in the plan?” Almë asked. “I have a spy blossom, if that’s helpful?”
Ruby frowned in confusion. “What does that mean?”
“I can put a plant somewhere in there, and then I can see and hear through the plant. If you think it’s helpful.”
“I don’t have a plan on how to go into the building an capture this guy. But maybe I can make an appointment….”
“I can use Shape Earth on the bricks of the wall and make a little hole and you can slip in and I can close the hole again. And then you are in his office!”
“Except to do that you be in plain sight of everyone,” Eykit mentioned. “His office is in the front of the building.”
“Do only you have to be in there? Or do multiple people have to be in there? Like, what is your goal?” There was a pause. “I mean, getting you and Eykit in there is easier, because the hole doesn’t have to be that big, right? It could be low, on the ground, like behind the bushes and you can go in.”
“Maybe,” Ruby said, “a good thing would be if we can follow him and observe him if he’s in the office. And then maybe we can find out where he is sleeping or staying or eating out or something.”
“But how do you want to follow him in the office?”
“Not in the office. When he comes out, maybe.”
“Yeah, but no one in the office will let us just stay there on the ground floor waiting for him. They won’t let us wait next to his office for, like, forever. We’re strangers.”
“No, not next to his office. When he goes out of the building, I mean.”
“So then, yeah, we can wait for him and see if he leaves the building.”
“Well,” Taid said, “there is a nice, convenient cafe just across the street.” It was lunch time, and seeing Ruby finishing off her meal was making him hungry too.
“Is there only one entrance?” Almë asked.
“There are two,” Eykit said. “There’s the one in front, which is the public entrance, and then there is the back door.
“Yeah, somebody should also watch the back door. Elitheris should watch the back door so she can make cool bird noises or something.”
Elitheris gave him a look. “Cool bird noises?”
Almë laughed. “Yes, you’re good at it. Better than Taid. Chocolate milk! Chocolate milk! Cacao! Cacao!”
“But sure, I can do that.” She shared a look with Taid.
He shrugged, grinning. “Dwarves grow up in caves. Not a lot of birds down there.”
Almë got back to the point. “We can observe him and follow him.” He looked at Taid and Eykit. ”I would say leave your mail and armor behind because he’s a mage, so you probably won’t need it. And we probably need to follow him stealthily.”
Ruby had been staying quiet, letting her companions figure out the small details. But she spoke up. “We have to be really careful because he’s the mage guild master. I already told you he is stealing money and information from a lot of people. He’s kind of a smart guy and we’ll have to be careful he doesn’t see us, or figure out that we are following him.”

“Okay,” Taid said. “We have a plan for tomorrow.”
“We need to see a loan. Do we want to get the loan from Eykit’s gang?”
Eykit bristled. Gang? We’re not a gang! We are a guild! have some respect.
“Well,” Elitheris said, “I don’t think we can get it from a legit source.”
“We can get part of it from a legitimate source. We can go to PKAC, the farming guild.”
“My sources aren’t legitimate, though,” Eykit said. “Absolutely not legitimate, and are expensive because they loan money to people who cannot get loans anywhere else.”
“So we need around 8700 marks for the farmers, which we probably could get from the Port Karn Ag Council. And we need like 5000 marks to repair the farming houses. I’m not sure if we can get this from PKAC, like around 2000 marks for the manor staff, and and unknown amount to repair some things in the manor.”
“I think,” Almë said, after thinking about it for a bit, “that I can get seed from PKAC. After we pull in a harvest, and they see what we can do, we might be able to get seasonal loans from them for operating expenses. So that means that for the salaries and repairs, we to get a loan from the New Square Skulls. If they’ll give it to Eykit, that is.”
Eykit had enough goodwill with his guild that he didn’t really require collateral. Besides, they knew where he lived, and they were very good about getting their investments back. With interest. They knew where his kneecaps were. For Eykit’s part, his plan was to keep his kneecaps where they belonged.
“We are digging a hole for ourselves,” Elitheris said. “You all realize that, right?” She wasn’t a big fan of debt. She’d also never had to be in the situation of being in debt.
The others nodded, but didn’t seem as concerned. Eykit knew that he could get support from the Skulls; the guildmaster himself had told him so. Plus, the excitement of being in the position of running what amounted to a commercial operation was still flooding through him.
It hadn’t been anything he thought he would be doing; he figured he would just become a really good thief, stealing from more and more challenging places. But apparently, Toren Ghent had bigger plans and a wider perspective. And he had put Eykit in charge of what could become one of the more lucrative businesses. It made him wonder what other plans his guildmaster had for him and the Manor.
“Eli,” he said, “I think we’ll be okay.” He grinned, not in his sly way, but a genuine smile meant to comfort. And he wasn’t even lying; he was as sincere as he’d ever been.
Almë said, “Eykit, if you can get a loan from the Skulls, I can then go to PKAC and get whatever they can give me. I suspect it will be just seeds, but it can’t hurt to ask for more. But I don’t want to end up with a bunch of seeds if we don’t get money to pay people to plant them.”
That seemed like a logical idea.
“So, let’s get about 16000 marks from your guild,” Almë said to Eykit.
“And how long will that keep us afloat for?” Eykit asked in reply.
“About a season. Five months. But we will also have to do some repair work during that time.”
“And when would I propose that we have this paid back?”
“We’d have to sell our first crops,” Elitheris said.
“Yes,” Almë admitted, “we’d have to sell the crops. So, later than that.” If it were done correctly, they’d have buyers lined up before harvest anyway, so money would be coming in almost as soon as they could harvest and ship it.
“Okay, realistically, would we be prepared to pay this back? It’s my kneecaps on the line, here, and I need them where they are.”
Almë had done a bit of thinking about this. “I’m not entirely sure what the cost of the seed will be, but I think it will be around 2000 marks. But whatever the seed cost is, with the Essential Earth we net around 17000 marks from the wheat field, and with barley in the other field we net like 9000 marks. Overall, if we do one field in wheat and the other in barley that would get us around 26000 marks. Probably.”
“Okay, so it’ll be more than enough to pay back. The next season is important because we don’t want to have to do this again.”
Eykit paced about, his mind racing. Then he said, “Yeah. I’m absolutely fine with presenting our plan to the guild, and say here’s what’s going on. But this is the same Manor that you helped me get. And, by the way, that’s super awesome of you guys, but this is turning out to be a fairly expensive venture and we’ve acquired some folks.”
“We should also check in on the alchemist, who’s been using our lab,” Elitheris said.
“Oh yeah!” Eykit said. “Ekain could be making some money for us.”
“He’s paying rent, so we have some income there.”
Eykit thought about his place in his guild. He’d started off as a pickpocket, then moved up into thievery under Elend Rabbitfoot. Elend had been his immediate superior for several years. Lately, however, Eykit had been doing other things besides second story work.
In essence, Elend was no longer his boss. Jakkit the Iceman was his new immediate superior; Eykit had made a lateral move in the organization, almost by accident. It had actually come as a surprise, when Elend almost casually admitted that he had little control over what Eykit did. It made the Goblin think about something Mr. Ghent had said about being his diplomat.
Eykit had refused, not wanting that job. But he was starting to suspect that his guildmaster wasn’t taking no for an answer, and had manipulated events to put him here.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
“The other thing that I kind of envision,” Eykit said, changing the subject a little, “is that we have this natural run of crops in and out of town and stuff. It might be an excellent way to move a few other things as well. We could probably be able to slip a few items in there and have it go in past the gate. Especially if we do some, uh, clever modifications to the wagons.”
He was certain that even if he hadn’t thought of it, Jakkit would have. There would have been some wagons conveniently showing up to help them get their crops to harvest. Driven by people in the guild’s employ, no doubt, and looking perfectly innocent. One hand washes the other….
They currently didn’t even have any wagons. They were renting one for the peach harvest, as they hurried to get what they could to buyers before they rotted. Mostly, they were going to Balgram the Dwarven pastry baker. He had given them names of some of his customers and suppliers, and so far they were able to offload all of the peaches that they had harvested so far.
Some peaches were going into their own pantry for their own use, and at some point they would need to set up canning stations and drying racks and trays. Fresh food didn’t last long in the warm climate that the Port Karn area had. Canning some and dehydrating some would both allow for long time storage, and open up more markets and buyers. But that would likely be for next year’s crop.
In the meantime, talking to the local vintners and distillers might prove useful; peach brandy was a popular drink.
But that could wait. None of that would ever happen until they got the Manor up and running, and to do that, Eykit needed to talk to his guild and ask for some capital.
He went into town, heading for New Square. A few moments in the Inn on Drefeg Street, and he knew where Jakkit was. A short walk of three blocks later, he was sitting across from Jakkit in a small office. He made his pitch, practiced on the walk over from the Manor to town, and refined a bit on the walk from the inn to the office.
Jakkit sat back, listening. As Eykit wound down his shpiel, the older Goblin nodded. “We can help with that.”
Jakkit authorized a loan of 10000 marks, not the 16000 that Almë had wanted. “Start with that,” he said, “and we’ll see.”
Eykit realized that they would have to prove that they could make it work, but it seemed, at least, that they could get support from the guild. Jakkit had also mentioned that there might be some folks in the enforcer division that might be willing to be hired on as guards.
He knew that having guards backed by the guild would be easier to vet than utter strangers. He’d be able to trust the enforcers. Well, he considered, mostly trust them. He wasn’t worried about loyalty, because they would certainly be loyal. He would just have to make sure that he didn’t let some of their tendencies get out of control. It wouldn’t do to have them being overly rough with their workers.
Feeling pretty elated, Eykit hurried back to the Manor at almost a dead run.
He burst through the front door, heard voices in the ball room, ran through that doorway, and slid to a stop at the table, where everyone was seated.
“We’ve got some money. Ten grand. Go get some seeds, Almë!”
Almë was looking a bit disappointed. He’d been hoping for the 16000 marks.
Eykit wasn’t deterred. “We’ve got ten of the sixteen thousand. That gets us to almost two thirds of the way through the season, and if we can prove we are doing a good job, then I’m sure that they would be willing to help us with the rest.”
Taid, Elitheris, and Ruby caught Eykit up on what they had been discussing, while Almë made the trip to the Port Karn Agricultural Council campus. It would be a while before he got back.
They would need to hire some house staff, and set the carpenters up to fix the first of the farming houses. The farmhands would need some place to live; they needed their own space. They were fine, for the moment, living in the manor house and sharing space with their employers and lords, but it made them uncomfortable. They were just peasant farmers, living in what, to them, was the lap of luxury, albeit a rather empty one with little to no furniture.
They would prefer being able to do their jobs without the employers constantly underfoot.
Almë had long legs, and he was focused, so he made good time. At least until he hit the busy streets of the city, where he was forced to go much more slowly. He was still able to move slightly faster than the crowds, however, as he wove his way through the throngs of people, animals, hand carts, and wagons.
Harvest was a busy time, and because he was going to the heart of local agriculture, the streets were crowded all the way to the block of buildings PKAC called its own.
When he got there, he asked for Skadrel, the Dwarf who had been his main contact when he had joined the guild. Had it only been half a month? It felt like a lot longer, and he hadn’t even started work for them yet.
It didn’t take long for Skadrel to come out. The Dwarf saw him, smiled, and said, “Hey, you’re back! You must be ready to work now, you lazy sod.”
“Yeah, but that’s not really why I’m here now,” Almë responded.
“Oh, what are you here for?”
“We need seed, to get our fields up and running.”
He turned to look over his shoulder at a man who was carrying a burlap sack into a storeroom. “Hey, Marco! You owe me ten marks!” The other man groaned. Seeing Almë’s questioning look, he said, “Just a bit of a wager. Nothing to concern yourself about.”
He turned, saying, “Follow me,” and walked out of the Administration building. They crossed the courtyard to another building. This one didn’t have windows, except for some narrow awning windows along the top edge of the two story building. There were a couple of large doors suitable for wagons, and a smaller, man-sized door. They went in that one. It was a warehouse, with shelves of sacks, barrels, and large ceramic containers.
“Welcome to our seed storage warehouse,” he said, with a gesture of his arm that encompassed the entire building. “What were you thinking? Grains? Vegetables? Fruit?”
“Grains,” Almë replied. “We’ll start with two fields. The larger one will be wheat, the smaller one barley.” He went on to tell Skadrel the sizes of the fields in order to get the right amount of grain he’d need. He would need something like fifteen kilos of seed per acre. With 98 acres to work, that worked out to around 1500 kilos of seed.
“Well, pick the varieties you want, and we will get a wagon load out to you.” Skadrel made some notations as Almë picked the kind of wheat and barley he wanted.
The Elf picked three varieties of each grain, just to not put all of his eggs in one basket. If one type failed, he didn’t want it taking out the entire crop. Different varieties had different pests and diseases.
“Shouldn’t take too long to get this seed out to you,” the Dwarf said. “And I’ve got the tally for the cost of the seed. We’ll set up your account. And, by the way, we’ve got the file on the Manor updated with the new name.”
“Good.”
“Sairina Tarwar. Elven, isn’t it? What’s it mean?”
“Magical Gardens. I would have preferred Almë Manor, but no one else agreed with me.”
“Of course they didn’t,” Skadrel grinned. “Were I in their place, I wouldn’t have, either.”
“Thanks for the seed.”
“You’re welcome. We want you to be successful. And pay back this little loan.”
“How much does all this come to?” Almë asked.
“About 2400 marks. There is interest, of course, but if you repay at the end of the season, it shouldn’t be more than about 400 marks more.”
“Okay.” Almë made his way back to the Manor, arriving a bit after the sun set.
They ate some dinner, and Ruby spent a couple of hours recharging her staff. She would need it the next day, if they were going to go up against Zorion Clemens. They all got a good night’s sleep, even Almë, who, for yet another day in a row, did not wake up screaming. He woke clear-eyed and cheery.
Lifesday, Leafturn 5, 879 AFE
They woke early, except for Ruby. Breakfast was ready by the time she got up, and she took her time packing away the food into what should have been a rather small Hobbit stomach. She still ate about twice as much as anyone else.
When she was finally done, they headed into Port Karn, to watch for Zorion Clemens at Artem, Tennant, and Tricola. They left the dogs at the manor. Norolind chuffed, but laid down on the cool flagstones of the foyer. Mr. Wiggles hopped up, his forefeet up on the windowsill, and whined until he couldn’t see them walking away any more.
“My plan is to sneak up and follow this guy,” Ruby stated. “One of us could watch the back door, and we can sit in the cafe and watch the front. We can look for him to leave the building and then we can try to follow him to a place where we can overwhelm him. And maybe Eykit could sneak up to him if he is sleeping and handcuff him, but that’s just if it’s possible. If not, I have another plan.”
They parked themselves at the cafe across the street from the guild office. Noise from the nearby construction site, now more than just wooden wall framing, made it difficult to hear with all the hammers and shouts.
Elitheris broke off, heading across the street and down an alley. She needed to get to the rooftops, to a position where she could see both the rear door, and her companions. She found a spot at the rear corner of the neighboring building. She could see the alley behind the guild offices, and the doorway, and she could also see down the alley to the street. Across from which, she could see the tables outside of the cafe, where her friends sat, watching the front of the guild building. She made herself as comfortable as she could. Now she knew what a gargoyle felt like.
Then they settled in to wait for Guildmaster Clemens to leave the building.
All day long, people went in and out of the front door. Most were obviously clients, or potential clients. Some, however, were employees, and Eykit was able to tell just by their demeanor. As was Ruby, if from a slightly different perspective.
At about midday, not long after the sixth bell, three people in expensive clothing walked out, each carrying a decorated staff. They were very obviously mages, and people on the street made room for them.
“Zorion!” Ruby whispered. “The one in the middle his him!”
“I’m on it,” Eykit said, and he slipped into the crowd. If his companions hadn’t been watching him, he would have simply appeared to disappear. They followed Eykit, doing their best to keep an eye on the short humanoid form. Almë also tried to keep an eye on the three mages, knowing that his shorter companions wouldn’t be able to.


Elitheris saw her companions leave the cafe, and move into the crowd going up the street. She left her spot, figuring that they were following the target, and ran along the spine of the roof. She leaped across the alley and onto the neighboring building’s roof, landing on the slope and, crouching, slid down the tiles until the gutter stopped her. A clay tile cracked under her foot, but she ignored that and ran along the length of the building.
She saw her friends, and a second later saw Eykit, worming his way through the crowd, keeping a consistent distance between him and three mages. I wonder which one is Zorion? she wondered.
Eykit slid around a woman holding the hand of her child as she made her way home from market. He refrained from snitching anything out of the bag she had in her other hand, mainly because it looked like she had come from a farmer’s market, and he really didn’t like broccoli or cabbage much. Those were best as flavorings and texture contrasts to the meat he preferred to eat.
A part of his mind wished that people would part for him like they did for the three mages up ahead of him, but he realized that he would have a hard time shadowing anyone were that the case. Just what he needed—being exposed in a crowd.
The three mages didn’t seem to be hurrying; they moved at the same pace as the crowd of people around them. It was one of the easier shadowing jobs Eykit had ever had.
The three mages turned down a side street.
Elitheris saw Eykit turn left, following the three mages. She could no longer see the mages, or Eykit; the bulk of the building on the corner obscured them. She cut the corner, running up the slope of the roof and leaping over to the rooftop of the neighboring building, somersaulting at the apogee of the leap. She came down onto the roof tiles, running downslope at an angle as she raced for the cross street. She didn’t’ slow down when she reached the gutter, but hurled herself across the gap to the building next door.
She went upslope, to the roof ridge, and peered over, but she couldn’t see the street from there. She vaulted over the tiled ridge caps, came down in a crouch, and slid down the clay tiles about two thirds the way down the slope until she could see the crowded street below. A pair of pigeons, started by the sudden appearance of a quickly moving Elf woman, flew off in a panic.
Her Elven eyes picked up Eykit first, then the three mages, then Ruby, Taid, and Almë came around the corner from the other street. Almë glanced up at her, and she raised a hand in response to let him know she saw him.
She could move more slowly now, as their quarry was only moving at a walk down the street. They walked down it about a block. They stopped at a building with a sign showing a glass coach pulled by four white horses, on a dark green background.
It was the Coach and Four, an upscale restaurant. It wasn’t a tavern, with common tables and benches and maybe three dishes to choose from if one was lucky. No, this was an actual restaurant, with private tables and a full menu, and food made to order. Expensive foods, made by chefs, who took pride in the presentation of the dish as much as the food itself.
Elitheris stayed on the rooftop of the building next to the restaurant, watching. She could see Eykit moving around the building, passing into the alley below her on his way to the back door.
There was no way he could go in the front. He wasn’t wearing his commendation clothes, which were the only ones he had that would be at all suitable for this place. No, he would fit in better going through the servant’s entrance, if he was able to get in at all.
Eykit did see a back door, used by the kitchen staff and other servants. It was grimy, like the back doors of all food establishments, it seemed. A mixture of grunge, kitchen oils, and food waste permeated the back alleyway. The wooden door was dark with oily grease, and scraps of food lay scattered in the alleyway, tossed out by the kitchen staff. Rats, brave and bold as anything, scurried here and there grabbing the food waste like treasure.
Eykit figured that the only reason someone of Clemens’ caliber would ever go through this door would be because he was either fleeing, or chasing someone.
The other three took up a position on the opposite side of the street from the Coach and Four’s doorway. “It a good thing to observe him, but we need to get him alone. So, I mean, we can wait until he’s coming out again, and maybe get him in the evening.”
“Yeah,” Almë said, “we should just shadow him and find out where he’s living or sleeping or whatever.”
“Yes, right. I think that’s the better idea, because if he is inside the restaurant with friends, we cannot go after him.”
So again, they waited. Elitheris shifted position again, following Eykit’s gestures to watch the back door again. Just in case.
She saw several carts full of foodstuffs arrive, and kitchen staff unloaded the goods and moved them into the pantry off of the kitchen. She saw cooks, waiters, and busboys, some helping with the loading, some just taking a break. Although she couldn’t understand how they could take a break while smelling the stench in that alley.
Eykit and the others kept watch on the front door. They were not together; Eykit felt it better to be a bit apart from the others.
They saw several patrons go in and out of the door, most of them wealthy, if their clothing was any indication. And it most certainly was. Fashion was a way for the different levels of social strata to differentiate themselves. No one who went into the restaurant wore peasant clothing, which was pretty typical of such an establishment. It wasn’t a tavern or public house.
After a two hour wait that seemed more like four, the three mages walked back out again, after having what must have been a long, leisurely lunch. They started walking back in the direction of the guild offices.
The group followed them back to their guild, Elitheris sticking to the rooftops. Above her, she could see a pair of Aarakocra circling. She felt as if one of them was watching her, but it was likely only her imagination.
Eykit followed fairly closely, slipping back and forth across the street as needed to keep them unaware that he was shadowing them. The others, Ruby, Taid, and Almë, followed on the far side of the street, mainly keeping track of Eykit, trusting him to keep track of their target. It wouldn’t do for them to keep seeing a tall, slender Elf head and shoulders above most of the crowd always behind them somewhere. They might get suspicious.
Zorion Clemens and his two lunch companions, did indeed go directly back to their offices.
Ruby wanted to wait until he went home for the evening. The others agreed. They continued to watch the entrances, just in case he slipped out early. Elitheris was still up on the rooftop, keeping an eye on the back door. The rest camped out at the cafe.
Normally, the wait staff would want to turn the table, but Ruby kept ordering food.
The sun crept across the sky, and started dipping down behind the buildings to the west. The clocktower bell struck twice quickly, followed by four slow bongs. It was the end of the third sixth. The sun would be down in an hour or so.
Many guild members and employees exited the building, their work days done. Clemens stepped out towards the end of that exodus, turning in the direction of the restaurant he had lunch at earlier that day.

Zorion Clemens, Guildmaster of Artem, Tennant, and Tricola
Eykit again faded into the crowd. Almë raised his hands as if stretching, pointing a finger in the direction of Clemens’ path. Elitheris saw it, and burst into a run as she tried to get to a position where she could see the guild master.
Taid, Almë, and Ruby followed along after Eykit. It was the same drill as earlier that day. Eykit shadowing him, Elitheris moving along the rooftops, and the rest of them following as best they could through the crowds of people. Once the sun was down, and the day shift either at home or having a drink in the pubs, the streets would start to become more clear.
Clemens walked quickly. Not hurrying, but not dawdling either. When a space opened up ahead of him, he sped up a bit, slowing again as he had to maneuver around someone. He moved as if he had a purpose, although he gave no indication that he was running to or from anything in particular. He just had a quick stride, a habit picked up over time in order not to waste his time traveling.


Eykit had to work a bit shadowing him. He couldn’t match his pace, at least, not in a consistent manner. But he was small, and lithe, and had an easier time sliding around people in the crowd. He was able to keep up, without looking like he was keeping up.


So he saw it when the guildmaster ducked into an alley way. As it turned out, so did Taid, and he was able to tell his two companions where he went. Eykit moved quickly to the mouth of the alley, peeking around the corner of the building. Has he discovered us already? he thought, frowning. I’m pretty good at this, damn it. He couldn’t have seen me.

A quick glance over his shoulder showed him that Almë was about thirty meters behind him. He assumed Taid and Ruby were with him.


Taid, Almë, and Ruby picked up their pace, trying to slide between the passersby.


Eykit, peering around the corner, saw Clemens turn right at the end of the alley. He looked up, trying to see Elitheris. He saw her running along the edge, looking into the alley, trying to spot their quarry. He waved to get her attention, and, after a moment, she saw him at the alley entrance. He pointed forward and to the right, letting her know where he went.


She nodded, and took off towards the back of the alley.


Almë meditated, clearing his mind. He ran into a few people, and they shoved at him in annoyance. “Sorry, sorry,” he mumbled, trying to concentrate. Ruby and Taid, seeing what he was trying to do, moved in front of him to act as icebreakers and keep his path clear.


His mind focused, he tried the Elven technique of getting into a state of flow. Things seemed a bit easier, and he caste his spell of Haste on Ruby, who had the shortest legs.


The magical energy flowed into her limbs. She felt she could run almost twice as fast, except for the fact that she was still hemmed in by people. She wouldn’t be able to fully open up until they got to the relatively empty alleyway.


Elitheris stalked across the rounded clay shingles of the roof, making her way to the back of the building. As the alley that Clemens turned down came into view, she saw him turn left, heading for the other side of the block of buildings. She ran forward and leaped across the gap from roof to roof. Her landing spot was a bit lower, and she came down arms first, tucking and rolling back up to her feet in one smooth motion that did little to reduce her speed. Up the sloping roof she went, diving over the ridge caps and grabbing at a chimney to keep her from going over the edge.


Clemens was making his way quickly out of the alley, turning left when he got to the street, going in the opposite direction than when he left his offices.


Eykit moved back into the crowd, heading for the next alleyway. He’d like to be in a position to cut Clemens off if he could. He was able to move fairly quickly through the crowd. Not as fast as he’d like, but more quickly than the average pedestrian traffic.


Taid, Almë, and Ruby went down the first alley, Ruby taking the lead and making it to where the alley became a T-intersection. They went to the right; correctly interpreting Eykit’s hand gestures.


Elitheris followed, along the roof, staying about halfway between edge and ridge, just enough to be able to see Clemens. She glanced over her shoulder every once in a while, watching for her friends.


Taid and Almë caught up to Ruby, who started going down the narrow alleyway that lay between the two rows of buildings on the block. Ahead of them, they could see Eykit coming around the next corner. Between them was an alley mouth that led off to their left, towards the next street over. The alley itself was filled with debris—barrels, crates, and various kinds of junk. They broke into a run, trying to make up some time.


Besides, they had to locate Elitheris, who would be the only person who might have eyes on the guildmaster. They ran past a man rooting in a bin. He didn’t even bother to look up as they moved past him.


Eykit sprinted down the alleyway. He got to the T-intersection at the end of the alley he ducked down. To the left was the alley that led to the one that Clemens had gone down, with another that led to the street on the other side of the block. To the right was more alleyway, with branching alleys off either side.


He hadn’t seen Zorion go past the alley he was in, so the Goblin went to the left. Just as he got to the side alley, he saw Ruby pop around the corner ahead of him. He pointed down the alley to the street, then turned and ran back the way he came, planning on taking the next alleyway to the street.


There was no reason to all go as a single group; they could cover more territory if they split up a bit. He checked above for signs of Elitheris, but didn’t see her. He hoped he could reacquire her soon, though.


Ruby, Taid, and Almë turned down the side alley that Eykit had indicated. It wasn’t long until they were on the street, back in the crowds. Eykit burst out of his alley a building down the street from them. They all started scanning about for Elitheris, correctly figuring that finding her would be easier than finding Zorion.


Spotting a barrel sitting up against the wall of a shop, Eykit hopped up onto it, scanning the crowd and the rooflines. He saw Taid and Maggie come out of the alleyway, along with Ruby and Almë. They stopped, looking around, trying to figure out which way to go.


Almë spotted Elitheris, running along the rooftops, then stopping, then walking or running again. She was moving down the street in the opposite direction than he originally went. He alerted his companions, and they headed off in that direction, following Elitheris, but scanning the crowd, too, hoping to get lucky and see Zorion.


The streets were shadowed, although sunlight still illuminated the highest parts of the taller buildings. It was getting harder to resolve the features of the people on the street.


Elitheris was about sixty or seventy meters down the street from them. He looked back the other way, and saw Eykit prairie dogging, standing on something to get his head up above the crowd. Almë waved, and pointed where Elitheris was.


Eykit jumped down, following as quickly as he could. Elitheris was pretty far ahead, but then again, she didn’t have crowds to deal with.


They all hurried in the direction of Elitheris. They were still hampered by the crowds, but the numbers of people had thinned out a little, and they could now move a bit more quickly than a walk. They needed to get close enough to reacquire their target.


Elitheris looked down upon Zorion Clemens. She’d been able to keep up with him without too much difficulty, and he hadn’t ducked down any more alleyways, at least, not yet. But he did turn right at the next intersection, and because Elitheris was on the roof to his left, that meant that she would have to cross the street in order to follow.


She looked for and easy way down; she couldn’t just drop to the street, she was on the roof of a three story building, and it was too far, and there were too many people in the way. But she could drop from the eaves to the stone window trim, and climb down to the next window. She started going over the edge when she saw the clothes line that stretched from the neighboring building to the one across the street. It was a dual line, with pulleys on both ends. It looked thick enough to support her weight, and she hoped that the pulleys were connected strongly as well, or the pulley would just pull itself out of the wall.


She tested the line, putting her weight on it. It flexed, but didn’t break, and the pulleys seemed to be bolted to the wall strongly enough to support her. She strode quickly across the slack line, her natural Elven sense of balance making it fairly easy for her.


She missed this, she realized. Elven settlements often used lines like this to connect the various flets and platforms that made up their treehouse-like villages. Without much difficulty, she was able to imagine herself in an Elven village again. It head been a long time since she’d had a chance to visit one.

“Look, Mommy!” A child called, “A street performer!” The girl, no more than seven, pointed up at Elitheris. She laughed. “She’s walking on the clothes!”


Many people looked up and saw the Elf striding along the clothesline, and many of those simply watched as she went from one side of the street to the other. Some of them thought it a bit odd that a street performer would be carrying a bow and hip quiver, but dismissed it as sometimes performers did trick shots, such as shooting an arrow while upside down on a trapeze, or doing archery with their feet while doing a handstand.


Elitheris could see the people looking up at her, and, on a whim, waved down to them. She contemplated doing an acrobatic flip while on the line, but dismissed it. She didn’t have time for it, and it risked her falling off the line and losing her target. So she quickly walked the last few meters and disappeared over the rooftop.


Behind her, she could hear the muttering of the disappointed crowds who had hoped for a more interesting show. She ignored it, as they hadn’t paid for a show anyway.


Zorion Clemens made his way down the street, and she peered over the edge of the roof to her left to keep track of him. Every now and then she would stop, and let him get a bit ahead of her, then hurry to catch up, sometimes going past him a little to get ahead of him.


But random people in the street weren’t the only ones who saw the Elf woman walk all over someone’s laundry. Taid, Eykit, Almë, and Ruby did as well, watching her almost run across the line from building to building, three stories up. The important thing was that they knew which direction Clemens had gone, and they hurried to catch up. They even heard the disappointed sighs and complaints of the crowd.

Eykit managed to catch up to the other three when they got to the intersection. They all went to the right, following Elitheris and, they presumed, Zorion. They could see Elitheris still going down the right side of the street, up on the roofs. They even saw her somersault over an alley as she leaped from one roof to the other.


“Oh, now she’s just showing off,” Eykit said. He wanted to get in on that kind of action. It looked fun. He’d have to get her to teach him some of that flippy spinny rolly stuff.


Elitheris saw Clemens turn onto another street. Unfortunately for her, he went to the left, which meant she’d have to cross a street again. But this time, there was no convenient clothes line to run across.


Eykit had been confused about how this guy moved. The pattern, so far, had been one of someone who thought he was being followed. But he wasn’t indicating that he knew he was being followed. Logically, then, either he was toying with them, or he didn’t realize that anyone was shadowing him. And if that was the case, then this guy made it his habit to just move through the city like this as his standard operating procedure.


It would shake off the casuals, and give him plenty of chances to see if anyone was actually following him. Fortunately for them, they had followed him as a team, and, accidentally or not, ended up swapping shadowers, making it difficult for Clemens to know if he was being followed.


“Guys,” Eykit said, “This is how he always acts. This could be how he covers his tracks, no matter where he is going, and that he feels as if he’s involved in some cloak and dagger plot at all times.”


He went on. “This is pretty odd behavior and I’m pretty sure I’m not being seen, so what the hell is he running from?” Zorion was not doing the things that he would normally do if he was checking specifically if someone was following him. This just seemed to be the way he did things. He just rarely went directly anywhere; he always tried to make it confusing. His actions made much more sense to Eykit.


Elitheris was on a two story building. She didn’t know where the others were, and hoped that they were close enough to see her. Because she couldn’t wait for them and still know where Clemens was. She put her faith in her friends hoping they could see her, pointed in the direction of Clemens, then hopped down onto the roof of the first floor and then down to the street.


She wove her way through the people and made it to the other side of the street. It was easier to move across the rooftops. She looked around, seeing a pile of crates just inside an alleyway. She went to the alley, and launched herself up the pile where she was able to grab the eaves and haul herself up onto the roof. It wasn’t as graceful as she would have liked, but she was up quickly enough. She quickly moved up and over the ridgeline, and down the other side until she could see the street and everyone on it.


She reacquired him more quickly than she thought she would. It wasn’t that he stuck out in any way, it just seemed as if she looked in the exact direction where he ended up being. Dumb luck, divine providence, or fate. It didn’t matter, she followed, keeping low enough on the roof to avoid detection. Most people didn’t look up that much anyway. They were too focused on where to put their feet, and avoid others on the street.


Zorion Clemens was walking next to a wagon, pacing it, possibly using it as cover. He dropped back, and went around to the other side, putting its bulk between him and the majority of the street.


Elitheris had to drop back herself, in order to see him between the wagon and the buildings on the right side of the street. She didn’t want him using the wagon as cover as he ducked down another alley without her seeing him.


She needn’t have worried. He got to a large, six story apartment building. It was one of the larger buildings in town; most weren’t more than four stories high. But this one was immense. It was in the shape of a U, with a courtyard of pavers and planters between the wings. Trees and flowers grew in the square planters, with wide stone sides suitable as benches. The windows on the first floor were glass, but the rest were oiled paper.


Clemens turned into the courtyard. Elitheris was on the roof of the three story building next to it. Across a two and a half meter divide was essentially a wall of windows, oiled paper, with stone trim around them forming narrow ledges and hand holds. She leaped.


Her hands clutched the windowsill, her feet tucked beneath her above the window below. She pulled herself up the wall, changing her grip to the trim above the window, and got her feet onto the sill. From there it was a series of jumps and grabs, as she made her way up the wall. The last jump was from the window ledge outward to the eaves, but her archer’s muscles and grip were up to the task. She mantled up onto the roof, and, crouching, ran up the low slope and over the ridge.


If anyone heard her, and opened their windows to look out, it was too late. She was up and onto the roof before anyone could react.


As her view cleared the eaves, she could see down into the courtyard. And she could see the main door close, visible between the canopy of the trees in the planters. There were several more doors, four on each side, which evidently led into the apartments on the first floor. All of the other apartments were likely accessed via the lobby.


The timing of the door closing likely matched where she expected Clemens to be, based upon his walking speed. He was going to one of the upper floors.


She looked around from her high vantage point. She could see her companions coming up the street. They were two buildings away from the apartment complex; Elitheris estimated that they were about twenty seconds away from the courtyard. Too far away to get here soon enough to follow him.


She needed to get down from the roof, and quickly. She gripped the eaves, crouching, and dropped off the rooftop, hanging from the edge. Swinging her legs to get momentum, she dropped down, arcing toward the wall, where she grabbed onto the window sill.


Barely waiting at all, she let go, grabbing the next windowsill to break her fall. She did this again, and again, until she was able to drop to the ground. It had taken her only about six seconds to go from the roof to the ground.


She ran to the door, opened it, and walked inside. It was the main lobby of the building. There was a wide stairway that went up to a mezzanine level, and then a flight of stairs going all the way up to the sixth floor. The flight alternated back and forth, two flights per floor. There was a meter wide space between them, and Elitheris could see all the way up the staircase to the ceiling, far above.


She raced up the stairs to the mezzanine level, and looked up the stairway. She could see someone’s hand as they climbed the stairs. There was a ring on one of the fingers of the hand.


Taid and his companions were almost forcing their way through the foot traffic of the street. They could see Elitheris leap from a rooftop onto the six story building, sticking to the wall like a gecko, then fling herself up each level of windowsill like a monkey. She went up and over the eaves, then up the roof slope until she disappeared over the ridge of the roof.


They hurried. They couldn’t see her, and they couldn’t see the quarry. But as they approached the building, she didn’t emerge from the courtyard. Elitheris must be inside the building. They didn’t know which apartment; there were several on the first floor. But there were no marks, or any indication at all that she left to indicate any specific door.


They headed to the main lobby door. There were five stories of apartments that he could be heading to.

Rewards Granted

3 CP

Missions/Quests Completed

The Mystery of the Blue Babies

Report Date

30 Jul 2023

Primary Location

The City of Port Karn

Secondary Location

The Tondene Empire

Related Characters

• Almë
• Elitheris
• Eykit the Eel
• Mister Wiggles
• Norolind
• Ruby Smallburrow
• Taid Tehoredor Lasu

GM’s notes:

Shape Plant is a Regular spell, with a cost of 3 for living wood. That tree was about 30m tall, which is a +7 Size Modifier. Which meant that Almë should have had to pay 24 mana to cast, 8 to maintain, to do what he did (8x cost). I didn’t realize this at the time, and thought he could just affect a part of the object, as if it were an Area spell. Nope. Doesn’t work like that.

Another thing I goofed on was the time it took Almë to climb up that tree. I should have given Boots about 300 more chances to make a ST roll to escape the Glue. While it wouldn’t have changed much, since Ruby would have just cast the Glue again, it would have made Almë’s climb up the tree more filled with tension.

Rondel daggers have some extra advantages to stilettos, bollocks daggers, and other knives. Their paired-disk pommel allows you, if you are wearing gauntlets (rigid armor type, DR 4+) to lock the dagger in your hand, giving you a +2 vs disarming. It also allows you to place the point in a chink of armor, and hammer the pommel with your other hand, giving a +2 to target chinks in armor.

Neither matter against poor, stuck Boots the Zombie Cat, but it’s good to remember for later.

And I changed the name of the restaurant that Zorion and his two buddies ate lunch at, from "Black Fish" to "The Coach and Four". 1) I didn't know that is what I named it until I listened to Session 33's synopsis, and 2) The Coach and Four sounds classier. Although I am certain that no one else remembered what it was called during the game session.