Adv Log, Session 38: On the River to Dwarfchat, Part 3
General Summary
The fight with the weird archers was over. Eykit, hobbling around with an arrow wound in his calf, held a hand over the wound, applying pressure to limit the blood loss. Taid looked at the wound, cast a healing spell, and the hole closed into a small, puckered scar. Extracting that arrow, without the proper tools, had been a painful ordeal. One wrong move could have severed an artery, causing the Goblin to bleed out. There was a reason war arrows were barbed….
They examined the bodies; there was nothing to loot. The stump of the arm showed muscle tissue and bone, but no fine detail such as arteries or veins. They were more constructs than living people.
“How are these things even alive?” Elitheris asked, glancing between the stump and the severed hand and bow. “No arteries, no veins, no nerves?” Left unsaid was the fact that the bow and the hand seemed to be all of a piece. They seemed stuck to each other, as if glued. The bow seemed made of wood, and the flesh was, well, flesh.
“Well, we’re in a world with necromancers and stuff,” Taid replied. He was just as curious and confused as she was.
“So,” Elitheris said seriously, “they’re just molding meat into people now?”
“Isn’t that what we’ve been fighting recently? Things with four arms and three legs, and two heads?”
Elitheris nodded. “I guess. Yeah.” She shivered. There were basically two types of people that studied necromancy. Those that wanted to extend life and cheat death, and those that used death as simply another tool in the toolbox. While the first could lead to the rumored spell of resurrection, the second was, unfortunately, far more common, and lead to power-hungry people using the dead as their playthings. Or, if not playthings, then at least as tools to get what they wanted. People like Lennerd Fountainsmith and Kallia. Herbert Vesten seemed to use his undead simply as servants, although his obsession with Shards and their necromantic uses made him use them to kill people for his experiments.
It was probably a good thing that the person with the highest number of Shards had no magical aptitude. Eykit wasn’t in danger of turning into a Goblin necromancer any time soon. Hopefully.
It was time to leave, and none of the crew, muddy from lying on the sheltering riverbank, wanted anything else to do with the place. Besides, a light rain had developed, and the clouds were dark and threatening, the overcast lending a pall of shadow over the already dim jungle.
The night’s “rest” hadn’t been that restful for Taid or Eykit, who had slept in their armor, and they woke up with a myriad of aches and pains. Both remembered waking up several times in the middle of the night, having to shift their positions due to their armor digging into soft parts of their anatomies. Both had bloodshot eyes, and moved stiffly as they went about their morning duties.
Elitheris and Almë had both slept only in their smallclothes. Ruby had slept in her silversilk, so she had been hot and sweaty all night, but felt safer sleeping in them. Protection was good, but more importantly she worried about theft. The gift bestowed upon her by the Elves was a very nice prize, so she did what she could to make it as difficult as possible to steal. She figured she could always sleep on board the boat during the day. It would be a nice change from the mind-clouding, stomach roiling and painful seasickness that she felt most days on that tub.
They broke down the camp and got on the boat, rowing upstream. The rain increased in severity, turning into a downpour shortly after they set off. Erven and Artur set up a pair of ridge lines, over which they hung tarps, the corners tied to the bulwarks. This formed sheltered areas from just behind the bow to the mast, and from the mast back to the steerboard. Those on the sides, the rowers and the captain, mainly, weren’t able to take advantage of the shelters, but everyone else huddled under the tarps.
And huddle they had to. The ridge lines were at a height of about two meters, with the edges of the tarps at about a meter and a half, so really only the shortest people on the boat were able to stand. Going in or out of the shelter also required a bit of stooping over, and ducking in through a curtain of water draining off of the sloping surface. But sitting down gave enough visibility over the bulwarks and under the tarp’s edge to see the jungle at the riverbank, if not the riverbank itself.
Almë had a good day on the boat; normally, just about any movement of whatever vehicle he was on caused him abject misery, but on this day, the gods smiled upon him, sparing him any motion sickness at all. It was like he was a normal person, able to fully enjoy the trip as the boat slowly made its way upriver in the rain.
Elias didn’t have to row that day. He had another duty, one that only he was suitably skilled at: sewing. It was his task to repair the rents in the tarps caused by the rock explosion. It was made even more important now that it was raining. No one wanted a wet bedroll.
And when Jory wasn’t rowing, he was refining the sketches he had made of the mouthless “Elves” that had attacked them. After the attack, and while the rest of the crew had been breaking down the campsite, he had been hurriedly making several rough sketches of their odd attackers. He had made about a dozen, from different angles, and once he was on the boat, not rowing, and under the shelter of the tarps, he could add the detailing and start to make some more finished artworks.
He had a sketch of the handless body, laying in the ferns and undergrowth. He also had a detail of the stump, with annotations denoting that no, the sketch wasn’t unfinished, there really were no anatomical details to draw. He also had a detail sketch of the hand, still closed around the bow, with notes on that one stating that the bow was actually attached to the hand. The hand and bow were fused together, or formed as one unit. It was hard to say, and his annotations included a series of question marks.
It would have been nice to take one of the bodies, but the boat was crowded enough as it was, and no one really wanted that thing on the boat with them anyway. Jory’s sketches would have to do, if they wanted to follow up on that little mystery. For the moment, they all assumed the beings were constructs of some kind, likely necromantic, and of a different kind than the Shard-based things they’d come into contact with. The constructs had had no Shards on them. Or in them, as far as they could tell. Eykit got the impression that he probably would have known if they had had Shards imbedded in their bodies, although he wasn’t sure why he thought that.
Elitheris looked embarrassed when Jory showed her his sketch of her being pulled over the bulwark by the fideal. It showed her losing her grip on the boat, and Mr. Wiggles, forefeet on the bulwark, barking in defiance as several tendrils snaked up out of the water about to grab him. It was quite good, and everyone agreed that it was a very accurate image of what had actually happened.
Since they were going to be under the tarps anyway, both Taid and Eykit doffed their armor and took naps, hoping to get some good sleeping time while they felt safe. Taid, having been in the Imperial Army, could fall asleep just about anywhere. It was a vital skill in the military. Eykit, however, lacked that training, and had trouble both falling asleep and staying asleep as the boat creaked and people made noises going about their business. He managed a few winks of shuteye, even if it was interrupted by noises and jostling.
At about midmorning, the rain slacked off, and a blue window opened up in the sky, letting the sun shine down and start to dry off all of the wet surfaces. An hour later, and those on the boat could hear the roar of falling water. A few moments later, and they could see what was making all of the noise: a sixty foot high waterfall, that fell into a pool before forming a stream that ran into the river. It was beautiful, and the pond looked very inviting in the 28° C heat.
But they didn’t have time for a bath, although several people on the boat smelled themselves, wishing they could take the time to stop. Considering the color change as the clear stream water hit the more sluggish, murky river, the pool would have been a good and relaxing place to bathe.
The rain started back up again in the early afternoon, coming down in sheets. They made camp in the rain, without a fire, and dinner was cold rations. Fortunately, it wasn’t a cold day, just a wet one. It was hot, humid, and wet. Their shelters had to be smaller, because they had to use part of their tarps as ground cloths. Which meant that their feet, overhanging the groundcloth part of the tarp, got wet.
Plowpoint diamond fold shelter
Almë and Taid did their usual things with campsites, Almë with Plant Vision, Taid with Mystic Mist. Elitheris took first watch, and Almë was happy to take second watch, as he didn’t spend the day nauseated. As Elitheris was about to wake Almë, she heard something crashing through the jungle. A moment later, she could hear a voice, muttering.
She slapped Almë awake. He spluttered, groggily saying “I’m awake! I’m awake! No need to be so rough.”
“Shh!” Elitheris said, “Listen! I heard something!” They both became quiet, listening. Whatever or whomever it was wasn’t trying to be stealthy; they were tramping through the undergrowth and squelching through the muddy puddles without care or worry.
They could hear the voice a bit better now, high pitched with that sound that seemed old. Whoever it was, they were coming closer, and sounded upset. “Damn Moon King! He’s still trying to take my eye! Well, he cain’t have it naow, can he? No he cain’t. It’s mine! My eye! You took one of them already, you shiny bastard! You can’t have my other one!” Whoever it was, they spoke Imperial.
Elitheris told Almë to wake the others. She could hear the stranger moving through the jungle, muttering. He sounded like an auroch moving through the forest, all bluster and force.
“Stop watching me, Moon King!” the voice said, “Stop! Leave me alone, you half blind bastard!”
Almë had woken Ruby, Taid, and Eykit. Then Almë walked to the edge of the mist, along with Elitheris.
“I think we need to kill it immediately,” Almë said to Elitheris, softly.
She shot him an incredulous look, frowning at his bloodthirstiness. The others, roused from their bedrolls, joined the pair near the edge of the mystic mist boundary. They’d be able to see whoever approached, while remaining hidden within the magic fog.
The noises in the jungle stopped. “Moon mist!” the voice said. “Scary. I’ll avoid that! Won’t get me that easily, stupid Moon King!”
Eykit looked at Taid, mouthing, “Moon mist? Interesting.” Taid’s raised his eyebrows with a shrug.
“Stupid Moon King,” came the voice again. “You may have taken one eye, but my other one sees just fine! Do you think I’m stupid? Think I’ll just blunder into your Moon Mist?”
Almë munched on a pickle, listening with interest. The noises seemed to stop moving, although they could still hear someone out there, standing in the jungle, just beyond some intervening foliage. “Hey, my friend!” he called out, “how’s it going?”
Taid spoke up, his sing-songing deep voice rumbling in the night. “O! I am the Moon King and I take your eyes! I am the Moon King and I write your demise!”
Not to be outdone, Almë piped in, “I am the Banana King and I take your ears!”
Elitheris looked at both Taid and Almë in confusion. They weren’t the Moon King or the Banana King. She didn’t even know who they were. But she kept her confusion to herself.
Taid whispered to Eykit and Ruby, “Do we want to make friends with him, or scare him off?”
Almë overheard, replying, “Why not both?”
Taid looked quizzically at him with his differently colored eyes, trying to make sense of that statement, despite the cognitive dissonance required to do so.
Ruby shook her head at the games Taid and Almë were playing. Sighing, she called out to the visitor, “Hello! Who’s there? Where are you?”
“Ah! Servants of the Moon King! Leave me alone!” came the voice in the wilderness. His tone of voice made it clear he had little respect for the “servants of the Moon King”.
“I am the Moon King!” Taid said sonorously.
Almë said, “We are not with the Moon King! We are the Mist Ghosts of the Jungle.”
“Mist Ghosts of the Jungle?” the voice said, incredulously.
“Yes, that is who we are. Who are you?”
“You sound like the Moon King to me! Go away, foul beasts!”
“No, we are not with the Moon King. We are enemies of the Moon King, actually.”
“Enemies?” the voice said, sounding very unbelieving. “Hah!”
“I am the Moon King!” Taid said again, trying to contain a laugh. He was having entirely too much fun at the old man’s expense.
“Oh, Taid, shut up,” Almë said, smacking Taid on the shoulder.
“I can say anything I want,” Taid said, softly.
“But we are going in opposite directions!” Almë replied, just as softly.
“We’re confusing the hell out of him. This is great!”
Almë tried to smack him again, but he overestimated Taid’s height, and his hand swooshed over the Dwarf’s head.
“Let’s befriend him, Taid, okay? Maybe we can get a crazy friend.”
“Maybe. But I’m keeping the Moon King in my back pocket.”
“Fine.” Almë spoke to the voice. “Yeah, enemies of the Moon King. We are the mist wraiths.”
The voice answered, “Well, I don’t believe you. Who are you really? Mist wraiths…I’ve never heard of anything called a mist wraith. And I’ve seen everything!”
“Who are you, that you’ve seen everything?”
“My name is unimportant. Don’t remember it anyway.”
“What are you doing out here? Out in our mist wraith jungle.”
“Running from the Moon King! He’s trying to take my eye!”
Eykit muttered, “Their eye?” quizzically.
Almë asked, “Why would he do that? Do you have magic eyes?”
“He took my other one,” the voice said. “He’s missing an eye.”
Elitheris asked, “Where is the Moon King?”
“Are ye blind? He’s up there!” They still couldn’t see him, but they got the distinct impression that he was pointing somewhere, although Kynett, which likely hung overhead past the jungle canopy, was in its new moon phase.
Almë stepped out of the mist, moving towards the voice.
Elitheris asked, “Almë, can I get some plant vision going here?”
Ruby followed Almë, backing him up, just in case.
Almë cast the spell of Plant Vision on himself, and the jungle faded into barely visible outlines. Standing about five meters away was an old, bald Hobbit with an unkempt beard and an eyepatch. Almë could see twigs and leaves in the old Hobbit’s beard; it was likely that the last time it had seen a comb or brush was several decades ago. His clothes were dirty and torn, likely from being worn for several days straight, or possibly weeks, and the various thorny plants and twigs that grew in the jungle were rather hard on fabrics. He wore beat up leather boots, with at least one visible hole near the toe. He was scrawny, but gave the impression of being as tough as nails.
“Do you need some help, old man?” Almë asked.
“Yeah! I’m gonna say yes! I need help! The Moon King is trying to take my eye! I’ve only got the one. He took the other one already.”
“How did the Moon King get your eye?” Ruby asked.
“And why would he take it?” Elitheris asked, still inside the mystic mist.
The old Hobbit fixed his eye on Ruby. “He came down out of the sky and took my eye. So he could see. Now he wants to see even better. He wants my other eye.”
“Do you need protection?” Ruby asked.
“Of course I need protection!” he shouted. “But who can protect me from the Moon King? The Moon Queen is gone!”
“We can.”
Almë asked, “Why are you, like, not asleep at night?”
“Slept earlier,” the old Hobbit said. Since the people from the mist didn’t seem overtly dangerous (despite claiming to be the Moon King), the old Hobbit came a bit closer, moving around a large-leafed bush and into view. Most plants growing at the forest floor level had large leaves, necessary due to the limited amount of light reaching through the canopy and understory of the jungle.
“Where do you live? Are you living around here?”
“I,” he said, self importantly, “am itinerant.”
Almë didn’t quite hear him. “What?” he asked.
Eykit piped up, “He’s basically homeless.”
“I’m not homeless! I am a wanderer! There’s a difference!”
“Ah.” He addressed the old Hobbit. “We are actually on a journey to kill one of the main allies of the Moon King. She’s like his right hand. She’s a Dwarven mage. Do you want to join us? Maybe we can get your eye back!”
“I’m too old for that kind of adventure!” He stroked his beard, muttering, “I would have thought the beard and wrinkles would have given that away.”
“When did you lose your eye?” Elitheris asked.
The Old Hobbit replied, “He took the eye a long time ago. I don’t remember naow. I was much younger then.”
“So, what? You’ve just been running from the Moon King ever since?”
“Well, he doesn’t always try to get my eye. Just most of the time.”
“Just when it’s a new moon?”
“He’s still up there. You just can’t see ‘im.”
Elitheris pointed at the nearly invisible disk of the new moon, faintly illuminated by the reflected light of Velyri. “Is that the Moon King?”
He looked at her, exasperated, as if she were a simpleton. “Of course! The Moon King!”
The Elven woman was thinking that the Old Hobbit was simply a crazy old man, the last few of his marbles bouncing around in his skull like dice in a cup.
“He’s out for me other eye!” the Old Hobbit said again. “Starin’ at me alla time.” He sniffed. “Is that food? I smell food!”
How can he smell our cold food? Eykit wondered. Probably is just assuming we have some.
The Old Hobbit cocked his head. “Spare a snack, for an old man?”
Almë asked, “Anything to trade?”
“Got a rabbit.” He held up a small rabbit, hanging from a snare around its neck. “Tired of rabbit,” he muttered to himself, barely loud enough for anyone to hear.
The five of them conversed for a bit, and quickly came to the conclusion that giving him some food would shut him up and likely get him out of their hair. Then they could go back to sleep. Almë rummaged around in their food stores, selecting a handful of various kinds of traveler’s rations.
He traded them with the Old Hobbit, who giggled, capering about dancing some sort of jig. Then he tucked in. Around mouthfuls he mumbled, “You cain’t see ‘im up there ‘cuz he’s got his eye closed. He wants my other one, so he can close one and still see out t’other.”
“Okay, if you say so,” Elitheris said. It sounded ridiculous.
“Cool story, bro,” Almë said, grinning.
“Do you be sittin’ on any treasure you be?” Taid asked, mocking the Old Hobbit’s speech patterns.
“Got a rabbit,” the Old Hobbit replied.
Elitheris asked, “Hey, Old Man, what’s your name?”
“Don’t remember.” He sighed. “Call me…George.”
“George, of the jungle?”
“George,” Almë said, “I think we will be calling it a night here. Stay safe. If you don’t want to join our quest, please keep it down because we are going back to sleep. It was a nice, quiet neighborhood until you showed up, so….”
“Beware the Moon King,” George warned, and he walked off into the jungle, muttering to himself, but not as loudly as he had before.
After several minutes without Old George coming back, people went back to their bedrolls, and, later, to sleep. Almë stayed up, on watch. Despite the Mystic Mist, which was like a magic security blanket, the people in the camp preferred someone awake on watch, even though they were almost redundant.
Just before dawn, the rain let up, although the sky was still mostly cloudy. The jungle steamed where the sun hit it, forming a light mist in the warm air. Breakfast was, like dinner the night before, cold rations, mostly nuts and dried fruit, with a bit of cheese, eaten in sporadic handfuls while breaking down camp.
Shortly after setting off, they drifted past a small, twisted tree with golden brown bark growing out of the riverbank. It was a spidlar tree. It grew in tropical areas, its deep green leaves shaped like small, slender maple leaves. It was typically found growing in the jungle understory, often along rivers or in marshes. Its leaves had a stimulant effect, which was useful, but they were addictive. They took some leaves off of the plant. If they weren’t usable to them, they could sell it to an alchemist, who might want to use them for elixirs.
Spidlar tree
They convinced Captain Gwendal to angle the boat over to the bank for a few minutes while they harvested some of the leaves. They figured it might come in handy to get that quick burst of energy, and even though the Captain didn’t really want to waste any more time, he understood that it might be useful for the rowers, in case they needed a quick burst of speed. To be honest, he didn’t mind too much; the boat was in the shade, and it was a rather pleasant morning.
“For what it’s worth,” Ruby said, “I think those leaves are also useful alchemically. Don’t know which elixirs use it though. Probably Endurance or Fetching and Carrying. Those would make the most sense.”
“Speaking of,” Elitheris said, “anyone know what our alchemist is currently working on in our basement lab?”
“He’s always working on something,” Eykit said. “He’s down in his playroom all the time.”
“If I remember correctly,” Taid said, “he said he was working on pastilles. Foolishness, and Stealth.”
Almë wanted to come back to the spidlar tree, and maybe take it home with him. If he could figure out a way to dig it up and carry it with him. He’d likely need a wagon. There might be a road somewhere around there that wasn’t too overgrown. Roads tended to disappear in jungles, or at least become difficult to travel on. He memorized what he could of the area, taking into account as many landscape details as he could. Mostly, it was the position of the visible peaks of the mountains they were getting closer and closer to. Alas, one section of the river was much like any other. But he did what he could.
A few hours later, they drifted past a section of riverbank that had somehow captured a skeleton in the roots of a tree. Its legs were in the water, the rest of the body held above it by the roots. Scavengers of all kinds had gotten to it, leaving only bones.
They used a boat hook to grab onto the body and pull it to the edge of the boat. It had been there a while, pushed there by the river’s current, the clothes, once very nice, shredded and rotting away. They rifled through its pockets, but all it had was a whetstone, some pieces of chalk, and a half used beeswax candle. They took them, then let the river carry the corpse away.
About a half hour later they could see a pall of smoke over the jungle ahead of them.
“Maybe it’s the Moon King!” Taid said, staring at the large smudge of smoke ahead of them.
It was pretty far away, and it was past noon when they finally came to what had caused it. There wasn’t a lot of wind, and as they approached, they could see lines of smoke rising, adding to the mass of smoke that hung in the air. The river curved around a small rise, and as the boat rounded the curve they could see what had caused the smoke.
It was a wildfire, or rather, the remains of one. It had burned away an area two kilometers across, stopping only because of the river and the morning rains. The area was completely burned, most of the plants had turned to ashes and embers, with a few charred pieces of wood lying here and there in a jumbled mass. A few charred trees stood like sentinels, their branches burned away. Small fires could be seen here and there, still burning. The landward edges of the fire, opposite the river, still appeared to be in danger from embers, although it didn’t seem to be actively on fire as far as anyone could tell.
Seeing this brought back some bad memories for Elitheris. Her greatest trauma involved a forest fire, specifically the one that had burned down Celumarauca. She had inadvertently caused that fire, by no real fault of her own, but that was small consolation, given the death toll and the fact that her home town no longer existed. The survivors had fled to other settlements, scattering like the wind. She had been the first to leave, choosing to exile herself, despite being allowed to stay. But that would have been uncomfortable for both her and the survivors, so she chose to wander the forests and jungles in lonely isolation.
“Think a dragon came through here?” Elitheris asked. She examined the area as best she could from the boat, her Elven eyes and keen knowledge of nature allowing her insight about the nature of the fire that had swept through the area.
Then she realized that some of the fires were moving. As in, from place to place, not just flickering like a normal fire. “Well, that’s not normal,” she said.
“What?” Eykit asked, standing next to her and trying to see through the hazy smoke-filled air.
“The fires are moving.”
Eykit looked at her with a frown on his face. “Like living fire?” His voice betrayed a bit a tremulousness. He wasn’t a big fan of fiery creatures that moved on their own. He liked his fires small and controlled, preferably in a fireplace, or on a candlewick. Something civilized. None of this independent, free to roam anywhere fire.
Taid glanced at the Elven woman. “Oh, you won’t be able to use your fire spell.”
“I know,” Elitheris replied. “I’ve got to learn some water magic right quick.”
Almë asked Erven, who was rowing nearby, “Is this shit normal? Do you pass by this kind of thing every other week?”
Erven shook his head. As did several other nearby crew members. “I have no idea what the hell happened here, assuming it’s not a normal forest fire. And this is definitely not normal.”
“Lightning strike, maybe?” Artur asked from the other side of the boat. He was also rowing, and the determined look on his face indicated that he would solidly row for as long as it took to get past the burned out area. Several other crew members also looked like they wanted to get past the area as quickly as possible. “Not sure I like the idea of a dragon anywhere nearby.”
“Yeah,” Alexa agreed, “we are just about the right size for a snack.”
Typically, a forest fire either moves outward from its source, or is pushed in a general direction by the wind. In this case, the wind was minimal, except perhaps what wind was generated by the fire itself. But this area didn’t look to be big enough to cause a firestorm, and the smoke that hung above their heads didn’t indicate any huge updrafts. This, also, was likely a result of the earlier rains. It was becoming evident that had it not rained earlier, the forest fire would likely be raging still, and growing.
It didn’t look like it was expanding quickly. There were small fires burning at the edges, but it mostly looked like the wet jungle had mostly stopped the fire’s progress, and the fire was mostly burned out.
Almë looked around, mostly skyward. He hadn’t completely dismissed Elitheris’ offhand comment about a dragon. He’d seen them before, once or twice, flying in the sky. He wasn’t completely comfortable with the thought of this being a dragon’s lair, or hunting ground. Although he had to admit, that if this was the result of a dragon, something really must have pissed it off.
Elitheris peered towards the center of the area, mostly hidden from sight by some low hills, charred, upright skeletons of trees, and the lingering haze. But she did see a squat tree, topped by what seemed to be a bonfire. It almost looked like the fire was using the charred remains of the tree as some sort of throne. She described what she saw.
“What the fuck?” Taid muttered.
“It’s the Moon King!” Almë joked.
Then a series of fist-sized fireballs arced into the air and towards the ship with a rushing, hissing sound. Most missed, hitting the water around the ship with hissing blasts of steam. But one hit the oilcloth tarp that covered the stack of barley sacks. The crew scrambled to try to put out the flames that started up from the impact point.
Almë turned to Ruby. “Can you make the boat fireproof?”
“I have a spell of Resist Fire,” Ruby replied, nodding. “And a spell of Fireproof.”
Another round of fireballs came arcing towards the ship, and now panic was starting to manifest as they realized they were under attack. Again, a few of the fireballs hit the water around the ship, hissing into steam as they did so.
One hit Captain Gwendal, who was at the rudder. It impacted his left arm, igniting the sleeve immediately, the flames rushing up his shoulder. He screamed in pain, his eyes wide with panic, letting go of the rudder as he attempted to beat the flames out with his other arm.
Alexa grabbed him, and plunged his arm into the river, extinguishing the flames. Captain Gwendal, his arm held cradled against his body, slumped down at the bulwark, using it as cover and wincing in pain. Alexa grabbed the rudder, correcting their course, which had drifted due to the river’s current. The captain groaned, closed his eyes, and slid to the deck, unconscious. A mercy, really; burns were horribly painful.
Taid ran over to him, and cast a healing spell. Subliminal motes of magenta light that only Taid could see flowed from him to the burned arm, swirling about the blisters, char, and raw spots on the flesh, partially healing the damage. It wasn’t enough, but it would help, and would keep the sailor captain from dying.
Burns were terrifying. They couldn’t be stitched up, and they were also an easy route for infection, because the main defense against infection was the skin. And with burns, the skin was effectively an open wound. And even after “healing”, they could still hurt, and the scars they left behind were unpleasant to look at, to say the least.
They would have to wait until Captain Gwendal regained consciousness to see if he managed to protect his eyes from the flames; there was a chance that one or both of his eyes had been blinded. He had seemed to be able to see, but it had all happened so fast that no one was actually sure.
“Rowers!” Alexa shouted. “Get going! Row!” There had been four people rowing, but on Alexa’s order, the three off duty rowers hurried to get oars in their hands and get them into the water.
Fireproof would last an entire day, but would take five minutes for Ruby to cast, which was a long time considering that they were being bombarded by fireballs every few seconds. And as she did the math, it would take several castings to cover the entire boat. Fire Resistance would have to do, despite the increased mana cost. But it only lasted a minute before needing to be maintained. If only she had time….
And at the speed they were going, even being under the propulsion of six oars, it would take a dozen minutes or so to escape the attacks. The seventh rower, Fikkiil, had grabbed a bailing bucket, and was trying to douse the flames that were threatening to burn the barley.
“Where are they coming from?” Artur shouted. “I haven’t seen any mages casting at us!”
Elitheris looked towards the shore, where the fireballs had come from. As she watched, more balls of flame shot towards them, emanating from the fires they had seen moving about. “They are coming from the fire creatures!”
They could see seven fires making a beeline to the riverbank, trying to get closer to the ship. They were the things launching the fireballs. And they were moving quickly, faster than the boat, trailing little trails of flame. Small fires ignited behind them, scattered here and there because most of the fuel in the area was used up and would no longer burn. More fireballs came hurtling into the boat, but the flame sprites, or whatever they were, launching them were still too far away to have decent aim.
Ruby cast the spell Fire Resistance on herself.
Elitheris ran to get a bailing bucket to help put out any fires the flame sprites might cause. She didn’t think her arrows would do much to creatures made of living flame. Eykit did likewise, snatching a bucket and dunking it in the river.
Almë scanned the surroundings, counting the flame sprites. There were seven of them, all rushing towards the boat. Some had launched fireballs, others hadn’t. As he watched, two of them lofted balls of fire, which arced towards the boat with a loud whoosh. One passed far behind the boat, the other just missed the bow, hissing into the water. He noticed a bailing bucket at the back of the boat. He scrambled for the bucket, shouting, “Ruby! Make us fireproof!”
Herself protected from fire by her previous cast, Ruby started casting the spell of Fire Resistance again, this time on the boat itself. It was a larger object, and would take a lot of mana, but it would keep them afloat, and prevent fires from starting. She flicked and twisted her fingers while speaking the words of power, and she got the impression of a wave of magenta light flowing from her and covering the ship before fading away.
Taid moved towards the front of the boat, thinking about using his spell of Create Water to form a wall of mist. It would be stationary, and the boat would move past it, but it would act as at least a partial shield against the incoming balls of fire.
Almë filled a bucket with water. Eykit turned with his bucket ready to put out the fire, but it was already out. Little wisps of smoke hung in the air above the scorched area of the tarp, but it didn’t even have embers glowing.
Elitheris had filled her bucket as well, and looked around for some flames to throw water onto. She didn’t see any either.
Elitheris and Eykit, buckets full, threw the water around the deck boards, wetting them as protection from flames. They refilled their buckets.
Taid continued towards the bow, trying to figure out the best way to deploy his mist wall. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the flames on the tarp to his right suddenly go out. Odd, he thought, no one had gotten a chance to douse it….
“The boat’s fireproof now!” Ruby called out.
Another set of fireballs, four this time, arced towards the boat, whooshing and trailing bits of fire as they came. Almë, seeing one coming straight for him, dived for cover behind the pile of barley sacks, right next to Wilbur, their horse. He wasn’t fast enough, and one of the balls of fire impacted on his arm, engulfing it in flame. He hit the deck, dousing his arm in the bilge water that lay in the bottom four inches of the boat. He hoped that the cargo was fireproof as well, but even if it wasn’t, there was a lot of grain between him and the fire creatures.
A second ball of fire struck their horse, Wilbur, on his leg. Fire spread over his haunches, burning. He screamed, and bucked, the hobbles preventing him from moving very well, and he fell over, fortunately falling away from Almë. Wilbur’s legs thrashed, and Almë kept his head down. A panicked horse hoof would easily take off his head. Even if he survived a horse kick to the head, the best case scenario would be as the village idiot, his time spent sitting on a stump, drooling.
The third one streaked towards Elias, who was standing over Captain Gwendal and rowing just ahead of Alexa, who was manning the steerboard. He ducked, and it flew past his head, across the river, and into the jungle on the other bank. It flew into a bush, and several large leaves started burning, embers creeping across the leaves. The leaves were wet, and soon the fire was extinguished. The fist sized balls of fire weren’t really large enough to start large fires on their own. It would take several hitting in the same general area to start a really large fire.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Almë, trailing flame, dive between the piles of cargo. He had a full bucket of water, but it was too far to toss the water onto Almë. He turned back to the bulwark, peering over it at the shore, watching for more fiery missiles heading in their direction.
Elitheris also had a bucket, and no where to apply it. The boat was safe, at least for now, and didn’t need a fire brigade. She looked around for a spare oar. The four at the front of the boat were all in use, but there were two at the rear of the boat. She dropped the bucket, the water spilling into the bilge, and started towards the stern of the boat.
Taid had followed the group of fireballs as they came in, and saw one of them land on his horse. He didn’t pause, or assess the damage; he just started casting a healing spell, pumping as much mana as he could into it. Wilbur was pretty tough, for a horse bred for easy riding. So when his leg collapsed under him, Taid knew it was serious. He was several meters away, but he was able to get his halberd, its shaft enchanted with the Staff spell which extended his reach, close enough to the horse to cast the spell without difficulty.
He could feel the energies flowing through him, down his arms, up the polearm shaft, and into the injured horse.
Ruby, at the stern of the boat, needed to get closer and to a better vantage point. The pile of cargo would do nicely, and she ran towards the pile of barley sacks covered by the tarp.
The fire sprites were converging on the boat, at least as far as the riverbank. The water seemed to stop their forward movement, but they were moving fast enough to be able to not only keep up with the boat’s motion, but outrun it. There was no way the boat was going to escape them, and it was going to take a very long time before they would be able to escape the burned area.
Elitheris looked around. Grabbing an oar wouldn’t help; the fire sprites were faster than they were. And shooting arrows at them was likely to be just as ineffective. She frowned, frustrated that she couldn’t do anything against them.
“Elitheris! I’ve got a spell of Icy Missiles!” Taid said. He started casting, saying the words of power under his breath as his fingers danced.
Elitheris stepped closer to him, readying a pair of arrows. It would take a few seconds for the spell to be complete, and she could use that time to aim at those little flaming bastards.
Almë, his arm smoking and wet, but no longer burning, kept his head down, crouching behind the cover of the barley bags. He had no intention of becoming a target again.
Eykit dived behind the barley bags as well, following Almë’s example.
Ruby climbed up onto the pile of barley sacks, and looked towards the shore. She could see the seven fire sprites, moving along the riverbank, keeping pace with the boat. In the distance, she could see the squat tree with the bonfire on it. It gave the impression that it was leaning towards her, or rather, the boat, as if paying attention. But it was about a kilometer away, past a blackened landscape cluttered with burned debris, in what seemed to be the center of the burned out area. So she couldn’t be sure.
But she didn’t think it was a coincidence.
Four of the fire sprites threw balls of fire at the boat. One of them splashed fire on the decking near Alexa’s feet, and she reflexively jumped back. The flames splashed harmlessly on the now-fireproof deck boards. There were some sparks, but no embers, and no lasting flames. The second fireball missed the boat completely, expending itself in the wake behind it. The third sailed over the boat, missing Ruby by half a meter and passing between her and the mast, hitting a tree trunk on the opposite bank. A spot of flame burned at the bark, sputtering out after a few seconds, unable to overcome the wet bark. The fourth one hit the sail at an oblique angle, forming a fiery teardrop shape. But like the boat, the sail was fireproof, and it went out as soon as it hit.
Eykit got to his feet, shaking off what bilge water he could. He peeked around the pile of cargo, trying to get a read on the situation with the fire sprites. Almë waved to him, his sleeve smoking, but no longer on fire.
Elitheris loosed an arrow. Taid was still casting, so the Icy Missiles hadn’t affected it yet. The fire sprite was small, and over twenty meters away. She had only instinctually aimed, and the arrow sailed above the fire sprite and into the mass of ashes and charcoal.
Ruby crouched on the pile of barley sacks. She wanted to hit those flaming things with a spell of Extinguish Fire, but she was too far away. The only way she’d be able to do it would be to make the area of effect so large as to be unable to power it in the first place. She frowned in frustration, her hands clenched into fists. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to have them angle the boat closer to the dancing flames.
Her next thought was about those spidlar leaves they had stashed in their preservation box. They would give the rowers a bit more oomph, and possibly make the boat go faster. She could see Almë and Eykit hiding down by Wilbur. “Hey!” she yelled down to them. “Get the spidlar out of the preservation box! Give it to the rowers!”
Another pair of fireballs shot towards the ship. The fire sprites’ aim was getting better. One fireball impacted against the sail, but failed to ignite it. Ruby’s spell was doing a good job of thwarting the fire sprites’ best efforts. The second ball of fire headed towards Taid, who was finishing up his casting. He tried to dodge to the side, but didn’t quite make it, and it slammed into his right arm. His gambeson smoldered, the embers working hard to ignite, but he didn’t let his words or his gestures stray off of their tasks. He patted out the embers absently after finishing up his spell.
Almë, sitting between the pile of sacks and the injured Wilbur, looked up at Ruby and said, “I’m staying here, thank you. There are fireballs flying around, and I already got hit.”
Ruby glared, surprised. On those rare occasions when she gave an order, she expected to be obeyed. She was really tempted to go down there and twist his pointy ear until he did what he ought to do. But she didn’t have time to corral a flighty Elf. They just often didn’t see the urgency of events sometimes….
Elitheris nocked her second arrow, drew, and all of sudden her bow iced up, cool mist flowing off of it. She grinned, and let fly. In the heat of the day, the coolness emanating from her bow felt pretty good. The arrow flew at the living flame, but the fire sprite slid to one side and the arrow missed.
Ruby saw that the rowers, at the bulwarks, were vulnerable to the fireballs. They were unable to duck behind the piles of cargo. She had thought about casting the spell of Fire Resistance on Almë, but he was being lazy, unlike Wynnstan, who was rowing his arms off, along with the other six rowers. She cast the spell on Wynnstan. He was on the starboard side, facing the fire creatures.
Wynnstan felt something, although he wasn’t sure what it was. He wasn’t a mage, and he looked around in panic.
Ruby caught his fearful expression. “Don’t worry, you’re fireproof,” she told him. He grinned in response, and dug his oar into the water with renewed vigor. He spared a moment to aim a rude gesture at the fire creatures.
Another two fireballs arced towards the boat. One sailed past the bow, sizzling when it hit the river. The other, however, landed on Mr. Wiggles, his right foreleg erupting into flames. He whimpered, the leg collapsing under his weight. On fire, he panicked, his instincts telling him to get away from the flames. He ran towards the rear of the boat on three legs, but he was unable to move away from the fire. It seemed to be following him. He headed forward towards the bow.
Almë heard the dog yelp in pain and panic, and saw him start running. He could feel the berserker rage start growing within him, but didn’t want to let it overwhelm him. He started to control his breathing, willing himself to be calm.
The little blobs of living fire were all lined up on the ashy riverbank, dancing over the burnt wood and pieces of charcoal as they followed the boat along. Alexa, for her part, was keeping the boat as far away from them as she could, without running aground on the muddy river bottom on the far side. She wished the river were wider, like the size of the Altasirya. Then they could have avoided the fireballs altogether. But the river was only about twenty meters wide here, and four meters on the far side were too shallow for the boat.
Elitheris drew two more arrows out from her quiver, nocked one, and aimed, her muscles straining against the strength of her bow. Her keen Elven vision allowed her to focus in on the little flaming buggers.
Taid scooped up the burning dog, halting his belabored, pained progress. He cast a spell of Healing, and smothered the flames. Mr. Wiggles smelled like burned hair, but the scorched flesh started healing, leaving minimal scars. The dog, healed and no longer in pain, licked the Dwarf’s bearded face.
“Yuck!” Taid said. “Good dog.” He gave the pup a quick scratch, then set him down.
Ruby, had heard Mr. Wiggles yelping in pain, and her empathic heart went out to him. She loved animals. They were, in general, better people than people. She had seen the depths that people could stoop to, and that was something animals never did. Red in tooth and claw, sure, predators will hunt prey, and kill them. But rarely did they ever do it for pleasure.
Although cats came pretty close….
But she didn’t want Mr. Wiggles to burn again, so she cast the spell of Resist Fire on him. Despite the long distance between them, the spells she was already keeping track of, and her ongoing seasickness, she managed to successfully cast the spell.
Another pair of fireballs swooshed in; one missing the boat completely, the other splashing off of the fireproofed sail in a cascade of flamelets and sparks.
The river stretched before them, curving this way and that as it flowed out of the mountains and through the hills. The burned out area extending far ahead of them. The living flames, spitting balls of fire, would be able to keep doing that for several minutes, at least. Even if the rowers, strong as they were, could row as fast as possible and not get tired, they would still be exposed to the flames. They had to come up with a better plan. Being sitting ducks was an untenable solution.
Ruby couldn’t make everyone on board proof against fire. They could probably manage to provide her with enough magical energy to do it, she’d be keeping track of so many spells that at some point it would be too dangerous to cast any more. Spell failures, if bad enough, were dangerous to both the caster and anyone around them. Magical energies, when uncontrolled, could be vicious.
Eykit crouched near the preservation box, which was stacked on top of the crates opposite the pile of barley sacks. He hit the latch and opened the box. Inside were pieces of fresh meat of different kinds, plus several kinds of leaves. He avoided the ones with the reddish veins. He knew that those were the ones from the bloodtree, but he didn’t remember what the other ones were.
Elitheris loosed the arrow she had been aiming. It streaked towards one of the living flame creatures, trailing a tail of mist from the spell of Icy Missiles. It hit the center of the fire sprite, creating a hole that collapsed upon itself, and the fire sprite diminished. It didn’t disappear, but it was a lot smaller than it had been. The chilled arrow had done what seemed to be significant damage to it.
“Row!” Alexa shouted at her crew. “Row faster!” She glanced at the riverbank, and the moving flame sprites. “Shit! This isn’t really working!”
Taid considered asking Alexa to bring the boat closer to the shore, and jumping out and taking the fight to the sprites. He’d cast Icy Weapon on Maggie, and go to town icing up the fire sprites.
Ruby started casting a spell of Air Shaping, to form a breeze to fill the sail, and hopefully go a bit faster.
Taid was really itching to take the fight to the fire sprites. He was sick and tired of getting bombarded by the balls of fire. It was only a matter of time before several people were burned by them. “I want to fuck these assholes up,” he said, to no one in particular.
Up ahead the river curved to the left then right, forming a spit of land. “Alexa!” Taid said. “Get as close to that spit of land as you can! I’m going to jump out and kill these flaming bastards!”
He saw her nod in agreement. In truth, she was tired of being a sitting duck as well. And she figured that the rest of the crew felt the same way.
“Come in as close as you can, and I’ll jump off from near the bow and you can turn back to deeper water.” Again, she nodded, and Taid began casting the spell of Icy Weapon on his halberd. It would take a few seconds of time to complete the casting, and he softly said the words of power and moved his hands in circular motions over the head of the halberd, feeding magic power into it.
The fire sprites had built up their balls of fire again, launching them at the boat. Of the four that streaked towards the boat, only Itura and Ruby got hit; the rest were ineffective against the fireproofed timbers and sail. Itura’s chest erupted into flame; screaming in pain and fear, she beat out the flames with one hand, while the other kept hold of the oar. She’d had the presence of mind to have wet herself with river water as she rowed, in an attempt to limit how flammable she was. The other sailors had done the same; they were all in the most exposed positions, despite getting some cover from the bulwarks. Unfortunately, they had to expose at least their upper bodies in order to work the oars.
Itura’s chest smoked, and she could feel that the skin beneath the charred shirt was burned and tender. The flames, fickle as ever, had also scorched her chin, and her eyes were watering from the smoke, obscuring her vision. Just as well, she thought, it’s too damn bright out here anyway. This being up during the day sucks.
Ruby had made herself fireproof; the fist-sized ball of fire puffed out as soon as it hit her. She grinned, and hadn’t felt a thing. With a final flourish of her fingers, she felt a small, ineffectual puff of air from her fingertips. The grin turned to a frown. Her spell casting had failed, likely a result of the momentary distraction of the fireball hitting her, combined with the mental strain of keeping several spells active simultaneously. She swore under her breath, and started casting it again.
Eykit was looking into the preservation box, sorting through the different leaves. There were several kinds, and he didn’t remember which ones were which. Most were herbs, he knew, but he also remembered that one kind of leaf was dangerous to touch. “Ruby!” he urgently called, “which ones do I grab?”
Elitheris nocked her second arrow, drew, and loosed, the arrow targeted at the same flame elemental as the previous one. Like the first, the Icy Missiles spell gave it an aura of cold, and it struck the flame sprite square in the center. It blew apart into small tongues of flame, which immediately turned to sparks, which then went out. The arrow, having passed through the living flame, struck a charred log behind where it had been, vibrating in what was left of the wood.
The fire sprites were made of diffuse flame, and thus difficult to damage just by swiping a weapon through them. Much like spirits, they were resistant to physical damage, and required something else to truly hurt them. The cold from the spell effect on Elitheris’ bow seemed to be that something, and Taid knew his melee weapon version would do the same. He was visibly antsy. The boat was moving too slow; he wanted at those stupid fire-spitting flames now.
Eykit, kneeling down by the preservation box, looked at the tarp tie downs. The tarp, being part of the boat, was currently fireproof. Maybe I can smother those flame-things with that, he thought. But would they still be fireproof if not part of the ship? He didn’t know enough about magic and how magic worked to know. But he’d get a really nasty surprise if the oil tarp lost its fireproofing though….But if it stayed on the ship, it would still be fireproof, right? So if I could prop it up like a wall….
Ruby finished casting the spell of Air Shaping. This time, there was no distraction to divert her attention to the words of power and the gestures. A strong breeze began to fill the sail, the canvas rippling and snapping as it inflated.
Two of the fire sprites threw their balls of fire at the people on the boat; one splashed harmlessly into Wynnstan’s chest as he pulled on an oar, but since Ruby had cast the spell of Fire Resistance on him, it didn’t even set his long hair alight. The second struck Artur, coming in on a shallow arc to just pass over the bulwark, striking him in the leg. His short-legged pants were ablaze, and he took his attention away from rowing to try to beat out the flames, yelling in pain and fear.
Getting no response from Ruby, who had been busy casting spells, Eykit closed the preservation box. The spidlar leaves, despite giving endurance, likely wouldn’t help very much to make the boat move any faster. He moved towards the tie downs. Getting a large shield up might be more useful than any amount of leaves.
Elitheris drew an arrow, nocked it, drew, and aimed down the shaft at the next nearest living flame creature.
Taid finished up his spell of Icy Weapon. He could see a rime of frost rush up the shaft from his hands and cover the head of the halberd. A cool mist condensed around the metal, appearing to drip off of the axe blade and spikes. Taid grinned, his teeth glinting from behind his beard and mustache. Laugh while you can, bastards, he thought. I’m coming for ya now!
Ruby saw Norolind, his paws up on the pile of barley sacks, watching the flames on the shore. “Nori!” she commanded, “Come and sit!”
The big black mastiff looked at her, then dropped down to all fours and took the few steps required to get to her side. He sat obediently at her feet, which put the main mass of cargo between him and the incoming balls of fire. She didn’t want him hit like Mr. Wiggles or Wilbur. She hadn’t cast a fireproofing spell on him, and she would be devastated if he got burned.
The little fire sprites followed the riverbank, keeping pace with the boat, moving slowly upriver. Other than the crackle of flames, they were silent. The boat was slowly gaining a bit more speed due to the wind in the sails.
Eykit began untying the first of the three ties that held the port side of the tarp down. He’d keep the starboard ties still lashed to the tie-downs, using them to keep the tarp taut when he held it up.
Elitheris loosed her arrow. The fire sprite sputtered a bit as the intensely cold arrow passed through it, but reformed itself, although it was a bit smaller than it had been before.
Ruby unlatched and flipped open the preservation box. Inside was what was left of the various cuts of meat, some vegetables, and a loose collection of various kinds of leaves.
Three balls of fire hurtled towards the boat. One missed completely, sailing over the stern. A second one hit the bulwark behind which Captain Gwendal sat, cradling his arm. It did nothing against the fireproof wood.
Erven was trying to wrap a bandage around Artur’s leg when the third fireball fell onto his own leg. His pants were burning, and he dropped the bandage to slap out the flames, moaning in pain as he did so.
Almë put his arm around Nori, who was sitting nearby. He gave him a scratch as he sat behind the sacks.
Elitheris drew another arrow and nocked it. She wasn’t done with that second flame creature. She wanted to put another arrow in it, hopefully to kill it like the first one. She sighted down the shaft.
Ruby, unlike Eykit, knew which leaves she was looking for, and picked out a handful of the spidlar leaves.
Three more fireballs arced towards the boat. One passed harmlessly over the bow, missing Elitheris by half a meter. The second hit Elias in the leg, but it was a grazing hit, and he was able to slap the flames out without much trouble, and only a bit of wincing. His leg would be tender, but he could still stand on it. Erven and Artur, however, didn’t seem able to put any weight on their injured legs.
The third fireball hit Wilbur, and the horse screamed, flames dancing on his foreleg. Almë wet his hands in the bilge water and hurriedly patted the flames out. Blistered, reddened flesh, stripped of the hair, lay exposed to his concerned gaze.
Eykit untied the first tie-down, and made his way to the second one, his nimble fingers quickly untying that knot. Wilbur lay hobbled nearby, screaming that disturbing equine scream. The short, wiry Goblin grit his sharp teeth. He hated the sound of screaming horses.
Elitheris shot her arrow, the bowstring twanging. The arrow passed right through the fiery target, and it blew out like a candle flame in a stiff breeze. She smirked. She liked being able to fight back. Those things could die. They were vulnerable.
Ruby gathered six of the small spidlar leaves, one for each rower.
A pair of fireballs streaked towards the boat. One dropped towards Eykit as he untied the tarp. He only knew it was coming because the whooshing sound kept getting louder. He moved the tarp over him just in time for the ball of fire to strike it, spraying tiny motes of flame in all directions. The tarp, being fireproof, acted as a shield against the fireball. “Shit! Shit! Shit! That was close!” he said. He didn’t want his Goblin good looks to be marred by twisted, ugly burn scars.
Elitheris drew two arrows, nocking one. She drew and aimed at her next target.
The boat neared the spit of land, and Alexa turned the rudder at the last moment. The boat slewed around, staying just barely clear of the muddy bottom, and Taid leapt out into the river. He was about four meters from shore, in water up to his thighs. The river water was cool on his legs, and his booted feet sank into the slippery mud as he started to move forward. Churned mud clouded the water behind him, and the boat started making its way around the river bend.
Taid thrashed his way through the water towards shore. He gripped his halberd, keeping it above the water. He didn’t want to splash Maggie. He noticed that when the halberd dropped too close to the water, little flakes of ice formed on the surface, only to be carried away by the current before melting.
Wynnstan was rowing just forward of Alexa at the rudder. Ruby took a few steps, handing a leaf towards him, saying, “Chew this; it will give you strength.”
He gave her a look, shrugged, then took the leaf and shoved it in his mouth, chewing. He winced; the leaf was astringent, with a sour bitterness that faded into slightly sweet, slightly menthol flavor. He went back to rowing. Within moments, he realized he wasn’t feeling as tired as he had been.
Three more fireballs were thrown at the boat. Two passed harmlessly overhead, but the third one landed on Wilbur. He was a large target, in the center of the boat, and seemed to be a magnet for the balls of fire. The fire cascaded onto his back, burning the hair and the skin beneath. Fortunately for him, Almë hadn’t just been sitting behind the sacks of grain, cowering. He’d actually been scooping handfuls of the water from the bottom of the boat onto all three of the animals, wetting them down to provide some fire protection. So when the fireball landed on Wilbur, the horse didn’t ignite; the ball of fire was too small to do that. It still hurt, though, and Wilbur was in a near panic of pain and fear. His screams were deafening, and Almë struggled to keep him under control.
Eykit finished untying the tie-downs of the tarp on the inside edge of the pile. Fikkiil, seeing Eykit untying the tarp, figured he knew what the other Goblin was doing. He smiled, thinking it was a good idea, and stopped rowing to help hold the tarp up as a shield.
Elitheris loosed her arrow at the fire sprite closest to her. Like the others, it passed through the insubstantial creature, seeming to take a big chunk out of it, before the flame sprung back up again. She thought it looked slightly smaller than it had, but regardless, her next arrow would likely put an end to it.
Taid’s polearm had a long reach. He was moving towards dry land, and the fire sprites were moving along the riverbank. One came into reach as it followed the path of the boat. The Dwarf stabbed at it, mist condensing off of the chilled metal. The metal spike, chilled by his magic, pierced the living flame creature, and completely extinguished it. It disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Taid was elated. “Now we’re talking! Let’s go, Elitheris!” With their icy weapons, these creatures seemed very fragile. Dangerous, but fragile.
Ruby moved to the rower on the port side behind the pile of cargo. It was Jory.
There were only four fire sprites left. The two nearest the one Taid had killed retargeted their attacks from the boat to Taid. One threw a ball of fire that passed harmlessly over his head. The other one looked like it was coming straight towards him. He twisted aside, and the fireball fizzed through the air mere centimeters from his chest. It landed in the water by the boat with a sizzle of steam.
Eykit and Fikkiil climbed up the sacks, each holding a corner of the fireproof tarp. They held it up, and it became a large shield to protect against flame attacks. At least now Wilbur was almost completely protected. No more fireballs would hit him.
Almë moved over to the rowing station behind Jory, at the port side rear of the boat.
Elitheris nocked her second arrow, drew, and loosed in a single quick movement. The arrow, trailing a line of cold mist, extinguished the fire sprite she had shot moments before.
Taid was just about on the riverbank. Another fire sprite was in range. He stabbed at it, hitting it, and it sputtered a bit, but seemed to recover.
Ruby handed a spidlar leaf to Jory, telling him to chew it.
The lead fire creature threw a ball of fire, hitting Erven in the back. He’d been tending to his leg wound, and he yelped in painful surprise as his back became ablaze. Already sitting, he dropped backwards to the deck, rolling to smother the flames.
Almë grabbed the oar that was stowed at the side of the ship near Jory, put the end in the water, and began rowing. Alexa trimmed the rudder, compensating for the higher number of rowers on the port side. Itura, realizing that the ship kept turning to starboard, moved from her position at the forward port rowing station over to the starboard side to help balance the thrust.
Elitheris again drew a pair of arrows, nocking one in the same swift movement. She started aiming at the single fire sprite that still followed the boat. The other two had stopped to attack Taid instead.
Taid was beset by a pair of the living flames. Trying to keep them as far away as possible, and staying in ankle deep water, he thrust the top spike, still dripping with condensation, into the sprite he had wounded previously. The spike seemed to absorb the flames, appearing to suck them into the halberd. The fire sprite was no more.
And then there were only two.
Ruby realized that handing out the leaves wouldn’t really help; Taid and Elitheris were taking care of the fire throwing beings, and they were going to have to stop the boat soon to allow Taid back on board. She glanced up at the sail, bellied out and full of the wind she had made. She cut off the spell, and the sail rapidly deflated, hanging limp from the yard.
The fire sprite chasing the ship lobbed another ball of fire at it, and it struck the tarp that Eykit and Fikkiil were holding up. Eykit could see a flash right in front of his face: the flames struck the tarp right in front of where he was holding it up. They dispersed harmlessly, the tarp doing its job as a shield. He laughed. “Try again, assholes!” he called out.
The Elf loosed her arrow at the flame creature following the boat. It puffed out in a cloud of smoke. She grinned, nocking her second arrow and turning to aim at the remaining fire sprite. It was still attacking her Dwarven friend.
Taid swung the halberd at the remaining fire creature. The cold metal almost appeared to chop the flame in half before snuffing out.
All of the fire sprites in the area were gone. There was no telling how many more of them roamed about the burned out area, but there were none who were threatening them at the moment.
Elitheris silently raised a fist, seeing the last one snuff out. She relaxed her draw, but kept the arrow nocked. Just in case one popped out of the rubble strewn landscape.
Alexa guided the boat back towards the shore so Taid could get back in it. She stopped the boat around the spit of land. She couldn’t get close enough to keep Taid from having to wade through waist deep water, but she had Jory and Itura help him get back on board.
Then they rowed the ship to a mooring point on the opposite bank, finding a spot where the river curved in such a way as to give the boat some cover from any flame sprites that might want to start lobbing fireballs at them. It wasn’t perfect protection, but the rocks behind which she put the boat would provide some needed cover. She had backed the boat under the spreading branches of some trees. The mast was too tall to allow the boat to be fully in shade, but Alexa did her best to at least get some shade cover to protect them from the heat of the day.
The anchor was tossed overboard, and Alexa went to give some much needed medical care to her captain and crew.
Taid and Ruby had cast a lot of spells, and were exhausted, and Taid knew that he had to cast a lot of healing spells. Resting and recuperating were the orders of the day, and no one was opposed to that.
Almë scouted the area, like he did with all of their potential campsites. This one, despite being filled with a lot of trees instead of a convenient clearing, was most likely harmless. He found no dangerous plants on his first scouting of the perimeter, and no dangerous animals once he cast his spell of Plant Vision for the second pass. All he saw were a pair of tapirs and a small group of marmosets. And bugs, of course. Lots of bugs.
Taid had the crew stomp around the area shouting loudly, to scare off any animals in the camp area. He didn’t want them to be “friendly” to his magic mist. Then Taid cast Mystic Mist, and filled the area with the protective fog. Most of the stern section of the boat was covered as well.
Once camp was established, they rested. Alexa provided triage, and Taid and Elitheris went around healing people’s burns. All told, it took a few hours, with the mages resting when they needed to in order to cast more spells.
They examined the bodies; there was nothing to loot. The stump of the arm showed muscle tissue and bone, but no fine detail such as arteries or veins. They were more constructs than living people.
“How are these things even alive?” Elitheris asked, glancing between the stump and the severed hand and bow. “No arteries, no veins, no nerves?” Left unsaid was the fact that the bow and the hand seemed to be all of a piece. They seemed stuck to each other, as if glued. The bow seemed made of wood, and the flesh was, well, flesh.
“Well, we’re in a world with necromancers and stuff,” Taid replied. He was just as curious and confused as she was.
“So,” Elitheris said seriously, “they’re just molding meat into people now?”
“Isn’t that what we’ve been fighting recently? Things with four arms and three legs, and two heads?”
Elitheris nodded. “I guess. Yeah.” She shivered. There were basically two types of people that studied necromancy. Those that wanted to extend life and cheat death, and those that used death as simply another tool in the toolbox. While the first could lead to the rumored spell of resurrection, the second was, unfortunately, far more common, and lead to power-hungry people using the dead as their playthings. Or, if not playthings, then at least as tools to get what they wanted. People like Lennerd Fountainsmith and Kallia. Herbert Vesten seemed to use his undead simply as servants, although his obsession with Shards and their necromantic uses made him use them to kill people for his experiments.
It was probably a good thing that the person with the highest number of Shards had no magical aptitude. Eykit wasn’t in danger of turning into a Goblin necromancer any time soon. Hopefully.
It was time to leave, and none of the crew, muddy from lying on the sheltering riverbank, wanted anything else to do with the place. Besides, a light rain had developed, and the clouds were dark and threatening, the overcast lending a pall of shadow over the already dim jungle.
Elitheris and Almë had both slept only in their smallclothes. Ruby had slept in her silversilk, so she had been hot and sweaty all night, but felt safer sleeping in them. Protection was good, but more importantly she worried about theft. The gift bestowed upon her by the Elves was a very nice prize, so she did what she could to make it as difficult as possible to steal. She figured she could always sleep on board the boat during the day. It would be a nice change from the mind-clouding, stomach roiling and painful seasickness that she felt most days on that tub.
They broke down the camp and got on the boat, rowing upstream. The rain increased in severity, turning into a downpour shortly after they set off. Erven and Artur set up a pair of ridge lines, over which they hung tarps, the corners tied to the bulwarks. This formed sheltered areas from just behind the bow to the mast, and from the mast back to the steerboard. Those on the sides, the rowers and the captain, mainly, weren’t able to take advantage of the shelters, but everyone else huddled under the tarps.
And huddle they had to. The ridge lines were at a height of about two meters, with the edges of the tarps at about a meter and a half, so really only the shortest people on the boat were able to stand. Going in or out of the shelter also required a bit of stooping over, and ducking in through a curtain of water draining off of the sloping surface. But sitting down gave enough visibility over the bulwarks and under the tarp’s edge to see the jungle at the riverbank, if not the riverbank itself.
Almë had a good day on the boat; normally, just about any movement of whatever vehicle he was on caused him abject misery, but on this day, the gods smiled upon him, sparing him any motion sickness at all. It was like he was a normal person, able to fully enjoy the trip as the boat slowly made its way upriver in the rain.
Elias didn’t have to row that day. He had another duty, one that only he was suitably skilled at: sewing. It was his task to repair the rents in the tarps caused by the rock explosion. It was made even more important now that it was raining. No one wanted a wet bedroll.
And when Jory wasn’t rowing, he was refining the sketches he had made of the mouthless “Elves” that had attacked them. After the attack, and while the rest of the crew had been breaking down the campsite, he had been hurriedly making several rough sketches of their odd attackers. He had made about a dozen, from different angles, and once he was on the boat, not rowing, and under the shelter of the tarps, he could add the detailing and start to make some more finished artworks.
He had a sketch of the handless body, laying in the ferns and undergrowth. He also had a detail of the stump, with annotations denoting that no, the sketch wasn’t unfinished, there really were no anatomical details to draw. He also had a detail sketch of the hand, still closed around the bow, with notes on that one stating that the bow was actually attached to the hand. The hand and bow were fused together, or formed as one unit. It was hard to say, and his annotations included a series of question marks.
It would have been nice to take one of the bodies, but the boat was crowded enough as it was, and no one really wanted that thing on the boat with them anyway. Jory’s sketches would have to do, if they wanted to follow up on that little mystery. For the moment, they all assumed the beings were constructs of some kind, likely necromantic, and of a different kind than the Shard-based things they’d come into contact with. The constructs had had no Shards on them. Or in them, as far as they could tell. Eykit got the impression that he probably would have known if they had had Shards imbedded in their bodies, although he wasn’t sure why he thought that.
Elitheris looked embarrassed when Jory showed her his sketch of her being pulled over the bulwark by the fideal. It showed her losing her grip on the boat, and Mr. Wiggles, forefeet on the bulwark, barking in defiance as several tendrils snaked up out of the water about to grab him. It was quite good, and everyone agreed that it was a very accurate image of what had actually happened.
Since they were going to be under the tarps anyway, both Taid and Eykit doffed their armor and took naps, hoping to get some good sleeping time while they felt safe. Taid, having been in the Imperial Army, could fall asleep just about anywhere. It was a vital skill in the military. Eykit, however, lacked that training, and had trouble both falling asleep and staying asleep as the boat creaked and people made noises going about their business. He managed a few winks of shuteye, even if it was interrupted by noises and jostling.
At about midmorning, the rain slacked off, and a blue window opened up in the sky, letting the sun shine down and start to dry off all of the wet surfaces. An hour later, and those on the boat could hear the roar of falling water. A few moments later, and they could see what was making all of the noise: a sixty foot high waterfall, that fell into a pool before forming a stream that ran into the river. It was beautiful, and the pond looked very inviting in the 28° C heat.
The rain started back up again in the early afternoon, coming down in sheets. They made camp in the rain, without a fire, and dinner was cold rations. Fortunately, it wasn’t a cold day, just a wet one. It was hot, humid, and wet. Their shelters had to be smaller, because they had to use part of their tarps as ground cloths. Which meant that their feet, overhanging the groundcloth part of the tarp, got wet.
She slapped Almë awake. He spluttered, groggily saying “I’m awake! I’m awake! No need to be so rough.”
“Shh!” Elitheris said, “Listen! I heard something!” They both became quiet, listening. Whatever or whomever it was wasn’t trying to be stealthy; they were tramping through the undergrowth and squelching through the muddy puddles without care or worry.
They could hear the voice a bit better now, high pitched with that sound that seemed old. Whoever it was, they were coming closer, and sounded upset. “Damn Moon King! He’s still trying to take my eye! Well, he cain’t have it naow, can he? No he cain’t. It’s mine! My eye! You took one of them already, you shiny bastard! You can’t have my other one!” Whoever it was, they spoke Imperial.
Elitheris told Almë to wake the others. She could hear the stranger moving through the jungle, muttering. He sounded like an auroch moving through the forest, all bluster and force.
“Stop watching me, Moon King!” the voice said, “Stop! Leave me alone, you half blind bastard!”
Almë had woken Ruby, Taid, and Eykit. Then Almë walked to the edge of the mist, along with Elitheris.
“I think we need to kill it immediately,” Almë said to Elitheris, softly.
She shot him an incredulous look, frowning at his bloodthirstiness. The others, roused from their bedrolls, joined the pair near the edge of the mystic mist boundary. They’d be able to see whoever approached, while remaining hidden within the magic fog.
The noises in the jungle stopped. “Moon mist!” the voice said. “Scary. I’ll avoid that! Won’t get me that easily, stupid Moon King!”
Eykit looked at Taid, mouthing, “Moon mist? Interesting.” Taid’s raised his eyebrows with a shrug.
“Stupid Moon King,” came the voice again. “You may have taken one eye, but my other one sees just fine! Do you think I’m stupid? Think I’ll just blunder into your Moon Mist?”
Almë munched on a pickle, listening with interest. The noises seemed to stop moving, although they could still hear someone out there, standing in the jungle, just beyond some intervening foliage. “Hey, my friend!” he called out, “how’s it going?”
Taid spoke up, his sing-songing deep voice rumbling in the night. “O! I am the Moon King and I take your eyes! I am the Moon King and I write your demise!”
Not to be outdone, Almë piped in, “I am the Banana King and I take your ears!”
Elitheris looked at both Taid and Almë in confusion. They weren’t the Moon King or the Banana King. She didn’t even know who they were. But she kept her confusion to herself.
Taid whispered to Eykit and Ruby, “Do we want to make friends with him, or scare him off?”
Almë overheard, replying, “Why not both?”
Taid looked quizzically at him with his differently colored eyes, trying to make sense of that statement, despite the cognitive dissonance required to do so.
Ruby shook her head at the games Taid and Almë were playing. Sighing, she called out to the visitor, “Hello! Who’s there? Where are you?”
“Ah! Servants of the Moon King! Leave me alone!” came the voice in the wilderness. His tone of voice made it clear he had little respect for the “servants of the Moon King”.
“I am the Moon King!” Taid said sonorously.
Almë said, “We are not with the Moon King! We are the Mist Ghosts of the Jungle.”
“Mist Ghosts of the Jungle?” the voice said, incredulously.
“Yes, that is who we are. Who are you?”
“You sound like the Moon King to me! Go away, foul beasts!”
“No, we are not with the Moon King. We are enemies of the Moon King, actually.”
“Enemies?” the voice said, sounding very unbelieving. “Hah!”
“I am the Moon King!” Taid said again, trying to contain a laugh. He was having entirely too much fun at the old man’s expense.
“Oh, Taid, shut up,” Almë said, smacking Taid on the shoulder.
“I can say anything I want,” Taid said, softly.
“But we are going in opposite directions!” Almë replied, just as softly.
“We’re confusing the hell out of him. This is great!”
Almë tried to smack him again, but he overestimated Taid’s height, and his hand swooshed over the Dwarf’s head.
“Let’s befriend him, Taid, okay? Maybe we can get a crazy friend.”
“Maybe. But I’m keeping the Moon King in my back pocket.”
“Fine.” Almë spoke to the voice. “Yeah, enemies of the Moon King. We are the mist wraiths.”
The voice answered, “Well, I don’t believe you. Who are you really? Mist wraiths…I’ve never heard of anything called a mist wraith. And I’ve seen everything!”
“Who are you, that you’ve seen everything?”
“My name is unimportant. Don’t remember it anyway.”
“What are you doing out here? Out in our mist wraith jungle.”
“Running from the Moon King! He’s trying to take my eye!”
Eykit muttered, “Their eye?” quizzically.
Almë asked, “Why would he do that? Do you have magic eyes?”
“He took my other one,” the voice said. “He’s missing an eye.”
Elitheris asked, “Where is the Moon King?”
“Are ye blind? He’s up there!” They still couldn’t see him, but they got the distinct impression that he was pointing somewhere, although Kynett, which likely hung overhead past the jungle canopy, was in its new moon phase.
Almë stepped out of the mist, moving towards the voice.
Elitheris asked, “Almë, can I get some plant vision going here?”
Ruby followed Almë, backing him up, just in case.
Almë cast the spell of Plant Vision on himself, and the jungle faded into barely visible outlines. Standing about five meters away was an old, bald Hobbit with an unkempt beard and an eyepatch. Almë could see twigs and leaves in the old Hobbit’s beard; it was likely that the last time it had seen a comb or brush was several decades ago. His clothes were dirty and torn, likely from being worn for several days straight, or possibly weeks, and the various thorny plants and twigs that grew in the jungle were rather hard on fabrics. He wore beat up leather boots, with at least one visible hole near the toe. He was scrawny, but gave the impression of being as tough as nails.
“Yeah! I’m gonna say yes! I need help! The Moon King is trying to take my eye! I’ve only got the one. He took the other one already.”
“How did the Moon King get your eye?” Ruby asked.
“And why would he take it?” Elitheris asked, still inside the mystic mist.
The old Hobbit fixed his eye on Ruby. “He came down out of the sky and took my eye. So he could see. Now he wants to see even better. He wants my other eye.”
“Do you need protection?” Ruby asked.
“Of course I need protection!” he shouted. “But who can protect me from the Moon King? The Moon Queen is gone!”
“We can.”
Almë asked, “Why are you, like, not asleep at night?”
“Slept earlier,” the old Hobbit said. Since the people from the mist didn’t seem overtly dangerous (despite claiming to be the Moon King), the old Hobbit came a bit closer, moving around a large-leafed bush and into view. Most plants growing at the forest floor level had large leaves, necessary due to the limited amount of light reaching through the canopy and understory of the jungle.
“Where do you live? Are you living around here?”
“I,” he said, self importantly, “am itinerant.”
Almë didn’t quite hear him. “What?” he asked.
Eykit piped up, “He’s basically homeless.”
“I’m not homeless! I am a wanderer! There’s a difference!”
“Ah.” He addressed the old Hobbit. “We are actually on a journey to kill one of the main allies of the Moon King. She’s like his right hand. She’s a Dwarven mage. Do you want to join us? Maybe we can get your eye back!”
“I’m too old for that kind of adventure!” He stroked his beard, muttering, “I would have thought the beard and wrinkles would have given that away.”
“When did you lose your eye?” Elitheris asked.
The Old Hobbit replied, “He took the eye a long time ago. I don’t remember naow. I was much younger then.”
“So, what? You’ve just been running from the Moon King ever since?”
“Well, he doesn’t always try to get my eye. Just most of the time.”
“Just when it’s a new moon?”
“He’s still up there. You just can’t see ‘im.”
Elitheris pointed at the nearly invisible disk of the new moon, faintly illuminated by the reflected light of Velyri. “Is that the Moon King?”
He looked at her, exasperated, as if she were a simpleton. “Of course! The Moon King!”
The Elven woman was thinking that the Old Hobbit was simply a crazy old man, the last few of his marbles bouncing around in his skull like dice in a cup.
“He’s out for me other eye!” the Old Hobbit said again. “Starin’ at me alla time.” He sniffed. “Is that food? I smell food!”
How can he smell our cold food? Eykit wondered. Probably is just assuming we have some.
The Old Hobbit cocked his head. “Spare a snack, for an old man?”
Almë asked, “Anything to trade?”
“Got a rabbit.” He held up a small rabbit, hanging from a snare around its neck. “Tired of rabbit,” he muttered to himself, barely loud enough for anyone to hear.
The five of them conversed for a bit, and quickly came to the conclusion that giving him some food would shut him up and likely get him out of their hair. Then they could go back to sleep. Almë rummaged around in their food stores, selecting a handful of various kinds of traveler’s rations.
He traded them with the Old Hobbit, who giggled, capering about dancing some sort of jig. Then he tucked in. Around mouthfuls he mumbled, “You cain’t see ‘im up there ‘cuz he’s got his eye closed. He wants my other one, so he can close one and still see out t’other.”
“Okay, if you say so,” Elitheris said. It sounded ridiculous.
“Cool story, bro,” Almë said, grinning.
“Do you be sittin’ on any treasure you be?” Taid asked, mocking the Old Hobbit’s speech patterns.
“Got a rabbit,” the Old Hobbit replied.
Elitheris asked, “Hey, Old Man, what’s your name?”
“Don’t remember.” He sighed. “Call me…George.”
“George, of the jungle?”
“George,” Almë said, “I think we will be calling it a night here. Stay safe. If you don’t want to join our quest, please keep it down because we are going back to sleep. It was a nice, quiet neighborhood until you showed up, so….”
“Beware the Moon King,” George warned, and he walked off into the jungle, muttering to himself, but not as loudly as he had before.
After several minutes without Old George coming back, people went back to their bedrolls, and, later, to sleep. Almë stayed up, on watch. Despite the Mystic Mist, which was like a magic security blanket, the people in the camp preferred someone awake on watch, even though they were almost redundant.
Just before dawn, the rain let up, although the sky was still mostly cloudy. The jungle steamed where the sun hit it, forming a light mist in the warm air. Breakfast was, like dinner the night before, cold rations, mostly nuts and dried fruit, with a bit of cheese, eaten in sporadic handfuls while breaking down camp.
Shortly after setting off, they drifted past a small, twisted tree with golden brown bark growing out of the riverbank. It was a spidlar tree. It grew in tropical areas, its deep green leaves shaped like small, slender maple leaves. It was typically found growing in the jungle understory, often along rivers or in marshes. Its leaves had a stimulant effect, which was useful, but they were addictive. They took some leaves off of the plant. If they weren’t usable to them, they could sell it to an alchemist, who might want to use them for elixirs.
They convinced Captain Gwendal to angle the boat over to the bank for a few minutes while they harvested some of the leaves. They figured it might come in handy to get that quick burst of energy, and even though the Captain didn’t really want to waste any more time, he understood that it might be useful for the rowers, in case they needed a quick burst of speed. To be honest, he didn’t mind too much; the boat was in the shade, and it was a rather pleasant morning.
“For what it’s worth,” Ruby said, “I think those leaves are also useful alchemically. Don’t know which elixirs use it though. Probably Endurance or Fetching and Carrying. Those would make the most sense.”
“Speaking of,” Elitheris said, “anyone know what our alchemist is currently working on in our basement lab?”
“He’s always working on something,” Eykit said. “He’s down in his playroom all the time.”
“If I remember correctly,” Taid said, “he said he was working on pastilles. Foolishness, and Stealth.”
Almë wanted to come back to the spidlar tree, and maybe take it home with him. If he could figure out a way to dig it up and carry it with him. He’d likely need a wagon. There might be a road somewhere around there that wasn’t too overgrown. Roads tended to disappear in jungles, or at least become difficult to travel on. He memorized what he could of the area, taking into account as many landscape details as he could. Mostly, it was the position of the visible peaks of the mountains they were getting closer and closer to. Alas, one section of the river was much like any other. But he did what he could.
A few hours later, they drifted past a section of riverbank that had somehow captured a skeleton in the roots of a tree. Its legs were in the water, the rest of the body held above it by the roots. Scavengers of all kinds had gotten to it, leaving only bones.
About a half hour later they could see a pall of smoke over the jungle ahead of them.
“Maybe it’s the Moon King!” Taid said, staring at the large smudge of smoke ahead of them.
It was pretty far away, and it was past noon when they finally came to what had caused it. There wasn’t a lot of wind, and as they approached, they could see lines of smoke rising, adding to the mass of smoke that hung in the air. The river curved around a small rise, and as the boat rounded the curve they could see what had caused the smoke.
It was a wildfire, or rather, the remains of one. It had burned away an area two kilometers across, stopping only because of the river and the morning rains. The area was completely burned, most of the plants had turned to ashes and embers, with a few charred pieces of wood lying here and there in a jumbled mass. A few charred trees stood like sentinels, their branches burned away. Small fires could be seen here and there, still burning. The landward edges of the fire, opposite the river, still appeared to be in danger from embers, although it didn’t seem to be actively on fire as far as anyone could tell.
“Think a dragon came through here?” Elitheris asked. She examined the area as best she could from the boat, her Elven eyes and keen knowledge of nature allowing her insight about the nature of the fire that had swept through the area.
Then she realized that some of the fires were moving. As in, from place to place, not just flickering like a normal fire. “Well, that’s not normal,” she said.
“What?” Eykit asked, standing next to her and trying to see through the hazy smoke-filled air.
“The fires are moving.”
Eykit looked at her with a frown on his face. “Like living fire?” His voice betrayed a bit a tremulousness. He wasn’t a big fan of fiery creatures that moved on their own. He liked his fires small and controlled, preferably in a fireplace, or on a candlewick. Something civilized. None of this independent, free to roam anywhere fire.
Taid glanced at the Elven woman. “Oh, you won’t be able to use your fire spell.”
“I know,” Elitheris replied. “I’ve got to learn some water magic right quick.”
Almë asked Erven, who was rowing nearby, “Is this shit normal? Do you pass by this kind of thing every other week?”
Erven shook his head. As did several other nearby crew members. “I have no idea what the hell happened here, assuming it’s not a normal forest fire. And this is definitely not normal.”
“Lightning strike, maybe?” Artur asked from the other side of the boat. He was also rowing, and the determined look on his face indicated that he would solidly row for as long as it took to get past the burned out area. Several other crew members also looked like they wanted to get past the area as quickly as possible. “Not sure I like the idea of a dragon anywhere nearby.”
“Yeah,” Alexa agreed, “we are just about the right size for a snack.”
Typically, a forest fire either moves outward from its source, or is pushed in a general direction by the wind. In this case, the wind was minimal, except perhaps what wind was generated by the fire itself. But this area didn’t look to be big enough to cause a firestorm, and the smoke that hung above their heads didn’t indicate any huge updrafts. This, also, was likely a result of the earlier rains. It was becoming evident that had it not rained earlier, the forest fire would likely be raging still, and growing.
It didn’t look like it was expanding quickly. There were small fires burning at the edges, but it mostly looked like the wet jungle had mostly stopped the fire’s progress, and the fire was mostly burned out.
Almë looked around, mostly skyward. He hadn’t completely dismissed Elitheris’ offhand comment about a dragon. He’d seen them before, once or twice, flying in the sky. He wasn’t completely comfortable with the thought of this being a dragon’s lair, or hunting ground. Although he had to admit, that if this was the result of a dragon, something really must have pissed it off.
Elitheris peered towards the center of the area, mostly hidden from sight by some low hills, charred, upright skeletons of trees, and the lingering haze. But she did see a squat tree, topped by what seemed to be a bonfire. It almost looked like the fire was using the charred remains of the tree as some sort of throne. She described what she saw.
“It’s the Moon King!” Almë joked.
Then a series of fist-sized fireballs arced into the air and towards the ship with a rushing, hissing sound. Most missed, hitting the water around the ship with hissing blasts of steam. But one hit the oilcloth tarp that covered the stack of barley sacks. The crew scrambled to try to put out the flames that started up from the impact point.
Almë turned to Ruby. “Can you make the boat fireproof?”
“I have a spell of Resist Fire,” Ruby replied, nodding. “And a spell of Fireproof.”
Another round of fireballs came arcing towards the ship, and now panic was starting to manifest as they realized they were under attack. Again, a few of the fireballs hit the water around the ship, hissing into steam as they did so.
One hit Captain Gwendal, who was at the rudder. It impacted his left arm, igniting the sleeve immediately, the flames rushing up his shoulder. He screamed in pain, his eyes wide with panic, letting go of the rudder as he attempted to beat the flames out with his other arm.
Alexa grabbed him, and plunged his arm into the river, extinguishing the flames. Captain Gwendal, his arm held cradled against his body, slumped down at the bulwark, using it as cover and wincing in pain. Alexa grabbed the rudder, correcting their course, which had drifted due to the river’s current. The captain groaned, closed his eyes, and slid to the deck, unconscious. A mercy, really; burns were horribly painful.
Taid ran over to him, and cast a healing spell. Subliminal motes of magenta light that only Taid could see flowed from him to the burned arm, swirling about the blisters, char, and raw spots on the flesh, partially healing the damage. It wasn’t enough, but it would help, and would keep the sailor captain from dying.
Burns were terrifying. They couldn’t be stitched up, and they were also an easy route for infection, because the main defense against infection was the skin. And with burns, the skin was effectively an open wound. And even after “healing”, they could still hurt, and the scars they left behind were unpleasant to look at, to say the least.
They would have to wait until Captain Gwendal regained consciousness to see if he managed to protect his eyes from the flames; there was a chance that one or both of his eyes had been blinded. He had seemed to be able to see, but it had all happened so fast that no one was actually sure.
“Rowers!” Alexa shouted. “Get going! Row!” There had been four people rowing, but on Alexa’s order, the three off duty rowers hurried to get oars in their hands and get them into the water.
Fireproof would last an entire day, but would take five minutes for Ruby to cast, which was a long time considering that they were being bombarded by fireballs every few seconds. And as she did the math, it would take several castings to cover the entire boat. Fire Resistance would have to do, despite the increased mana cost. But it only lasted a minute before needing to be maintained. If only she had time….
And at the speed they were going, even being under the propulsion of six oars, it would take a dozen minutes or so to escape the attacks. The seventh rower, Fikkiil, had grabbed a bailing bucket, and was trying to douse the flames that were threatening to burn the barley.
“Where are they coming from?” Artur shouted. “I haven’t seen any mages casting at us!”
Elitheris looked towards the shore, where the fireballs had come from. As she watched, more balls of flame shot towards them, emanating from the fires they had seen moving about. “They are coming from the fire creatures!”
They could see seven fires making a beeline to the riverbank, trying to get closer to the ship. They were the things launching the fireballs. And they were moving quickly, faster than the boat, trailing little trails of flame. Small fires ignited behind them, scattered here and there because most of the fuel in the area was used up and would no longer burn. More fireballs came hurtling into the boat, but the flame sprites, or whatever they were, launching them were still too far away to have decent aim.
Ruby cast the spell Fire Resistance on herself.
Elitheris ran to get a bailing bucket to help put out any fires the flame sprites might cause. She didn’t think her arrows would do much to creatures made of living flame. Eykit did likewise, snatching a bucket and dunking it in the river.
Herself protected from fire by her previous cast, Ruby started casting the spell of Fire Resistance again, this time on the boat itself. It was a larger object, and would take a lot of mana, but it would keep them afloat, and prevent fires from starting. She flicked and twisted her fingers while speaking the words of power, and she got the impression of a wave of magenta light flowing from her and covering the ship before fading away.
Taid moved towards the front of the boat, thinking about using his spell of Create Water to form a wall of mist. It would be stationary, and the boat would move past it, but it would act as at least a partial shield against the incoming balls of fire.
Almë filled a bucket with water. Eykit turned with his bucket ready to put out the fire, but it was already out. Little wisps of smoke hung in the air above the scorched area of the tarp, but it didn’t even have embers glowing.
Elitheris had filled her bucket as well, and looked around for some flames to throw water onto. She didn’t see any either.
Elitheris and Eykit, buckets full, threw the water around the deck boards, wetting them as protection from flames. They refilled their buckets.
Taid continued towards the bow, trying to figure out the best way to deploy his mist wall. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the flames on the tarp to his right suddenly go out. Odd, he thought, no one had gotten a chance to douse it….
“The boat’s fireproof now!” Ruby called out.
Another set of fireballs, four this time, arced towards the boat, whooshing and trailing bits of fire as they came. Almë, seeing one coming straight for him, dived for cover behind the pile of barley sacks, right next to Wilbur, their horse. He wasn’t fast enough, and one of the balls of fire impacted on his arm, engulfing it in flame. He hit the deck, dousing his arm in the bilge water that lay in the bottom four inches of the boat. He hoped that the cargo was fireproof as well, but even if it wasn’t, there was a lot of grain between him and the fire creatures.
A second ball of fire struck their horse, Wilbur, on his leg. Fire spread over his haunches, burning. He screamed, and bucked, the hobbles preventing him from moving very well, and he fell over, fortunately falling away from Almë. Wilbur’s legs thrashed, and Almë kept his head down. A panicked horse hoof would easily take off his head. Even if he survived a horse kick to the head, the best case scenario would be as the village idiot, his time spent sitting on a stump, drooling.
The third one streaked towards Elias, who was standing over Captain Gwendal and rowing just ahead of Alexa, who was manning the steerboard. He ducked, and it flew past his head, across the river, and into the jungle on the other bank. It flew into a bush, and several large leaves started burning, embers creeping across the leaves. The leaves were wet, and soon the fire was extinguished. The fist sized balls of fire weren’t really large enough to start large fires on their own. It would take several hitting in the same general area to start a really large fire.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Almë, trailing flame, dive between the piles of cargo. He had a full bucket of water, but it was too far to toss the water onto Almë. He turned back to the bulwark, peering over it at the shore, watching for more fiery missiles heading in their direction.
Elitheris also had a bucket, and no where to apply it. The boat was safe, at least for now, and didn’t need a fire brigade. She looked around for a spare oar. The four at the front of the boat were all in use, but there were two at the rear of the boat. She dropped the bucket, the water spilling into the bilge, and started towards the stern of the boat.
Taid had followed the group of fireballs as they came in, and saw one of them land on his horse. He didn’t pause, or assess the damage; he just started casting a healing spell, pumping as much mana as he could into it. Wilbur was pretty tough, for a horse bred for easy riding. So when his leg collapsed under him, Taid knew it was serious. He was several meters away, but he was able to get his halberd, its shaft enchanted with the Staff spell which extended his reach, close enough to the horse to cast the spell without difficulty.
He could feel the energies flowing through him, down his arms, up the polearm shaft, and into the injured horse.
Ruby, at the stern of the boat, needed to get closer and to a better vantage point. The pile of cargo would do nicely, and she ran towards the pile of barley sacks covered by the tarp.
The fire sprites were converging on the boat, at least as far as the riverbank. The water seemed to stop their forward movement, but they were moving fast enough to be able to not only keep up with the boat’s motion, but outrun it. There was no way the boat was going to escape them, and it was going to take a very long time before they would be able to escape the burned area.
Elitheris looked around. Grabbing an oar wouldn’t help; the fire sprites were faster than they were. And shooting arrows at them was likely to be just as ineffective. She frowned, frustrated that she couldn’t do anything against them.
“Elitheris! I’ve got a spell of Icy Missiles!” Taid said. He started casting, saying the words of power under his breath as his fingers danced.
Elitheris stepped closer to him, readying a pair of arrows. It would take a few seconds for the spell to be complete, and she could use that time to aim at those little flaming bastards.
Almë, his arm smoking and wet, but no longer burning, kept his head down, crouching behind the cover of the barley bags. He had no intention of becoming a target again.
Eykit dived behind the barley bags as well, following Almë’s example.
Ruby climbed up onto the pile of barley sacks, and looked towards the shore. She could see the seven fire sprites, moving along the riverbank, keeping pace with the boat. In the distance, she could see the squat tree with the bonfire on it. It gave the impression that it was leaning towards her, or rather, the boat, as if paying attention. But it was about a kilometer away, past a blackened landscape cluttered with burned debris, in what seemed to be the center of the burned out area. So she couldn’t be sure.
But she didn’t think it was a coincidence.
Eykit got to his feet, shaking off what bilge water he could. He peeked around the pile of cargo, trying to get a read on the situation with the fire sprites. Almë waved to him, his sleeve smoking, but no longer on fire.
Elitheris loosed an arrow. Taid was still casting, so the Icy Missiles hadn’t affected it yet. The fire sprite was small, and over twenty meters away. She had only instinctually aimed, and the arrow sailed above the fire sprite and into the mass of ashes and charcoal.
Ruby crouched on the pile of barley sacks. She wanted to hit those flaming things with a spell of Extinguish Fire, but she was too far away. The only way she’d be able to do it would be to make the area of effect so large as to be unable to power it in the first place. She frowned in frustration, her hands clenched into fists. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to have them angle the boat closer to the dancing flames.
Her next thought was about those spidlar leaves they had stashed in their preservation box. They would give the rowers a bit more oomph, and possibly make the boat go faster. She could see Almë and Eykit hiding down by Wilbur. “Hey!” she yelled down to them. “Get the spidlar out of the preservation box! Give it to the rowers!”
Almë, sitting between the pile of sacks and the injured Wilbur, looked up at Ruby and said, “I’m staying here, thank you. There are fireballs flying around, and I already got hit.”
Ruby glared, surprised. On those rare occasions when she gave an order, she expected to be obeyed. She was really tempted to go down there and twist his pointy ear until he did what he ought to do. But she didn’t have time to corral a flighty Elf. They just often didn’t see the urgency of events sometimes….
Elitheris nocked her second arrow, drew, and all of sudden her bow iced up, cool mist flowing off of it. She grinned, and let fly. In the heat of the day, the coolness emanating from her bow felt pretty good. The arrow flew at the living flame, but the fire sprite slid to one side and the arrow missed.
Ruby saw that the rowers, at the bulwarks, were vulnerable to the fireballs. They were unable to duck behind the piles of cargo. She had thought about casting the spell of Fire Resistance on Almë, but he was being lazy, unlike Wynnstan, who was rowing his arms off, along with the other six rowers. She cast the spell on Wynnstan. He was on the starboard side, facing the fire creatures.
Wynnstan felt something, although he wasn’t sure what it was. He wasn’t a mage, and he looked around in panic.
Ruby caught his fearful expression. “Don’t worry, you’re fireproof,” she told him. He grinned in response, and dug his oar into the water with renewed vigor. He spared a moment to aim a rude gesture at the fire creatures.
Another two fireballs arced towards the boat. One sailed past the bow, sizzling when it hit the river. The other, however, landed on Mr. Wiggles, his right foreleg erupting into flames. He whimpered, the leg collapsing under his weight. On fire, he panicked, his instincts telling him to get away from the flames. He ran towards the rear of the boat on three legs, but he was unable to move away from the fire. It seemed to be following him. He headed forward towards the bow.
Almë heard the dog yelp in pain and panic, and saw him start running. He could feel the berserker rage start growing within him, but didn’t want to let it overwhelm him. He started to control his breathing, willing himself to be calm.
The little blobs of living fire were all lined up on the ashy riverbank, dancing over the burnt wood and pieces of charcoal as they followed the boat along. Alexa, for her part, was keeping the boat as far away from them as she could, without running aground on the muddy river bottom on the far side. She wished the river were wider, like the size of the Altasirya. Then they could have avoided the fireballs altogether. But the river was only about twenty meters wide here, and four meters on the far side were too shallow for the boat.
Elitheris drew two more arrows out from her quiver, nocked one, and aimed, her muscles straining against the strength of her bow. Her keen Elven vision allowed her to focus in on the little flaming buggers.
Taid scooped up the burning dog, halting his belabored, pained progress. He cast a spell of Healing, and smothered the flames. Mr. Wiggles smelled like burned hair, but the scorched flesh started healing, leaving minimal scars. The dog, healed and no longer in pain, licked the Dwarf’s bearded face.
“Yuck!” Taid said. “Good dog.” He gave the pup a quick scratch, then set him down.
Ruby, had heard Mr. Wiggles yelping in pain, and her empathic heart went out to him. She loved animals. They were, in general, better people than people. She had seen the depths that people could stoop to, and that was something animals never did. Red in tooth and claw, sure, predators will hunt prey, and kill them. But rarely did they ever do it for pleasure.
Although cats came pretty close….
But she didn’t want Mr. Wiggles to burn again, so she cast the spell of Resist Fire on him. Despite the long distance between them, the spells she was already keeping track of, and her ongoing seasickness, she managed to successfully cast the spell.
Another pair of fireballs swooshed in; one missing the boat completely, the other splashing off of the fireproofed sail in a cascade of flamelets and sparks.
The river stretched before them, curving this way and that as it flowed out of the mountains and through the hills. The burned out area extending far ahead of them. The living flames, spitting balls of fire, would be able to keep doing that for several minutes, at least. Even if the rowers, strong as they were, could row as fast as possible and not get tired, they would still be exposed to the flames. They had to come up with a better plan. Being sitting ducks was an untenable solution.
Ruby couldn’t make everyone on board proof against fire. They could probably manage to provide her with enough magical energy to do it, she’d be keeping track of so many spells that at some point it would be too dangerous to cast any more. Spell failures, if bad enough, were dangerous to both the caster and anyone around them. Magical energies, when uncontrolled, could be vicious.
Eykit crouched near the preservation box, which was stacked on top of the crates opposite the pile of barley sacks. He hit the latch and opened the box. Inside were pieces of fresh meat of different kinds, plus several kinds of leaves. He avoided the ones with the reddish veins. He knew that those were the ones from the bloodtree, but he didn’t remember what the other ones were.
Elitheris loosed the arrow she had been aiming. It streaked towards one of the living flame creatures, trailing a tail of mist from the spell of Icy Missiles. It hit the center of the fire sprite, creating a hole that collapsed upon itself, and the fire sprite diminished. It didn’t disappear, but it was a lot smaller than it had been. The chilled arrow had done what seemed to be significant damage to it.
“Row!” Alexa shouted at her crew. “Row faster!” She glanced at the riverbank, and the moving flame sprites. “Shit! This isn’t really working!”
Taid considered asking Alexa to bring the boat closer to the shore, and jumping out and taking the fight to the sprites. He’d cast Icy Weapon on Maggie, and go to town icing up the fire sprites.
Ruby started casting a spell of Air Shaping, to form a breeze to fill the sail, and hopefully go a bit faster.
Taid was really itching to take the fight to the fire sprites. He was sick and tired of getting bombarded by the balls of fire. It was only a matter of time before several people were burned by them. “I want to fuck these assholes up,” he said, to no one in particular.
Up ahead the river curved to the left then right, forming a spit of land. “Alexa!” Taid said. “Get as close to that spit of land as you can! I’m going to jump out and kill these flaming bastards!”
He saw her nod in agreement. In truth, she was tired of being a sitting duck as well. And she figured that the rest of the crew felt the same way.
“Come in as close as you can, and I’ll jump off from near the bow and you can turn back to deeper water.” Again, she nodded, and Taid began casting the spell of Icy Weapon on his halberd. It would take a few seconds of time to complete the casting, and he softly said the words of power and moved his hands in circular motions over the head of the halberd, feeding magic power into it.
The fire sprites had built up their balls of fire again, launching them at the boat. Of the four that streaked towards the boat, only Itura and Ruby got hit; the rest were ineffective against the fireproofed timbers and sail. Itura’s chest erupted into flame; screaming in pain and fear, she beat out the flames with one hand, while the other kept hold of the oar. She’d had the presence of mind to have wet herself with river water as she rowed, in an attempt to limit how flammable she was. The other sailors had done the same; they were all in the most exposed positions, despite getting some cover from the bulwarks. Unfortunately, they had to expose at least their upper bodies in order to work the oars.
Itura’s chest smoked, and she could feel that the skin beneath the charred shirt was burned and tender. The flames, fickle as ever, had also scorched her chin, and her eyes were watering from the smoke, obscuring her vision. Just as well, she thought, it’s too damn bright out here anyway. This being up during the day sucks.
Ruby had made herself fireproof; the fist-sized ball of fire puffed out as soon as it hit her. She grinned, and hadn’t felt a thing. With a final flourish of her fingers, she felt a small, ineffectual puff of air from her fingertips. The grin turned to a frown. Her spell casting had failed, likely a result of the momentary distraction of the fireball hitting her, combined with the mental strain of keeping several spells active simultaneously. She swore under her breath, and started casting it again.
Eykit was looking into the preservation box, sorting through the different leaves. There were several kinds, and he didn’t remember which ones were which. Most were herbs, he knew, but he also remembered that one kind of leaf was dangerous to touch. “Ruby!” he urgently called, “which ones do I grab?”
Elitheris nocked her second arrow, drew, and loosed, the arrow targeted at the same flame elemental as the previous one. Like the first, the Icy Missiles spell gave it an aura of cold, and it struck the flame sprite square in the center. It blew apart into small tongues of flame, which immediately turned to sparks, which then went out. The arrow, having passed through the living flame, struck a charred log behind where it had been, vibrating in what was left of the wood.
The fire sprites were made of diffuse flame, and thus difficult to damage just by swiping a weapon through them. Much like spirits, they were resistant to physical damage, and required something else to truly hurt them. The cold from the spell effect on Elitheris’ bow seemed to be that something, and Taid knew his melee weapon version would do the same. He was visibly antsy. The boat was moving too slow; he wanted at those stupid fire-spitting flames now.
Eykit, kneeling down by the preservation box, looked at the tarp tie downs. The tarp, being part of the boat, was currently fireproof. Maybe I can smother those flame-things with that, he thought. But would they still be fireproof if not part of the ship? He didn’t know enough about magic and how magic worked to know. But he’d get a really nasty surprise if the oil tarp lost its fireproofing though….But if it stayed on the ship, it would still be fireproof, right? So if I could prop it up like a wall….
Ruby finished casting the spell of Air Shaping. This time, there was no distraction to divert her attention to the words of power and the gestures. A strong breeze began to fill the sail, the canvas rippling and snapping as it inflated.
Two of the fire sprites threw their balls of fire at the people on the boat; one splashed harmlessly into Wynnstan’s chest as he pulled on an oar, but since Ruby had cast the spell of Fire Resistance on him, it didn’t even set his long hair alight. The second struck Artur, coming in on a shallow arc to just pass over the bulwark, striking him in the leg. His short-legged pants were ablaze, and he took his attention away from rowing to try to beat out the flames, yelling in pain and fear.
Getting no response from Ruby, who had been busy casting spells, Eykit closed the preservation box. The spidlar leaves, despite giving endurance, likely wouldn’t help very much to make the boat move any faster. He moved towards the tie downs. Getting a large shield up might be more useful than any amount of leaves.
Elitheris drew an arrow, nocked it, drew, and aimed down the shaft at the next nearest living flame creature.
Taid finished up his spell of Icy Weapon. He could see a rime of frost rush up the shaft from his hands and cover the head of the halberd. A cool mist condensed around the metal, appearing to drip off of the axe blade and spikes. Taid grinned, his teeth glinting from behind his beard and mustache. Laugh while you can, bastards, he thought. I’m coming for ya now!
Ruby saw Norolind, his paws up on the pile of barley sacks, watching the flames on the shore. “Nori!” she commanded, “Come and sit!”
The big black mastiff looked at her, then dropped down to all fours and took the few steps required to get to her side. He sat obediently at her feet, which put the main mass of cargo between him and the incoming balls of fire. She didn’t want him hit like Mr. Wiggles or Wilbur. She hadn’t cast a fireproofing spell on him, and she would be devastated if he got burned.
The little fire sprites followed the riverbank, keeping pace with the boat, moving slowly upriver. Other than the crackle of flames, they were silent. The boat was slowly gaining a bit more speed due to the wind in the sails.
Eykit began untying the first of the three ties that held the port side of the tarp down. He’d keep the starboard ties still lashed to the tie-downs, using them to keep the tarp taut when he held it up.
Elitheris loosed her arrow. The fire sprite sputtered a bit as the intensely cold arrow passed through it, but reformed itself, although it was a bit smaller than it had been before.
Ruby unlatched and flipped open the preservation box. Inside was what was left of the various cuts of meat, some vegetables, and a loose collection of various kinds of leaves.
Three balls of fire hurtled towards the boat. One missed completely, sailing over the stern. A second one hit the bulwark behind which Captain Gwendal sat, cradling his arm. It did nothing against the fireproof wood.
Erven was trying to wrap a bandage around Artur’s leg when the third fireball fell onto his own leg. His pants were burning, and he dropped the bandage to slap out the flames, moaning in pain as he did so.
Almë put his arm around Nori, who was sitting nearby. He gave him a scratch as he sat behind the sacks.
Elitheris drew another arrow and nocked it. She wasn’t done with that second flame creature. She wanted to put another arrow in it, hopefully to kill it like the first one. She sighted down the shaft.
Ruby, unlike Eykit, knew which leaves she was looking for, and picked out a handful of the spidlar leaves.
Three more fireballs arced towards the boat. One passed harmlessly over the bow, missing Elitheris by half a meter. The second hit Elias in the leg, but it was a grazing hit, and he was able to slap the flames out without much trouble, and only a bit of wincing. His leg would be tender, but he could still stand on it. Erven and Artur, however, didn’t seem able to put any weight on their injured legs.
The third fireball hit Wilbur, and the horse screamed, flames dancing on his foreleg. Almë wet his hands in the bilge water and hurriedly patted the flames out. Blistered, reddened flesh, stripped of the hair, lay exposed to his concerned gaze.
Eykit untied the first tie-down, and made his way to the second one, his nimble fingers quickly untying that knot. Wilbur lay hobbled nearby, screaming that disturbing equine scream. The short, wiry Goblin grit his sharp teeth. He hated the sound of screaming horses.
Elitheris shot her arrow, the bowstring twanging. The arrow passed right through the fiery target, and it blew out like a candle flame in a stiff breeze. She smirked. She liked being able to fight back. Those things could die. They were vulnerable.
Ruby gathered six of the small spidlar leaves, one for each rower.
A pair of fireballs streaked towards the boat. One dropped towards Eykit as he untied the tarp. He only knew it was coming because the whooshing sound kept getting louder. He moved the tarp over him just in time for the ball of fire to strike it, spraying tiny motes of flame in all directions. The tarp, being fireproof, acted as a shield against the fireball. “Shit! Shit! Shit! That was close!” he said. He didn’t want his Goblin good looks to be marred by twisted, ugly burn scars.
Elitheris drew two arrows, nocking one. She drew and aimed at her next target.
The boat neared the spit of land, and Alexa turned the rudder at the last moment. The boat slewed around, staying just barely clear of the muddy bottom, and Taid leapt out into the river. He was about four meters from shore, in water up to his thighs. The river water was cool on his legs, and his booted feet sank into the slippery mud as he started to move forward. Churned mud clouded the water behind him, and the boat started making its way around the river bend.
Taid thrashed his way through the water towards shore. He gripped his halberd, keeping it above the water. He didn’t want to splash Maggie. He noticed that when the halberd dropped too close to the water, little flakes of ice formed on the surface, only to be carried away by the current before melting.
Wynnstan was rowing just forward of Alexa at the rudder. Ruby took a few steps, handing a leaf towards him, saying, “Chew this; it will give you strength.”
He gave her a look, shrugged, then took the leaf and shoved it in his mouth, chewing. He winced; the leaf was astringent, with a sour bitterness that faded into slightly sweet, slightly menthol flavor. He went back to rowing. Within moments, he realized he wasn’t feeling as tired as he had been.
Three more fireballs were thrown at the boat. Two passed harmlessly overhead, but the third one landed on Wilbur. He was a large target, in the center of the boat, and seemed to be a magnet for the balls of fire. The fire cascaded onto his back, burning the hair and the skin beneath. Fortunately for him, Almë hadn’t just been sitting behind the sacks of grain, cowering. He’d actually been scooping handfuls of the water from the bottom of the boat onto all three of the animals, wetting them down to provide some fire protection. So when the fireball landed on Wilbur, the horse didn’t ignite; the ball of fire was too small to do that. It still hurt, though, and Wilbur was in a near panic of pain and fear. His screams were deafening, and Almë struggled to keep him under control.
Eykit finished untying the tie-downs of the tarp on the inside edge of the pile. Fikkiil, seeing Eykit untying the tarp, figured he knew what the other Goblin was doing. He smiled, thinking it was a good idea, and stopped rowing to help hold the tarp up as a shield.
Elitheris loosed her arrow at the fire sprite closest to her. Like the others, it passed through the insubstantial creature, seeming to take a big chunk out of it, before the flame sprung back up again. She thought it looked slightly smaller than it had, but regardless, her next arrow would likely put an end to it.
Taid’s polearm had a long reach. He was moving towards dry land, and the fire sprites were moving along the riverbank. One came into reach as it followed the path of the boat. The Dwarf stabbed at it, mist condensing off of the chilled metal. The metal spike, chilled by his magic, pierced the living flame creature, and completely extinguished it. It disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Taid was elated. “Now we’re talking! Let’s go, Elitheris!” With their icy weapons, these creatures seemed very fragile. Dangerous, but fragile.
Ruby moved to the rower on the port side behind the pile of cargo. It was Jory.
There were only four fire sprites left. The two nearest the one Taid had killed retargeted their attacks from the boat to Taid. One threw a ball of fire that passed harmlessly over his head. The other one looked like it was coming straight towards him. He twisted aside, and the fireball fizzed through the air mere centimeters from his chest. It landed in the water by the boat with a sizzle of steam.
Eykit and Fikkiil climbed up the sacks, each holding a corner of the fireproof tarp. They held it up, and it became a large shield to protect against flame attacks. At least now Wilbur was almost completely protected. No more fireballs would hit him.
Almë moved over to the rowing station behind Jory, at the port side rear of the boat.
Elitheris nocked her second arrow, drew, and loosed in a single quick movement. The arrow, trailing a line of cold mist, extinguished the fire sprite she had shot moments before.
Taid was just about on the riverbank. Another fire sprite was in range. He stabbed at it, hitting it, and it sputtered a bit, but seemed to recover.
Ruby handed a spidlar leaf to Jory, telling him to chew it.
The lead fire creature threw a ball of fire, hitting Erven in the back. He’d been tending to his leg wound, and he yelped in painful surprise as his back became ablaze. Already sitting, he dropped backwards to the deck, rolling to smother the flames.
Almë grabbed the oar that was stowed at the side of the ship near Jory, put the end in the water, and began rowing. Alexa trimmed the rudder, compensating for the higher number of rowers on the port side. Itura, realizing that the ship kept turning to starboard, moved from her position at the forward port rowing station over to the starboard side to help balance the thrust.
Elitheris again drew a pair of arrows, nocking one in the same swift movement. She started aiming at the single fire sprite that still followed the boat. The other two had stopped to attack Taid instead.
Taid was beset by a pair of the living flames. Trying to keep them as far away as possible, and staying in ankle deep water, he thrust the top spike, still dripping with condensation, into the sprite he had wounded previously. The spike seemed to absorb the flames, appearing to suck them into the halberd. The fire sprite was no more.
And then there were only two.
Ruby realized that handing out the leaves wouldn’t really help; Taid and Elitheris were taking care of the fire throwing beings, and they were going to have to stop the boat soon to allow Taid back on board. She glanced up at the sail, bellied out and full of the wind she had made. She cut off the spell, and the sail rapidly deflated, hanging limp from the yard.
The fire sprite chasing the ship lobbed another ball of fire at it, and it struck the tarp that Eykit and Fikkiil were holding up. Eykit could see a flash right in front of his face: the flames struck the tarp right in front of where he was holding it up. They dispersed harmlessly, the tarp doing its job as a shield. He laughed. “Try again, assholes!” he called out.
The Elf loosed her arrow at the flame creature following the boat. It puffed out in a cloud of smoke. She grinned, nocking her second arrow and turning to aim at the remaining fire sprite. It was still attacking her Dwarven friend.
Taid swung the halberd at the remaining fire creature. The cold metal almost appeared to chop the flame in half before snuffing out.
All of the fire sprites in the area were gone. There was no telling how many more of them roamed about the burned out area, but there were none who were threatening them at the moment.
Elitheris silently raised a fist, seeing the last one snuff out. She relaxed her draw, but kept the arrow nocked. Just in case one popped out of the rubble strewn landscape.
Alexa guided the boat back towards the shore so Taid could get back in it. She stopped the boat around the spit of land. She couldn’t get close enough to keep Taid from having to wade through waist deep water, but she had Jory and Itura help him get back on board.
Then they rowed the ship to a mooring point on the opposite bank, finding a spot where the river curved in such a way as to give the boat some cover from any flame sprites that might want to start lobbing fireballs at them. It wasn’t perfect protection, but the rocks behind which she put the boat would provide some needed cover. She had backed the boat under the spreading branches of some trees. The mast was too tall to allow the boat to be fully in shade, but Alexa did her best to at least get some shade cover to protect them from the heat of the day.
The anchor was tossed overboard, and Alexa went to give some much needed medical care to her captain and crew.
Taid and Ruby had cast a lot of spells, and were exhausted, and Taid knew that he had to cast a lot of healing spells. Resting and recuperating were the orders of the day, and no one was opposed to that.
Almë scouted the area, like he did with all of their potential campsites. This one, despite being filled with a lot of trees instead of a convenient clearing, was most likely harmless. He found no dangerous plants on his first scouting of the perimeter, and no dangerous animals once he cast his spell of Plant Vision for the second pass. All he saw were a pair of tapirs and a small group of marmosets. And bugs, of course. Lots of bugs.
Taid had the crew stomp around the area shouting loudly, to scare off any animals in the camp area. He didn’t want them to be “friendly” to his magic mist. Then Taid cast Mystic Mist, and filled the area with the protective fog. Most of the stern section of the boat was covered as well.
Once camp was established, they rested. Alexa provided triage, and Taid and Elitheris went around healing people’s burns. All told, it took a few hours, with the mages resting when they needed to in order to cast more spells.
Rewards Granted
Whetstone, chalk, half of a beeswax candle.
3 CP
Report Date
03 Dec 2023
Primary Location
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