Adv Log, Session 39: On the River to Dwarfchat, Part 4
General Summary
Jyprasday, Leafturn 25, 879 AFE, Afternoon
Taid and Elitheris went around casting spells of healing on the wounded crew, Mr. Wiggles, and Wilbur. They rested as necessary between casts to avoid becoming too exhausted by spell casting.
The crew grumbled a little about the attack, and how they were in the most exposed positions. But Alexa noted that they were being fixed up by competent healers, for free. “Erven, if you were in town, the healers would have charged you several hundred Imperial Marks for that treatment, if magical healing was available at all. You know they have strict rules for triage.”
Erven’s face screwed up in a show of disgust. “Yeah, unless the patient is rich and powerful. They don’t seem to have trouble getting magical healing.”
“So be thankful our passengers have those skills, and are willing to use them.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n!” he said, saluting her.
She just gave him a stern look, glancing at Captain Gwendal, who was up and about, now that his burnt arm was healed. He just shook his head dismissively. He figured that Erven was just making a joke, given that Alexa had had the presence of mind to take over when he was incapacitated, and not being disrespectful.
Taid was stretched thin, trying to heal everyone, and Elitheris stepped in to help. She had some healing spells, although she wasn’t as good as Taid was with them. Erven was the most badly wounded, having been hit multiple times by fireballs. He was unconscious; large swaths of his skin showed signs of second degree burns. Taid had already cast a spell of Major Healing upon him, which helped quite a bit, but he was still gravely injured.
Elitheris knelt by his side, going over in her head the movements and words of the spell she had laboriously learned from the book she had found. She began casting, feeding energy into it as it built up in her mind. There was a flash of light, and she toppled over, falling across Erven’s legs, sprawled on the deck.
“Eli!” Taid cried out, alarmed, as he saw her slump. She didn’t respond. He went over to her, checking her pulse. She still had one, and was breathing. She seemed simply unconscious. “She’s still breathing,” he said to the others, when he noticed them looking in his direction, alarmed.
Ruby came over to Taid and Elitheris, checking Elitheris for wounds. She didn’t find any, even when she unbuckled the gambeson to check underneath.
Taid looked around for potential enemies, but saw nothing threatening. He knew that she wasn’t a good mage, so his suspicion, once he had determined that there were no visible enemies, was that something had gone wrong.
Ruby came to the same conclusion as Taid: Elitheris had done something to herself, and whatever it was, it had caused her to feint dead away. Ruby cast a spell of Lend Energy, sacrificing some of her own energy in order to give some to the Elven woman sprawled out on the deck.
Elitheris groaned, and her eyes snapped open. “What happened?” she asked.
Taid looked down at her. “That thing you just did? Don’t do that.” He patted her on the shoulder. “Ruby and I think you really, really botched a spell casting. Avoid doing that. Eventually you end up summoning a demon, or blowing yourself up.”
Elitheris thought back to the days in the forest, sitting on a tree log, reading through the healing book she had surreptitiously taken from the town’s library. She had spent hours reading through it, trying to figure out the body, arm, and hand motions based upon the few illustrations in the book. The magic words were easier, although forming the complicated mental images at the same time was tricky. She had set a snare and caught a rabbit, and the wire had cut into its neck as it attempted to escape. She had practiced her healing spell on it, but had done something wrong then, too, and watched in horror as the two inch long shallow cut widened, spraying out arterial blood in a frothing gush. She had flung the writhing hare away from herself, but not before become painted with its blood. It wasn’t one of her happier memories.
The triage, first aid, and healing took a while, but a few hours later it was done. Taid, especially was rather tired, and he surveyed both Jacora’s staff and his own halberd, both of which were pretty tapped out as far as their stored mana was concerned. It would take hours of work to refill them.
Erven was the only one still wounded; his wounds had been too great to completely heal all at once. But they reassured him that they would be able to fix him up completely the following day.
“We still need to find out about that fire on that tree,” Taid said, indicating the fire in the distance. As he watched, he could see other, smaller fires moving around. There were more of those fire sprites.
“Why?” Eykit and Elitheris both asked.
Taid looked at Elitheris. “It’s burning down the forest, right?” He turned to Eykit. “And it would be like walking away from a dangerous rival intent on taking over your turf.”
Eykit nodded, getting the analogy. “Fuck. Well, as long as you can make my knives icy, I think I can manage.”
“Besides,” Almë added, “they might have fire sprite poop or something that we can collect for our alchemist.”
Ruby shook her head. “Taid, when you killed them, did they leave any residue behind?”
“Not that I saw.”
“They probably don’t have anything alchemically useful.” But maybe, she thought, there might be something in the burned out area that might be alchemically useful, such as the ashes of a tree burned by a fire elemental. It was unlikely; she hadn’t heard any rumors, notes, or theories about such a thing, but she wasn’t an alchemy expert. She knew enough to do basic alchemy, and to recognize most of the more common alchemical materials and uses.
Almë nodded. He knew, as well as she did, that fire elementals didn’t really leave any residue behind, like air elementals, but unlike water or earth elementals. Those left something behind when the animating force that moved them was killed or dispelled. At least, if vaporous elementals actually did leave anything behind, there was no way to retrieve it.
“Yep,” Elitheris said, “Fire bad. Stay away from fire.”
Ruby glanced at Elitheris, understanding why she felt that way. Elven memories could be long, and the trauma that informed the Elven woman’s view was still fresh, having happened only about 70 years ago.
“So, are we moving on to Dwarfchat?” Almë asked.
“Yeah, let’s leave,” Elitheris agreed.
“There is that big bonfire over there, sitting on that tree,” Taid said. “Maybe there is something useful there, for Ruby maybe. She’s all fiery.”
Once he heard Taid’s comment, Almë was eager to get off the boat and explore the burned out area. The idea of loot motivated him.
Eykit glanced at him appreciatively, thinking, He’s learning. Good. We’ll make a properly motivated person yet.
“We can’t just row back over there without a plan,” Elitheris said. She wasn’t sure of the idea of going back into danger, but the jungle was burning, something that some forests needed, but not jungles. Elven lore stated that there were some kinds of forests, mostly conifer forests, that required fire to set their seeds. And in some cases, clearing out the underbrush with small, controlled fires could prevent disastrous wildfires by depriving them of potential fuel. Jungles, however, didn’t need any of that.
“There’s going to be some strategy here, or we don’t go.”
“Well,” Taid said, “we learned how to fight the small flame sprites pretty well. I think it should help us fight the bigger guy.”
“Without your spell, I’ve got fuck-all that will affect these things. Arrows just burn up, and I like stabbing people at a distance.”
“You killed several of those little bastards once the Icy Missiles was in effect.”
“True,” Elitheris admitted.
Almë looked across the river into the burned out area, trying to peer past the rocks that shielded them. He couldn’t see much; even had the rocks not been there obscuring part of his view, the rolling landscape would have hidden much of what might be over there.
“Does anyone know how fast these things regenerate or respawn, or resummon, or whatever?” Almë asked.
Ruby spoke up. “Elementals are spirits, summoned into a temporary body made up of whatever material the summoner chooses. Historically, it’s usually one of the four primary elemental forms: air, water, fire, or earth. The given body determines what kinds of powers the elemental has. But in essence, the elementals themselves, are just spirits. They are diffuse, and hard to hurt because of that.”
“Similar to that ghost skull that Herbert used on us,” Taid said. “We could hurt it, but not very well or very quickly. I imagine that the fire elementals—those sprites, or whatever we want to call them—are similar. We can slowly whittle them down with swords and arrows and what have you. But the icy weaponry seemed to hurt them a lot.”
“Fire tends to be vulnerable to water, Ruby said. “Or ice. A few hits of that, and the sprites seemed to die.”
Almë, still looking into the burned out area, caught a glimpse of a flamelet moving around in the distance, heading from the center area where the bonfire was towards the edges. He mentioned this to everyone else on the ship.
“Can you see any groups of them?” Taid asked the tall Elf.
“No, I’ve only seen a few, and they seem to be singletons.”
Taid nodded. He liked that. “So I say what we do is get up close, give Elitheris the Icy Missiles, and have her shoot it. If they are spaced out around that kilometers wide area, we should be able to get them one by one. We’ll be able to gauge how they react when we attack the first one. Then we can see if we need to adjust our tactics at all. Maybe we can open a door into their line of sentries to get inside and take out their leader. Or whatever that big bonfire is.”
The burly Dwarf turned towards Ruby and Almë. “You guys know any sneaking or invisibility spells or anything like that?”
The other two mages shook their heads. All they had was nonmagical, mundane stealth. But they had an entire landscape of cover: hills, ravines, washes, stumps, and a clutter of burned out trees and logs scattered all over the ashen terrain.
“I’m all for going over there and taking out whatever sprites we find,” Elitheris said, “but I’d like to rest first. Spellcasting is tiring work.”
Taid nodded; he had to admit to himself that he felt similarly. His Dwarven constitution was superior to his Elven companions, but he’d done a lot more spell casting than she had.
Meanwhile, Almë watched the opposite shore, wary of any fire creatures coming too close to the shore. He didn’t want any surprises. If more balls of fire were thrown at them, he wanted as much warning as possible.
“We’ve drained the stored energy in our staves, as well,” Taid said. “I’ve even dipped into Jacora’s staff. That’s a rare occurrence. If we are going to be resting for a bit, maybe we can channel some energy into our staves while we wait.”
Ruby didn’t respond; she was already sitting crosslegged, leaning against the bulwark of the boat, her staff laying across her lap. She was already focusing power into it, in order to charge it back up again. Her power stones would have to gain their power back at their own rates.
Almë’s staff, or rather his dead wife’s staff which he now used, was still topped up. He hadn’t used it at all in the fight. But he took Jacora’s staff from Taid, sat down, meditated until he reached a trance-like state, and started focusing his power into the staff. It took only a few minutes; he only put in about half of his own power. Then he had to rest for over an hour to recover.
Taid took the staff back, and did the same, focusing some of his mana energies into the staff, then resting to recover.
They even got Elitheris to contribute a bit of energy, once they taught her how to do it. It hadn’t been something she’d ever done before, but it really wasn’t all that difficult to focus and channel the mana into the staff. It was similar to spell casting; she gathered the energy in her mind, then, as if casting a spell, sent the energy into the staff, which acted somewhat like a magnet to iron filings. To her surprise, it almost felt as if the mana energy was sucked into the staff, and the feeling of sudden drainage startled her for a moment.
They had arrived at the burned out section of jungle not too long after midday. The conflict with the fire creatures hadn’t taken all that long, although it certainly felt long in the throes of fear and adrenaline. Triage and medical care had taken another couple of hours, and now the sun was beginning to dip towards the horizon. It was getting late in the afternoon.
The wind shifted, carrying the smell of smoke and ashes in their direction. The air felt hot and heavy, and there were flakes of ashes floating in it like dirty snowflakes.
They took what gear they wanted with them out of their packs, which they planned to leave behind on the boat. There was little need to carry so much weight on what should be a short day trip.
Elitheris got her potions and power stones out of her pack; she wanted those with her, and she held the collection of items loose in her hands.
Elias, ever the helpful and friendly sailor, saw Elitheris holding her pile of loose items. “I’ve got my bag of yarns and such,” he told her. “You can use it, if you like.”
She nodded, and he pulled out his knitting materials, shoving them under the cargo tarp to keep them dry until he could get his bag back. He handed the empty shoulder bag, about the size of a large purse, to the Elven woman.
Elitheris put her gear in it, then slid the strap over her head, hanging the bag on the opposite side from her quiver. It would make getting her knife out a little slower and more troublesome, but it was better than obstructing her access to her main weapons.
The plan set, they had Captain Gwendal get the boat over to the burned out shore so they could go over the side and splash their way to the ash-covered landscape. Itura wanted to go with them. She had a beef with those fire sprite things; she didn’t take their attacks on her and her crew mates lightly.
Besides, she was an Orc. She could see heat with her Orcish eyes, and since these things were literally fire, she might be able to see them before anyone else might.
As they walked from the water to the riverbank, they scanned the area ahead of them for any fire sprites. If at all possible, they wanted to sneak up on them one by one. Individually, they seemed fairly weak. They got dangerous in large groups, and avoiding that possibility was the order of the day.
They stood on the riverbank. It was rocky, strewn with rounded pebbles ranging in size from pea-sized to stones the size of their heads. All were coated in a greyish layer of ash, liberally mixed with black grains of charcoal. Around them were the burned out remains of tree trunks, some still standing like black, skeletal fingers, but most fallen over and forming a labyrinth of treacherous, crumbling obstacles.
The only flame sprite they could see was several hundred meters away. It was moving from place to place, and they only got short momentary glimpses of it before it was hidden again by a hill or fallen tree.
They could also see flickers of movement up in the burned out trees, off in the distance. If the sun wasn’t setting, and the landscape throwing the area into shadow, it was unlikely they would even had seen that. But the flickers of movement were glowing, making them stand out against the darker background.
As they watched, the little flicks of motion would arc up off a branch, dip down, then back up again to a nearby branch. But they were too far away to get any real detail.
Itura was glancing all around them. “There are lots of things around here,” she said nervously. Both her arms pointed from one spot to another, ranging all around them, and fairly close by. “They are small. About the size of my fist.”
Everyone immediately started scanning the area for movement, and at first, no one saw anything in the jumble of charred logs and branches.
“I see it!” Ruby exclaimed. It was a small rodent. It had darted out from beneath a burned stump, hopped over a fallen branch, and disappeared under a pile of charcoal and rubble.
It had appeared to be a rat, about the size of someone’s fist, with a long tail. And glowing orange eyes.
“What was it?” Taid asked.
“Some kind of rat. With fiery orange eyes,” Ruby replied, her head swiveling, trying to find it.
“Well, that’s different. Shapeshifted fire mage? Damn, do we have to kill this rat now? Gods damn it.”
“Possessed?” Elitheris asked.
“Maybe?” Taid replied. His head was on a swivel too. It was possible that these rats, which Itura could sense, but they couldn’t yet see, were enemies. He gripped Maggie tightly in his gloved hands.
“Maybe it’s been granted fire abilities.”
Taid grit his teeth. If we lose to a rat, we’re going to turn around and get back on the boat, he thought. He advanced towards where Ruby had said she’d seen the rat, leading with his halberd.
Elitheris pulled back the arrow she’d had nocked, but undrawn, aiming past Taid in case she could see the target. A rat wasn’t diffuse; she figured an arrow would ruin its day right quick.
Ruby, being an animal lover and a Hobbit, always carried a bit of food with her. Some of it was for her, when she started to feel peckish. But most was for whatever animal she came across. She always felt a bit of pleasure when she could feed some wandering animal. There were some chunks of ship’s biscuit in her snack pouch, she got a smallish piece and tossed it midway between where she saw it disappear into the pile of branches and where they stood. It hit the ash-covered ground, bounced with a puff of grey ash, and came to rest next to a piece of charcoal that had been part of a tree trunk.
It took a moment, but then the rodent popped its head out from its hiding place, sniffing the air. It hadn’t been a trick of the light, or a reflection of flames; the eyes were definitely glowing orange. In the early twilight, they could see that they shed light, its little rat face tinted orange. They could also see that smoke curled off of it, as if it were an ember just starting to catch fire.
“I’m wondering if those flame sprites could possess animals,” Taid said. “There could be a fire bear out there somewhere.”
Sniffing the air, its whiskers twitching, the orange-eyed rat hopped out from its hiding place, grabbed the chunk of hard bread in its tiny, little hands, and scampered back under the pile of rubble.
“Give me a chunk of that biscuit,” Taid said to Ruby. She wordlessly grabbed a chunk and put it in his outstretched hand. “I want to pick it up and see if it does anything to us.” Then Taid walked towards where the rat hid. He was hoping to grab it, but didn’t think it likely that it would just stay there and let him. But maybe he might get lucky.
He crouched down and put the bread at the entrance of the rat hole in the pile of burned branches. His other hand he held above the hole, ready to grab the rat when it came to get the bread. He could see the twin flames of its eyes just inside the opening under the rubble.
Then his vision was engulfed in the flames that jetted out of the hole. He screamed and reeled back, his hand in front of his face taking the brunt of the fire. It had breathed fire at him, and his glove was burning. He could smell the burned meat of his hand. Flames leapt up from his glove, singing the gambeson sleeve on his arm.
As he retreated from the ungrateful rat, he patted the flames out, smothering the fire in his gambeson skirt. His glove was ruined, and he couldn’t really hold anything in that hand. It bled from the burns, mostly on his palm.
Eykit had seen something like that before, up close and way too personal. A Goblin mage priest named Nopozu had come at him with a pair of jets of fire and had tried to kill him with them. But Eykit had wrestled with him, keeping the mage from being able to aim them at him. He still occasionally had nightmares about it. It had been a close thing.
“Think it might be the byproduct of what happened here?” Eykit asked. “An accident? Or something more purposeful and sinister?” He gave his companions a lopsided grin. “I don’t think it’s a shapeshifted mage. Would a mage go after a crust of bread? That seems more in line with an actual rat.” He was familiar with rats, at least the urban ones. This orange-eyed one didn’t seem that much different, excepting the fire breath. It seemed to be behaving like a normal rat.
“Yeah, I think it’s just a rat,” Elitheris agreed, “with some enhancements.”
At that, the rat hopped out, grabbed the toasted biscuit chunk, and leapt back under the pile of burnt branches.
Taid finished extinguishing the flames on his hand and glove. “Well, I’ve been injured, but we’ve learned a lot right here. The damned thing is clever, and dangerous, so that’s good to know.”
He looked around, out over the charred, ashen landscape. “I’m just wondering if this is a look at things to come. If a rat can fuck us up like that, what does that say about the rest of what we might find?”
“Well,” Elitheris said, “we don’t know what happens when we try to kill it.”
“From now on, we’d be smart to use Ruby’s spells of fire protection. And spread out and keeps some distance between us. No need for them to be able to catch more than one of us at any one time.”
There were nods all around. The rat had a significantly powerful attack, given its tiny size. Its breath weapon extended over ten times its body length, more than double that if its tail wasn’t included.
Elitheris wasn’t done talking about killing it. “Can we kill it like any other rat, or is there something special we’ll need to do?”
That question only elicited questioning looks. No one knew the answer to that yet.
“Guys,” Itura said softly, “there are more of them.”
The others looked up from where the rat had hid, scanning around. They could see two more pairs of glowing orange eyes staring in their direction. With sidelong glances at each other, they increased the distance between them, spreading out a little to reduce spillover flames.
“More rats,” Taid said. “If we leave them alone, will they attack us?”
The rats didn’t seem to be doing anything immediately threatening, but maybe they were just waiting for more reinforcements. More likely, they had been alerted by the big flare up of flame, and were assessing if they were in danger as well.
The rat breathing fire on Taid had turned what Ruby had thought might have been a cute little animal into a dangerous monster. “Taid, I can cast the spell of Resist Fire on you, and then you can stomp these little shits with Maggie.”
Elitheris turned to look at Ruby. The Hobbit was an animal lover; that sounded so unlike her normal disposition. But then, maybe these things were no longer animals in the natural sense….
“Can do,” Taid replied.
Ruby cast her spell, settling the protective magics over Taid. “Done,” she said, and the Dwarf nodded his bearded head.
He took a step forward, readying his halberd in his one good hand. It was clumsy, and awkward, but he was strong, and managed, if barely.
But Elitheris was faster, and her bow and an arrow were ready. She aimed, then let fly. The arrow struck the rat at the junction of its rear leg and body, the impact of the arrow spinning it through the air. The finger thick, 72 cm, 60 gm arrow had effectively pinned the struggling, dying rat to the ground. It struggled to move, dragging the heavy and awkward broad head arrow with it, its damaged leg held on only by a flap of tissue. It squealed in pain, its other three legs scrabbling at the ashes and dirt.
Taid heard the twang of Elitheris’ bow, then the squeal of the rat she struck. He swung Maggie down at the rat in front of him, the cheeky one that had fried his hand. That pain was still there, still smarting, and he could only barely steady the shaft of his weapon with the back of his burned hand. But gravity was working with him.
The axe blade came down, striking the rat through the dubious protection of the burned branches. They hardly slowed the blade at all, and Maggie turned the rodent into two uneven pieces of rat. As Taid watched, the smoke that had been curling off of its fur increased, then the two pieces burst into flame, consuming themselves like paper thrown into a fire.
“Well,” Almë said, “that’s unnatural. I think some shit is going on here. Have a bad feeling about this.” He started looking around, trying to see any rats that might be trying to sneak up on them.
Taid stepped over towards the rat that Elitheris had pinned with the arrow, and put it out of its misery. He left that one in two pieces as well. The pieces smoked, then burst into flame, just like the first one.
Another thing that they noticed was that they weren’t being attacked by the rats; the rat had only breathed fire when it felt threatened. There didn’t seem to be any army of rats attacking them, pissed off because some of their number had been attacked by the invading two-legs.
So, they didn’t think they really needed to worry about them, as long as they didn’t act in a threatening manner. At least, they hoped that was the case.
They moved inland, staying as quiet as they could, moving from cover to cover to keep from being seen. Taid, of course, had the hardest time being stealthy, but even Eykit, as naturally stealthy as he was, couldn’t keep his maille from being more jingly than he would like.
Now that they had entered farther into the burned out area, they could see the flames in the trees better. They appeared to be flaming birds, flying from tree limb to tree limb. If two got too close to each other, they screeched and fought, so they were obviously territorial.
They endeavored to stay away from the birds. There was no telling what a fire bird might do. They moved single file, keeping some space between them. Taid led, and Itura wanted to be up near the front, given her vision. Ruby and Norolind brought up the rear, where she could see everyone.
The landscape was a clutter of burned debris, fallen logs and half burned branches forming clumps and labyrinths of charcoal and wood that still burned with flames or embers. They had to be careful not to burn themselves as they made their way through is, stepping carefully, and as quietly as they could.
They didn’t want to arouse the danger sense of the birds at all, and, for the most part, they succeeded.
Almë’s foot came down on a burned branch, and it snapped under his weight with a sound that seemed louder than it probably was. But the birds heard it, and one flew over him. As it did, a meter diameter ball of fire formed under it, and dropped towards Almë’s head.
He sidestepped, trying to get out of its way, but it was too large and too fast, and it enveloped his head and shoulders. The stink of burning hair completely overshadowed the smell of cooking meat, and the tall Elf looked like a mobile torch, the back of his head and his upper back and shoulders aflame.
He kept his eyes tightly shut, and he hoped that the leaping flames hadn’t blinded him.
Taid reacted quickly, casting a spell of Create Water to douse Almë’s head and upper body. The water formed over his head, the moisture pulled from the surrounding environment, coalescing into an amorphous globule of water, which once formed, fell onto Almë’s head and shoulders. Taid followed it up with his hands, patting out the remaining embers.
Most of Almë’s hair was damaged, leaving a misshapen mass with various chunks fused together, all of different lengths. He still had half an eyebrow above his left eye. But most of his gambeson was still in fair shape; Taid had extinguished the fire before it could burn through the second layer of linen.
“Thanks,” Almë said, once he’d spit out the water that had made its way into his mouth. He gingerly touched his ruined hair, checking his scalp for damage. It wasn’t too bad; from what he could tell, it felt like a bad sunburn. He’d survive.
The bird was circling around, possibly for another attack.
Alme saw it coming, and held his staff by one end up over his shoulder, as if waiting for a pitch in stickball.
Taid held Maggie above Almë’s head one handed, ready to thrust the top spike and skewer the bird if it got too close to either of them. He was starting to think about having some pre-cooked rotisserie fowl. Roasted firebird might be nice with some white wine, or a good ale.
Elitheris lined up a shot as the bird flew towards them. She waited as it got closer, then loosed her shaft. Its flight was erratic, and the arrow grazed past its leg, the feathers of the shaft igniting as they went past the body of the fire bird. The bird itself wobbled in the air, wounded, but still able to fly.
The burning arrow sailed off into the clutter of the landscape.
Almë swung, a great, two-handed swing, which mostly whistled past the bird, but managed to clip its leg, causing it to tumble in the air.
Taid, reacting quickly to the wild course change of his target, skewered the bird on Maggie’s top spike, where it hung, limp and burning. With a quick flick of his arm, he flung the dead, burning bird into a pile of burned tree branches. It lay there, burning for a moment, before flaring up and being consumed like the dead rats.
He grunted. Using a long polearm one handed was tiring and difficult, even for him. One-handed, it made a very top-heavy spear.
Almë did what he could to fix his hair; his scalp was tender, but he got rid of the fused, clumped bits of what used to be his hair, leaving only the patchy, unburned hairs of various lengths. That completed as best as possible, he nodded for them to continue.
They moved onwards, mainly towards the large central fire on its tree stump, but detouring towards the fire sprites when they could see them. Itura was key, here: her infrared vision alerted them to hotspots, such as the birds and the rats, allowing them to move around them and keep their distance.
When they crested ridges, they could occasionally see the fire sprites here and there in the charred landscape, generally moving towards the edges of the area. It seemed as if they had been sent out to expand the area of wildfire, eating away at the jungle, slowly spreading like a tumor.
They could see a fire sprite up ahead of them, moving transversely across their path towards the jungle. They crouched low, behind cover, trying to not attract its attention. If they could get to the central tree and bonfire without having to alert any of the smaller fire elementals, it would avoid some potentially nasty fights.
They made their way stealthily towards the tree with the bonfire. They carefully avoided the rats and the birds, and also saw what appeared to be lines of fire moving through the undergrowth.
“If this area is corrupting the animals, how long until it corrupts us?” Elitheris whispered. “Are we going to turn into some kind of fiery monster?”
“I suppose we’ll find out,” Ruby said, as if resigned to that fate. So far, she hadn’t felt anything, and she liked to think that she knew enough to at least get some kind of warning.
“Yeah, I’m sure we’ll find out,” Elitheris replied. “I am just hoping that we can avoid that.”
They could see the tree stump with the fire on it. The fire, at first, seemed like a normal fire. But after watching it for a little while, they could tell that it didn’t move quite like a normal fire. With a little imagination, it almost looked like it had arms, and almost seemed to point in different directions, as if giving orders. At other times, it seemed to lean in one direction of another, as if it was paying attention to something. The more they watched it, the more it seemed like there was some kind of intelligence behind it.
“Let’s take a bit of a water break,” Taid said. “Over there.” He indicated with his arm. “We can hunker down in that ravine. Rest up a bit, then we can tackle that big flaming thing.”
No one objected, and they crept into the ravine, using the burned fallen trees as cover. Once there, they drank, and rested. Having the mages at full power could be the difference between life and death. It was, apparently, a large fire elemental. And they had no idea what it could do. They stayed there for a half an hour.
Taid held his hand out in front of him. He hadn’t bothered to take off what was left of his glove; the palm was gone, as were a lot of the inside of the fingers. It barely stayed on his red, tender hand. His skin was cracked and bleeding. And casting healing spells on one’s self was…risky. Doable, in a pinch, but much like surgery, easier to do on someone else.
“Elitheris, can you give me a hand here?”
Elitheris looked at his hand. “Looks like a bigger injury than the spell of lesser healing can handle. Looks like I’ll get some practice with the greater healing spell.”
She took her time; she didn’t want to accidentally hurt Taid. Whether it was luck or careful preparation, her spell went off without trouble, and the mana flowed from her into her friend’s hand. The cracks in the flesh sealed, and the red, inflamed flesh became a more normal color as the swelling went down.
Taid flexed his hand, fingers curling. “That’s much better, thanks.”
Almë spoke up, “While you’re handing out the healing, mind helping me with my burned shoulders?”
“Ah!” Elitheris said in alarm. “In all the confusion, you got overlooked.”
“Others needed help more than I did,” Almë responded with a shrug. He winced. Shrugging hurt. “But if we’re going up against that thing, I want my shoulders working properly!”
“Yeah, pretty hard to swing your stick around with hurting shoulders,” Taid said.
Elitheris took a look at his shoulders, after he had unbuckled his gambeson and slid it off of his shoulders. He wasn’t terribly hurt, but the skin was raw and tender.
She cast a healing spell, and the skin became Almë’s normal, tanned color. He flipped his gambeson back up over his shoulders, rolling them to see how they felt. There was no more pain, so he rebuckled his armor. He made a few practice passes with his staff.
He grinned. “Back to my usual self!”
They climbed up out of the ravine, keeping low amongst the ground clutter as they made their way towards the large fire on the tree.
They stopped behind a pile of rubble. It smoked, and there were embers still glowing in and around it. They could feel the heat coming off of it. The smell of burnt wood was thick and sharp. The large fire in the tree was about twenty meters away. They could hear the roar of its flames, rising and falling, almost like it was conversing. If they went any closer, it was sure to see them. If “see” was the right word. It had no eyes that they could see.
“Ruby,” Taid said, “can you give me fire resistance again? I’ll just go out and scout and see what’s what. If it hits me, it hits me. But we need to see what the hell it’s going to do, if it’s going to do anything. There’s no reason for all of us to be out there and get hit by it.”
“Sounds good,” Ruby replied. “A moment.”
Taid cast the spell of Icy Missiles on Elitheris’ bow. Then he ran out from behind cover, charging the tree, his legs pumping and hopping over the larger clumps of branches and clutter.
When he was about six meters away, the living bonfire threw a ball of fire at him.
He dodged to the side, almost losing his footing on a pile of charred wood that crumbled under his weight. But he moved far enough that the ball of fire whizzed and flamed past his head. The ball of fire hit the ground behind him, flaring up in a pyrotechnic explosion. The blast rocked him, forcing him to take a pair of steps to stay on his feet, and he could almost feel the heat envelope him. He didn’t have any exposed flesh from that direction, not that it would have mattered. He could have been naked, and the flames wouldn’t have hurt him.
But he was exposed. He looked at the tree, but there was no place he could stand at its base where the big elemental couldn’t get him. He didn’t see any cavities in the trunk, either, at least not from where he currently was.
“Shit,” Almë said, “should we spread out? We’re clustered here. If it realizes we are here, he could get all of us in one shot.”
Almë started casting the spell of Haste. If he was going to be out there in the open, he wanted a bit more speed.
Elitheris drew and aimed at the big fire.
Ruby cast the spell of Fire Resistance on Almë. He looked like he was about to run into combat.
Taid started casting the spell of Icy Weapon on his halberd. It would take him a few seconds to finish, assuming the large fire being let him.
Itura had a short sword out and ready, although she really wasn’t sure what she’d be able to do with it. But it made her feel better to grip it. She scanned the area, wary of things trying to flank them. She had to peer over her sunglasses every now and then in order to check her surroundings for heat signatures. They were her primary protection whenever she glanced in the direction of the living bonfire.
From their position crouching behind the fallen logs and debris, they could see the large flame on what was left of the tree. They could also see a second, smaller flame forming at its side, swirling and pulsing.
Almë broke cover, running towards Taid and the large bonfire creature, his speed greater due to the spell he’d cast upon himself. He ran straight at first, then started zigzagging in order to make himself a harder target.
Elitheris loosed her arrow. It flew towards the bonfire, trailing a haze of mist like a streamer. It flew through the large fire, and seemed to create a momentary hole in it.
Ruby cast the spell of Fire Resistance on herself.
The large fire flared up a bit, then moved. It moved off of its tree, appearing to slide down the trunk, then came towards Taid, the secondary swirling fire at its side increasing in size. The flames roared, seeming louder now that it was moving across the ground.
The flaming elemental threw the growing ball of fire at Taid. It hurtled towards him, roaring, flames trailing behind it.
Taid saw it coming, and quickly sidestepped, the ball of fire whistling past his shoulders as he turned the upper part of his body to avoid it. It continued through the air, hitting the cluster of debris the rest of his friends were hiding behind, where it splashed harmlessly on the charred wood.
Eykit, Ruby, Elitheris, and Itura didn’t know that, though, and they all flinched, raising their hands to protect their faces. Eykit squeaked in fear as it hit. Unlike the first ball of fire from the large elemental creature, this one didn’t explode, although a few of the branches were now aflame.
The elemental moved closer to Taid. Around it, he could see objects, mainly mostly burned branches, spontaneously burst into flame. The effect seemed to extend a meter or two from it.
Elitheris drew out two arrows from her hip quiver. She nocked the first one, drew back the string, and aimed at the large fire creature.
Eykit scanned the area, judging distances between him and the fire creature, and spinning his head around to make sure they weren’t being flanked. He didn’t see any as his eyes passed over the landscape. It was just them and the big flame creature, at least at the moment.
Taid completed casting his spell, and a rime of frost sped from his hands, up the shaft, and covered the head of his halberd. Maggie shed a cool mist that evaporated almost as soon as it left the axe blade.
Ruby turned to her immense mastiff. “Nori,” she commanded, pointing at a spot two meters behind him, “sit.”
There was a moment as Norolind processed the command, then he rose, turned, took a few steps, then sat down. He looked at her, awaiting her next instruction.
“Good boy,” she said, smiling. Then she turned back to the fight.
She saw the elemental move up to Taid.
Taid could tell that he was in the area of shed heat; things around him were popping and sparking into embers, but he himself felt nothing. Intellectually, he could tell that the elemental in front of him was giving off incredible amounts of heat, but the spell that protected him negated all of it as far as he was concerned.
Elitheris loosed her arrow. The bow thwanged, and the arrow leapt towards its target, trailing a streamer of mist that evaporated in moments. It struck the elemental squarely in the center, forming a hole that soon filled with more fire.
The flames roared louder, as if the elemental screamed in pain. Whatever else the arrow did, it seemed to have hurt it, or at least made it angrier.
Eykit’s head was swiveling, trying to see everywhere at once. He saw a flash of light about fifty meters away, and he focused on it, noting that it was one of the smaller fire sprites. It appeared to be moving in their direction.
It was too close to Taid for him to have room to swing his polearm around, so he hopped back, following that up with a cleaving swing from the axe blade.
But the large flame being was too fast, and it managed to get out of the way of the icy steel weapon.
Ruby started another casting of the spell of Fire Resistance, this time on Elitheris. Because she had to see the target over the barricade of burned branches, she was more exposed than the rest of them. It made sense to protect her. Alas, due to a portion of her mind controlling three other spells, it failed.
The fire elemental spewed out a gout of flame all over Taid, who barely even flinched. The fire cascaded over him, harmlessly. He smiled grimly, mentally thanking Ruby for her protective spell.
With a shout, Almë charged into combat, sprinting at the elemental with his staff above his head. He swung his staff in a downward, horizontal arc, the staff passing through its fiery body without resistance. He was unsure whether he had done anything to it or not.
Elitheris took the second arrow she had drawn before, set it to the string, and drew back her bow. She sighted down the shaft, aiming past Taid and Almë at the side of the fire elemental. She was a good enough shot that she was fairly sure she wouldn’t hit either of them.
“Itura,” Eykit asked, “you see anything?”
Itura shook her head. “Nothing closer than about ten meters, and those were just those rats. There might be a snake over yonder, but I can’t tell with all of the ground clutter.”
Taid took another shot at the elemental, but it moved out of the way of the icy blade. Taid swore.
Ruby tried the spell casting again, on Elitheris. This time, she was able to focus enough to get the spell off. Elitheris became fire resistant.
The fire elemental, spewing out a jet of flame three meters long, targeted Almë. The short one didn’t seem to be affected by fire, but maybe the tall skinny one would be….
No such luck. Almë was fire resistant as well, thanks to Ruby’s spell. Almë cackled, the flames enveloping him in an embrace he couldn’t even feel. He wished he had some bread. Or some marshmallows. Put the stupid fire to some good use.
The tall Elf went at the elemental with his staff, striking quickly with first one end, then the other. The fire elemental, fast as it was, couldn’t get out of the way of both attacks. The end of the staff passed through its body with little or no resistance. It was like passing a stick through the flames of a campfire.
“We’ve got incoming,” Itura said. “Fire sprite!” She gripped her short sword in her dark skinned hand, the knuckles paling.
Elitheris’ arrow flew through it; its attempt at avoiding Almë’s attacks had put it into a position where Elitheris had a better shot. A gaping hole was the result, and instead of being refilled by the flames of its body, the remaining flames appeared to get sucked up behind it and extinguished. The elemental was gone.
Coming up behind them was one of the smaller fire elementals. It appeared to know they were there, and was coming after them.
Ruby moved to meet it; it was still a ways out. She was thinking that maybe a spell of Extinguish Fire might hurt it.
The fire sprite moved up to Ruby, throwing a ball of fire from point blank range. It hit her square in the chest, splashing flames all over her body. But she was resistant to fire, and didn’t even feel the heat. It had been a harmless attack, no better than a simple illusion.
His foe evaporated, Almë took a look around, mainly to see if his friends behind the rubble were okay. From what he could tell, they weren’t in any danger.
Eykit saw Ruby go out to meet the incoming fire sprite. Then he saw it blast her with its fire. He wanted no part of that. He didn’t have the comfort of fireproofing. He valued his skin too much to want to risk burning.
Elitheris spun to face the sprite and drew out another two arrows, fitting one to her string and drawing the bow back.
Taid went towards the tree.
Ruby cast the spell of Fire Extinguishing on the small fire sprite that hovered just above the ground in front of her. The spell made the fire sprite shrink, as if parts of it were extinguished. It seemed to be an effective spell against these things, and much better than her mage’s staff would ever be.
It responded by jumping onto her leg, then, like a flame traveling up a tree trunk, it crawled up to her chest, where it sat, burning. Except that Ruby wouldn’t burn. A small ball of fire started swirling at its side. Ruby, startled, turned to face her friends, the flames obscuring her vision.
Almë saw her turn around, the flames making her look like he did when he was on fire. Her head looked like it was on fire.
“Are you okay?” he yelled. “You’re looking hot, by the way!” He had the feeling she had cast a fire protection spell on herself, so he wasn’t really worried. Or perhaps Ruby’s lack of screaming in pain tipped him off.
“Ha ha,” she replied, deadpan. “Funny, beanpole.”
Eykit ran towards Ruby. He wasn’t exactly sure how effective his knives would be, but he’d at least try to help the Hobbit. The short folk had to stick together in the land of the biggens.
Elitheris aimed at the fire sprite. The problem was that it was on Ruby’s chest, and Ruby was facing the archer. This meant that if Elitheris shot the fire sprite, the arrow would pass through it and into Ruby. Even if her armor saved her from the damage, Elitheris was reluctant to put an arrow into her friend. She moved, trying to get a better angle.
Ruby cast the spell of extinguish fire on the fire sprite that rode her chest. It went off, and the flame puffed into nonexistence. It barely even left any smoke.
Itura was watching the heat signatures the ranged about them, but none seemed especially interested in coming any closer to them. The fire-animals seemed to be acting like animals; unless threatened, they didn’t seem overly aggressive. But the Orc woman kept her eyes on them anyway.
Taid eyed the tree as he approached it. It was charred, and only the trunk had burned down to a stump some four meters high. It was about two meters in diameter, with a few of the lower, larger branches, devoid of any smaller branches, still attached. He moved around it, looking at all sides, looking for the best place to climb it.
On the far side was a crevice in the tree, like a cave opening into its trunk. He could see a hollow space inside. It was dark, both because it was charred, and because the sun had dropped below the level of the treetops, and everything was in shadow.
He looked around. There were broken and burned branches all around him, some still with little flames struggling to stay alight on them. He picked one up, and used it as a torch. The meager light was enough for his sensitive Dwarven eyes.
Just inside, in what appeared to be a little alcove, was a cluster of five candles, nestled in all of the charcoal. He stuck his head in to get a closer look. It was a severed hand, with the stump of a wrist, with each finger a lit candle. Over the smell of the charcoal and burnt wood, he could smell the distinctive scent of tallow.
The hand looked like the hand of an adult, probably male, covered in soot. It was also magical; Taid could tell that with his mage senses.
He grabbed it by the wrist, lifting and drawing it out from the hole in the tree. The flames on the tips of the fingers were still burning.
Almë made his way over to him, looking at the hand in Taid’s hand. “Huh,” he said.
“Maybe this is what summoned the fire elemental up above,” Taid said.
“Anything else in there?” Almë asked.
“This was it. We got robbed. I was hoping for a big chest of treasure. Like in the tales.”
“Fat chance. This is real life. Besides, how would a fire elemental carry a chest? Maybe he carried his coins in a little pocket of fire.”
“Hah! That would be hilarious. Probably melt the coins into a useless lump.”
Almë eyed the tree where the elemental had sat. He climbed up. The top was a charred bowl, formed by the burning fire elemental.
Almë climbed back down, and the two of them went back to the rest of the group.
“Well gang,” Taid said, “I’ve got to hand it to you.” He held out the burning candle-hand. “Anyone know what the hell this is?”
Ruby looked at it, combing through her memories of the theoretical thaumatology lectures she’d gotten from her master when she had been apprenticed. “I think it’s a called a ‘hand of glory’, and it’s used in summoning spells.”
“Why would somebody summon this bullshit here?” Almë asked rhetorically. “It makes no sense. To disrupt traffic on the river or something?”
“It disrupted us,” Itura said with a shrug. She looked over at the hand. “That thing is gross.”
“So,” Taid said, “we have a hand.”
“And it’s still burning,” Elitheris said, “but I don’t know what that means.”
“What happens if we blow out the candles? Does anyone know? Ruby?”
“No idea,” the Hobbit mage said. My studies didn’t delve deeply into that kind of thing. More of an off-hand reference. It’s not the kind of magic I studied.”
“Well, I didn’t have any problem keeping it lit while walking over here.” Normally candles didn’t fare well in the open air, what with all the breezes suddenly coming up.
“I say we blow them out before it summons anything else,” Almë suggested.
“The question is, does that cancel its magic, or whatever.” Taid looked intently at the hand, and the candle flames. They didn’t even waver in the slight breeze.
“Probably not, but we don’t know,” Almë added.
Taid came to a decision. “All right, let’s blow them out.” He blew his breath at them, as if he were blowing the candles out on a birthday cake. The flames wavered a bit, but didn’t go out. Taid frowned, and blew harder. Again, they wavered, but didn’t go out.
“Well, damn,” he said.
“Do it with your fingers,” Almë said, miming pinching out the flames.
Taid removed his remaining glove. He pinched the flames, but they didn’t go out. “Damn,” he said, sucking on his fingers, “that hurt.”
“Need to get back to the smithing,” Eykit said. “Build up your heat tolerance.”
“I could cast the spell of Fire Extinguishing,” Ruby commented.
Taid thought about it. “Nah. I say let’s leave it on. We’re getting close to Dwarfchat. Let’s leave it until we get into Dwarfchat. Maybe we can find out if it’s actually useful in any way. It clearly doesn’t want to go out by itself. So let’s leave it on and see if that’s part of the magic.”
“Okay by me,” Almë said. “Maybe it’ll go out when we leave the area.”
“I’ll put it somewhere on the boat. Let it glow and do its thing.”
“You can try putting it in the water. See what happens when you hold it in the river.”
That decided, they moved back towards the river and the boat, sneaking past the remaining fire sprites, avoiding the areas where the fire birds were, skirting the places where the fire-breathing rats were, and skillfully not aggravating the flame snakes. Soon they stood on the muddy, ashen bank, the boat moored on the far bank. Once the crew on the boat saw them, they rowed over so they could get back on it.
“Dip it in the water,” Almë said.
Taid looked at him with an “I don’t think that’s a good idea” look.
“Just for testing reasons. For knowledge.”
“I know, but we could lose our magic ability on this and lose its value.”
Eykit nodded. He didn’t like the idea of getting less for it if they sold it. That thought was antithetical to his philosophy.
“Then we turn it on again,” Almë soothed.
“What if it was lit by some special incantation?” Taid asked.
“We’ll figure it out.”
“All right, I don’t care.” Taid dunked it in the river. The flames went out. The river was delightfully cool on his hand. He pulled the hand of glory back out, where it dripped in his grasp. The flames didn’t re-light.
“Can you re-light it?” Elitheris asked.
“Is it still a hand of glory now?” Taid asked.
“I’d say that’s a future problem,” Almë said. “Let’s board the boat.”
In the distance, flitting from tree branch to tree branch, the fire birds went about their business, whatever that was. Putting out the Hand of Glory hadn’t seemed to affect them. They couldn’t see any of the rats or snakes, but it stood to reason that they were unaffected as well.
It was getting dark. “I want to get back on the boat,” Elitheris said. “I’m getting hungry.”
“Yeah, me too,” Ruby said.
They got back on the boat, and Captain Gwendal guided the boat upriver. They sailed until they got the edge of the burned out area, moored on the opposite bank, and made camp for the night.
They could see small fires burning away at the edges of the area, and every now and then, they could see one of the small fire sprites, happily consuming the jungle, extending the burned out area.
“We didn’t kill the little elementals,” Elitheris stated. “They area still damaging the forest.”
“Yep,” Almë said. “I’d love to just say ‘not my forest’, but it’s all my forest.”
Elitheris nodded, knowing that the tall Elf didn’t mean it in a possessive way. He meant it as a duty. She felt the same way. But they weren’t going to do anything about it that evening. Whatever they did, it would have to wait until dawn.
Taid, Almë, and Ruby spent the evening channeling power into their staffs, to refill what had been used. It took maybe two hours, total, to do that. It was tiring work, but they had all night to rest, and they felt better having the insurance of extra magic power when they needed it.
Velisday, Leafturn 26, 879 AFE
They awoke at dawn. Some had slept on the deck, some in hammocks strung from the mast to the bulwarks, and some had slept on shore. Most were stiff, and the air stunk of smoke. The edge of the burned area had expanded overnight, and was ten meters farther upriver. It seemed to be a slow, but inexorable creep, the jungle turning to ashes and charred wood.
Almë looked at the ashen landscape, then up at the pall of smoke that hung above their heads like dirty overcast. Dawn’s light was watery and thin, and tinted a grayish orange. He scrubbed at his face, and the remains of his hair; ashes fell out of it like grungy dandruff.
“I could turn into a bird, and fly over there and scout it out,” Ruby offered.
“I’ve got an appointment with a Dwarven woman,” he said. “So I’m voting to move on.”
Elitheris gave him a look, but he was still looking out at the landscape, so he missed it.
“It’s clear that the thing we took out—“ Elitheris started.
“The Hand of Glory?” Taid asked.
“Yeah. Doing that didn’t affect anything else that’s going on in this jungle. The fire birds are still fire birds, the fire rats are still fire rats. Whatever that thing cast, it isn’t done. Even if we killed that big elemental.”
“We probably have to get the Hand farther away from it,” Almë said. “Then it will sort itself out.”
“We’ve got it outside the area already. It’s still doing its thing.”
“Maybe it needs to be farther. Like in Dwarfchat.”
“I think Ruby’s idea of flying over it isn’t a bad one. Maybe we missed something.” She turned to Ruby. “If you’re willing to fly around, I say go for it.”
"Okay,” Ruby said. “Anyone else have an opinion?”
“I’m fine with you going,” Taid said. Eykit nodded.
“I just feel that we’ve already invested all this time in this area,” Elitheris said. “We should…kind of finish it. Might as well not be half-assed about it, since we’ve already done as much as we have.” Besides, she didn’t like wildfires, with a deep and personal intensity. And this one was growing, even if slowly. That could simply be from the ambient moisture in the area, but they’d been rising in altitude this entire boat ride, and getting closer to the mountains.
She knew it would get drier and more temperate, losing the defense that moisture and saturated plants had against flames. And then it was highly likely that the slow creep of the burned border would change to a faster, more dangerous race. Wildfires, she knew, could outrun a person. And if the small fires she could see joined into larger ones, then even larger ones, it could turn into a raging firestorm. She shuddered. She definitely didn’t want that. Now was the time to take care of the problem. Not when it was bigger.
She couldn’t fathom why an Elven plant mage, of all people, wanted to leave this as it was.
Ruby cast her spell, and her pudgy Hobbit form changed into a sleek falcon. She preened her feathers, then leapt into the air on broad wings. She rose in a circle above the boat; she wanted plenty of altitude before she traversed the skies above the burned landscape.
It didn’t take her long to notice a few things about the area she viewed from above. One was that the area seemed to be centered on that tree that had had the elemental perched on it. The second thing she noticed was that the burned out area was almost perfectly circular, the final shape being modified by the variations in the landscape.
She could also see the flames, burning at the edges of the circle. And she could see seven of the fire sprites. It took her a while to spot them, because the only difference between them and the more normal fires were that they moved about. They skirted the edges, moving back and forth, causing fires to start.
The fires tended to be pretty small, and usually burned themselves out in minutes, but the fire sprites would just keep going over areas, relighting the fires, until those sections had burned to blackened wood and grey ash.
She could see the fire birds, roosting the burnt out remnants of trees, and every once in a while they would fly over to a different perch. Sometimes, if they got too close to one another, territorial fights broke out.
She could see the fire snakes, moving around the landscape like curvy glowing lines. And, every once in a while, she thought she could see the glowing eyes of the rats, but they mostly kept out of sight.
What she didn’t see were any structures, or any other trees like the one in the center. While some trees were still standing, most had fallen over when their trunks had burned through. The ones still standing were thin, black spires, with only a few black branches still attached.
Having seen enough, Ruby banked, turning back towards the river, the boat, and her companions. The flames, small and scattered as they were, still managed to provide a few updrafts. It didn’t take her long to get back; at the cruising speed of a falcon, it was the matter of about a minute.
On her way back, she saw a stag near the edge of the area, standing in a pile of ash and charcoal. Smoke came from its nostrils, and patches of its fur, normally a warm-toned brown, was becoming distinctly reddish.
She shifted back into her normal form and told them what she saw.
“So this thing isn’t just burning down forests,” Elitheris said, “it’s taking over the animals as it goes.”
“If you want, you can go kill them,” Almë said. “I would like to refill the staffs.”
“Captain,” Elitheris asked, “how much longer to Dwarfchat?”
He scratched his beard, looking upriver towards the mountains. “Four or five.”
“Ah,” she said, disappointed. “I was hoping that we could report this to somebody who would go back and do something about it.”
“Look,” Taid said, tired of the discussion. “We know how to kill them. Ruby can make us fire proof, and I can make our weapons effective. I don’t think it will take much to kill the fire sprites. In a one on one fight against us, they don’t stand a chance.”
“Fine,” Almë said.
After all was said and done, Elitheris, Taid, Almë, and Ruby made their way across the ashen landscape, being as stealthy as they could to avoid alerting the sprites, the birds, or stumbling into any of the snakes.
They got close to the first of the fire sprites, and Ruby cast her spell of Fire Resistance on Taid, while he cast his spell of Icy Weapon on his halberd.
The fire sprite realized that Taid was there moments before Maggie, trailing a streamer of cold mist, descended upon it. In its last moments, it threw a fireball at Taid, striking him in the chest. It lived just long enough to see that the fire ball had no actual effect on the Dwarf.
The second sprite dropped just as fast. Third did as well.
Ruby stepped on a brittle, burned branch; it snapped with what seemed to be a loud crack. They all paused, looking around, trying to see if anything noticed or was reacting in any way. Almë saw, or thought he saw, some glowing eyes in the shadow of a pile of debris dart away. But nothing else seemed to notice. They continued onward, towards the next fire sprite.
Ruby cast Fire Resistance on Taid again, like all of the other times. His Icy Weapon was still going, feeding off of the ambient mana around them. Given the hot, 34° C day, the coolness coming off of it felt welcome.
“It’s nice being invincible,” Taid whispered as they made their way towards the next fire sprite. “Takes a lot of the fear of death away.”
“You think?” Almë said with a grin.
The fifth fire sprite appeared to be climbing up and down a tree at the edge of the area, spreading its flames up and down the trunk. Again, Ruby made Taid immune to flames, and he crept up to the fire sprite. He got within five meters of it before it saw him.
It threw a fireball at him, and he reflexively jumped out of the way, despite his immunity. Had he just let it hit him, he would’ve merely felt a light breeze. But his military training bypassed his conscious mind, and his body reacted. The ball of fire hit a pile of ash and embers, and sparks puffed up from its impact point.
A few seconds later, and the fifth fire sprite had felt the icy touch of Maggie. They moved on, following the jungle’s edge.
Behind them, Elitheris could see a doe, possibly the mate of the stag Ruby had seen. Its fur was red, with what appeared to be embers at the ends of the hairs. As it moved, the tiny points of orange light flexed and shifted, appearing as if it wore a skin tight fabric made of glowing topaz. It didn’t seem to see them, though.
The next one died quickly too. They had lots of practice with these things. It was almost too easy. The seventh, and last one that they could find, died quickly too.
They were close to the downstream edge of the burned out area; to get back to the boat they would have to walk upriver for about two kilometers. They set out, still paying attention to avoid the birds, snakes, and whatever else might have been corrupted by the area. They had to stop and wait for a snake to get out of the way ahead of them, but that only took a minute or so before they could continue onward. None of the animals, corrupted or not, seemed all that interested in attacking them.
They did notice that the fires along the edges of the jungle guttered and burned out, likely due to how wet the plants were. Without the fire sprites to reignite them, the fires had too difficult a time staying lit for very long. And none of the other corrupted animals appeared to be actively spreading any fires. They knew that they could, given their fiery modes of attack, but any fire was more likely a side effect, rather than a motive for it.
About halfway back to the boat, they saw a trihorn antelope leap its way across the blackened landscape. Its fur was orange, and its antlers were aflame. Its fiery crown didn’t seem to bother it at all.
Elitheris saw it and shook her head. “I’m hoping that by killing the sprites we’ve stopped the spread of this area, but apparently we can’t really do anything about the animals it has already corrupted.”
Taid shrugged. “Unless the fire sprites had been the ones maintaining the spell, or ritual, or whatever had caused this area to appear.”
They made it back to the boat.
Taid put the Hand of Glory down by Wilbur’s hooves. He kicked it out from under him; he wanted nothing to do with it. Taid rescued it from under the deck boards. If it decided to relight itself, having it wedged under the deck boards would be a bad idea.
Once on board, and the boat was headed upriver, Almë decided to do something about his damaged head of hair. And he had just the spell to do it.
The spell of Hair Growth makes the subject’s hair grow about a million times faster, resulting in an inch of growth every five or so seconds. But hair is keratin, and the spell doesn’t discriminate, so his fingernails were growing at about an inch every thirty seconds. Fortunately, without continuing to power the spell, it only lasts for five seconds. If he’d let it go on long enough, he’d have have to remove his boots, because his toenails were growing too.
All of his body hair had grown over ten centimeters long. Since he wasn’t an old Elf, his face remained free of facial hair. But the long hair on his arms and legs made his sleeves and leggings itch, and he really didn't want to discuss how his crotch felt.
Taid wasn’t impressed; proper people had beards, and the longer the better.
Almë used his knife to trim his fingernails; they’d grown out 4 millimeters. “Hey,” he called out, “anyone on this boat know how to trim hair?” He'd take care of his abundance of body hair later, in a more private setting than an open boat.
Artur ran his hand over his black bald head and grinned. “I can. But you went to all the trouble to grow some more hair; you don’t want me touching it.”
Alexa looked up from her oar. “I’ve got some scissors. I’ll take care of it when I’m off shift.”
“She’ll make you look pretty, Elf-boy,” Elias said. He, like Artur, didn’t need her hair cutting services; he was as bald as Artur.
They made camp without further incident.
Ralsday, Leafturn 27, 879 AFE
Taid had taken first watch. Elitheris had the dawn watch. As the sky was starting to lighten with the first light of false dawn, she noticed that several of the trees nearby had greenish, glowing runes on them.
A half dozen trees had odd, curvilinear glyphs on them. It wasn’t just trees near the campsite; while one was fairly close at about ten meters distance, the others were deeper into the jungle.
She rose, and walked over to examine them more closely. They weren’t carved into the trees, it looked simply like a light projected onto them. She didn’t recognize them specifically, although she had seen sigils similar to them along the borders of magic texts.
The trees weren’t in any kind of discernible pattern.
As she approached the first tree, she could see that the trees were exuding some kind of thick goop from the runes. It was thick, and ran down the tree like sap. But it wasn’t sap. But it was magical, and her mage senses registered it, like they did with enchanted items. She could just feel it. And it was right most of the time. The mucus-like sap didn’t seem to be affecting the tree in any way.
Elitheris looked at the ground around the affected trees. There were no obvious prints, no footprints to show that someone had been there putting the runes on the tree. She did find some deer pellets, and found a couple of deer prints. But nothing to indicate who had made them.
She woke Jory up.
“What? What?”, he mumbled, alarmed. “Something happening?” He rubbed sleep out of his eyes. It wasn’t usually a good thing when the sentry woke you up in the middle of the night.
“Yeah, something’s happening. Get up. I’ve got something to show you.” She backed off, giving him room to emerge from his tarp shelter.
He stood, stretched, and looked up at the sky. It was almost dawn.
“Sorry I ruined your sleep,” Elitheris apologized. “Grab you sketchbook.”
“It’s fine,” he said around a yawn. “Looks like I was going to get up in a few minutes anyway.” He reached into his pack and extracted his sketchbook. “What needs to be drawn?”
“Come,” the Elf said, leading him out from the camp.
He trudged after her, his eyes mostly closed. He was about four meters away from the first rune when he looked up and realized it was there. “What the heck is that?” His curiosity piqued, and his sleepiness forgotten, he walked up to the tree for a closer look. His finger touched the goop, and he rubbed the residue between his finger and thumb. “Ah! It tingles!”
“You haven’t sketched them yet, dumbass!” Elitheris said, exasperated. She didn’t know what that goop did, and if it dissolved his fingers before he drew the runes, she’d be pissed. “Sketch the runes.”
“Alright, alright,” Jory replied, opening his sketchbook.
“You had one job!”
“You should have stopped me from touching it, then!”
It didn’t take him too long to sketch the rune and a fair representation of the tree it was on, and the goop that dripped from it. When he finished, and his focus shifted, he saw the others. “Oh gods! How many of these things are there?” With that, he wandered over to the next tree, and sketched that one.
He went from tree to tree, sketching all of the runes. They were all different, all of about the same general size, and all with similar design motifs.
“What is that goop stuff, anyway?” he asked Elitheris, as if she were the expert on it.
“I don’t know.”
“I can still feel the tingling on my fingertips. Doesn’t hurt; it’s like when your foot falls asleep, sort of.”
“Interesting.” She looked around, finding a bush with the typical large, dark leaves of understory jungle plants. She picked one. Then she found a stick, and used the stick to scrape some of the goop into the leaf. It sat there on the leaf, a clumpy, colorless, translucent sap-like material. It smelled of bitter mint and menthol.
She knew just who to wake up. Surely he would know what this stuff was? Or, if not, would at least be interested in it.
She and Jory walked back to camp. She nudged Almë with her boot.
“Hey hey hey hey hey!” he said, fending off her foot. “I’m awake! Get your toes out of my ribs.” He crawled out of his bedroll. “What?”
“I’m here to put your skills to good use for a change.”
Groggy, Almë mumbled, “What am I putting to good use?”
“I need to show you something. Come. Get your pants on, man. I’ve got to show you something.” She walked back out of camp.
Skeptical, he followed, putting his pants on as he went, hopping on one foot, then the other.
It didn’t take him long to see the runes. They were brightly glowing, at eye height, and a beautiful teal color. He could see the goop, too. And he, like Elitheris, could tell it was enchanted. He could feel it.
He examined the tree, but there was no evidence of any damage to the tree. He was pretty confident that whatever this was, it wasn’t a natural process. He touched the goop with an outstretched finger, and pinched off a bit, rubbing it between his fingers. He felt a tingling sensation, almost like his fingertips fell asleep. It wasn’t unpleasant, just tingly.
He tasted the residue on his fingers. It tasted like bitter mint. And his tongue and lips now tingled as well. It didn’t feel numb, just…tingly. The tingling sensation went away after about thirty seconds.
Frowning, he looked around. There were six trees that had the glyphs on them. There were three different species of trees represented, of varying ages, although all were “adult” trees, not saplings. Similar trees were all around him, so the chosen trees didn’t really stand out in any way. They seemed like plain old normal trees.
He went back to camp, knelt by Ruby’s shelter that she shared with Nori, and gently woke her. “Uh, Elitheris found something. There are runes on trees. She didn’t blow us up this time, but maybe you can figure out what is going on here.”
Ruby got up, scrubbed the sleepy gunk out of her eyes, and went to go look at the runes.
They were about sixty centimeters above her head. Glowing a greenish color, and causing the tree to exude some kind of unguent-like substance. And it was a magic unguent, although it didn’t match any alchemical elixirs she was aware of. She was pretty certain she’d never come across this before in any of her alchemical studies. Or, for that matter, he magical ones.
“If it makes any difference,” Almë said, “it has the taste of bitter mint. And it causes a tingly sensation.” He had a thought. “I wonder if this is the result of an Elven ritual?”
Ruby looked at him and shrugged. “You’d know better than I would.”
“Ah, fuck it,” Almë said, and he scraped off some goop off of the tree with his hand, then ate it, swallowing the thick, mucus-like substance. It went down, slowly, tingling the whole way.
What felt like warmth at first flooded out from his stomach. The grogginess he felt from being woken too early disappeared, and his eyes dilated and became very wide. He started moving in quick, jerky motions, like he was hopped up on an entire carafe of the strongest coffee. He had the jitters.
He practically ran the ten meters back to camp, rustled frantically through his pack, and came back with a ceramic jar. He then ran from tree to tree, quickly scraping every scrap of the goop into the jar that he could. Even when standing in place, he bounced, unable to contain the frenetic energy that seemed to consume him. He wan’t even breathing hard.
“What did it do to you?” Ruby asked him.
He didn’t answer, he just continued scraping the goop into the jar. He looked around, trying to find landmarks. He wanted to harvest this stuff again.
He had an idea. He ran back to the riverbank, and found a sapling. “Perfect!” he said, and cast the spell of Plant Shaping. When he was done, it formed a large letter A. That should mark the spot well enough. The trees with the glyphs were only about twenty meters from the riverbank.
He did notice that there was some kind of variation in the physical conditions that spell casting cost him. It didn’t seem as bad. It wasn’t much, but it was noticeable.
He was still full of energy. He helped the crew break down the camp, even before they had fully awakened.
With Almë’s frenetic help, the camp was packed up in about half the time. Part of it was Almë’s example, which encouraged everyone else to go faster than usual. But they were on the boat and sailing upriver very quickly. They ate a breakfast of cold traveler’s rations on board.
Taid and Elitheris went around casting spells of healing on the wounded crew, Mr. Wiggles, and Wilbur. They rested as necessary between casts to avoid becoming too exhausted by spell casting.
The crew grumbled a little about the attack, and how they were in the most exposed positions. But Alexa noted that they were being fixed up by competent healers, for free. “Erven, if you were in town, the healers would have charged you several hundred Imperial Marks for that treatment, if magical healing was available at all. You know they have strict rules for triage.”
Erven’s face screwed up in a show of disgust. “Yeah, unless the patient is rich and powerful. They don’t seem to have trouble getting magical healing.”
“So be thankful our passengers have those skills, and are willing to use them.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n!” he said, saluting her.
She just gave him a stern look, glancing at Captain Gwendal, who was up and about, now that his burnt arm was healed. He just shook his head dismissively. He figured that Erven was just making a joke, given that Alexa had had the presence of mind to take over when he was incapacitated, and not being disrespectful.
Taid was stretched thin, trying to heal everyone, and Elitheris stepped in to help. She had some healing spells, although she wasn’t as good as Taid was with them. Erven was the most badly wounded, having been hit multiple times by fireballs. He was unconscious; large swaths of his skin showed signs of second degree burns. Taid had already cast a spell of Major Healing upon him, which helped quite a bit, but he was still gravely injured.
Elitheris knelt by his side, going over in her head the movements and words of the spell she had laboriously learned from the book she had found. She began casting, feeding energy into it as it built up in her mind. There was a flash of light, and she toppled over, falling across Erven’s legs, sprawled on the deck.
“Eli!” Taid cried out, alarmed, as he saw her slump. She didn’t respond. He went over to her, checking her pulse. She still had one, and was breathing. She seemed simply unconscious. “She’s still breathing,” he said to the others, when he noticed them looking in his direction, alarmed.
Ruby came over to Taid and Elitheris, checking Elitheris for wounds. She didn’t find any, even when she unbuckled the gambeson to check underneath.
Taid looked around for potential enemies, but saw nothing threatening. He knew that she wasn’t a good mage, so his suspicion, once he had determined that there were no visible enemies, was that something had gone wrong.
Ruby came to the same conclusion as Taid: Elitheris had done something to herself, and whatever it was, it had caused her to feint dead away. Ruby cast a spell of Lend Energy, sacrificing some of her own energy in order to give some to the Elven woman sprawled out on the deck.
Elitheris groaned, and her eyes snapped open. “What happened?” she asked.
Taid looked down at her. “That thing you just did? Don’t do that.” He patted her on the shoulder. “Ruby and I think you really, really botched a spell casting. Avoid doing that. Eventually you end up summoning a demon, or blowing yourself up.”
Elitheris thought back to the days in the forest, sitting on a tree log, reading through the healing book she had surreptitiously taken from the town’s library. She had spent hours reading through it, trying to figure out the body, arm, and hand motions based upon the few illustrations in the book. The magic words were easier, although forming the complicated mental images at the same time was tricky. She had set a snare and caught a rabbit, and the wire had cut into its neck as it attempted to escape. She had practiced her healing spell on it, but had done something wrong then, too, and watched in horror as the two inch long shallow cut widened, spraying out arterial blood in a frothing gush. She had flung the writhing hare away from herself, but not before become painted with its blood. It wasn’t one of her happier memories.
The triage, first aid, and healing took a while, but a few hours later it was done. Taid, especially was rather tired, and he surveyed both Jacora’s staff and his own halberd, both of which were pretty tapped out as far as their stored mana was concerned. It would take hours of work to refill them.
Erven was the only one still wounded; his wounds had been too great to completely heal all at once. But they reassured him that they would be able to fix him up completely the following day.
“We still need to find out about that fire on that tree,” Taid said, indicating the fire in the distance. As he watched, he could see other, smaller fires moving around. There were more of those fire sprites.
“Why?” Eykit and Elitheris both asked.
Taid looked at Elitheris. “It’s burning down the forest, right?” He turned to Eykit. “And it would be like walking away from a dangerous rival intent on taking over your turf.”
Eykit nodded, getting the analogy. “Fuck. Well, as long as you can make my knives icy, I think I can manage.”
“Besides,” Almë added, “they might have fire sprite poop or something that we can collect for our alchemist.”
Ruby shook her head. “Taid, when you killed them, did they leave any residue behind?”
“Not that I saw.”
“They probably don’t have anything alchemically useful.” But maybe, she thought, there might be something in the burned out area that might be alchemically useful, such as the ashes of a tree burned by a fire elemental. It was unlikely; she hadn’t heard any rumors, notes, or theories about such a thing, but she wasn’t an alchemy expert. She knew enough to do basic alchemy, and to recognize most of the more common alchemical materials and uses.
Almë nodded. He knew, as well as she did, that fire elementals didn’t really leave any residue behind, like air elementals, but unlike water or earth elementals. Those left something behind when the animating force that moved them was killed or dispelled. At least, if vaporous elementals actually did leave anything behind, there was no way to retrieve it.
“Yep,” Elitheris said, “Fire bad. Stay away from fire.”
Ruby glanced at Elitheris, understanding why she felt that way. Elven memories could be long, and the trauma that informed the Elven woman’s view was still fresh, having happened only about 70 years ago.
“So, are we moving on to Dwarfchat?” Almë asked.
“Yeah, let’s leave,” Elitheris agreed.
“There is that big bonfire over there, sitting on that tree,” Taid said. “Maybe there is something useful there, for Ruby maybe. She’s all fiery.”
Once he heard Taid’s comment, Almë was eager to get off the boat and explore the burned out area. The idea of loot motivated him.
Eykit glanced at him appreciatively, thinking, He’s learning. Good. We’ll make a properly motivated person yet.
“We can’t just row back over there without a plan,” Elitheris said. She wasn’t sure of the idea of going back into danger, but the jungle was burning, something that some forests needed, but not jungles. Elven lore stated that there were some kinds of forests, mostly conifer forests, that required fire to set their seeds. And in some cases, clearing out the underbrush with small, controlled fires could prevent disastrous wildfires by depriving them of potential fuel. Jungles, however, didn’t need any of that.
“There’s going to be some strategy here, or we don’t go.”
“Well,” Taid said, “we learned how to fight the small flame sprites pretty well. I think it should help us fight the bigger guy.”
“Without your spell, I’ve got fuck-all that will affect these things. Arrows just burn up, and I like stabbing people at a distance.”
“You killed several of those little bastards once the Icy Missiles was in effect.”
“True,” Elitheris admitted.
Almë looked across the river into the burned out area, trying to peer past the rocks that shielded them. He couldn’t see much; even had the rocks not been there obscuring part of his view, the rolling landscape would have hidden much of what might be over there.
Ruby spoke up. “Elementals are spirits, summoned into a temporary body made up of whatever material the summoner chooses. Historically, it’s usually one of the four primary elemental forms: air, water, fire, or earth. The given body determines what kinds of powers the elemental has. But in essence, the elementals themselves, are just spirits. They are diffuse, and hard to hurt because of that.”
“Similar to that ghost skull that Herbert used on us,” Taid said. “We could hurt it, but not very well or very quickly. I imagine that the fire elementals—those sprites, or whatever we want to call them—are similar. We can slowly whittle them down with swords and arrows and what have you. But the icy weaponry seemed to hurt them a lot.”
“Fire tends to be vulnerable to water, Ruby said. “Or ice. A few hits of that, and the sprites seemed to die.”
Almë, still looking into the burned out area, caught a glimpse of a flamelet moving around in the distance, heading from the center area where the bonfire was towards the edges. He mentioned this to everyone else on the ship.
“Can you see any groups of them?” Taid asked the tall Elf.
“No, I’ve only seen a few, and they seem to be singletons.”
Taid nodded. He liked that. “So I say what we do is get up close, give Elitheris the Icy Missiles, and have her shoot it. If they are spaced out around that kilometers wide area, we should be able to get them one by one. We’ll be able to gauge how they react when we attack the first one. Then we can see if we need to adjust our tactics at all. Maybe we can open a door into their line of sentries to get inside and take out their leader. Or whatever that big bonfire is.”
The burly Dwarf turned towards Ruby and Almë. “You guys know any sneaking or invisibility spells or anything like that?”
The other two mages shook their heads. All they had was nonmagical, mundane stealth. But they had an entire landscape of cover: hills, ravines, washes, stumps, and a clutter of burned out trees and logs scattered all over the ashen terrain.
“I’m all for going over there and taking out whatever sprites we find,” Elitheris said, “but I’d like to rest first. Spellcasting is tiring work.”
Taid nodded; he had to admit to himself that he felt similarly. His Dwarven constitution was superior to his Elven companions, but he’d done a lot more spell casting than she had.
Meanwhile, Almë watched the opposite shore, wary of any fire creatures coming too close to the shore. He didn’t want any surprises. If more balls of fire were thrown at them, he wanted as much warning as possible.
“We’ve drained the stored energy in our staves, as well,” Taid said. “I’ve even dipped into Jacora’s staff. That’s a rare occurrence. If we are going to be resting for a bit, maybe we can channel some energy into our staves while we wait.”
Ruby didn’t respond; she was already sitting crosslegged, leaning against the bulwark of the boat, her staff laying across her lap. She was already focusing power into it, in order to charge it back up again. Her power stones would have to gain their power back at their own rates.
Almë’s staff, or rather his dead wife’s staff which he now used, was still topped up. He hadn’t used it at all in the fight. But he took Jacora’s staff from Taid, sat down, meditated until he reached a trance-like state, and started focusing his power into the staff. It took only a few minutes; he only put in about half of his own power. Then he had to rest for over an hour to recover.
Taid took the staff back, and did the same, focusing some of his mana energies into the staff, then resting to recover.
They even got Elitheris to contribute a bit of energy, once they taught her how to do it. It hadn’t been something she’d ever done before, but it really wasn’t all that difficult to focus and channel the mana into the staff. It was similar to spell casting; she gathered the energy in her mind, then, as if casting a spell, sent the energy into the staff, which acted somewhat like a magnet to iron filings. To her surprise, it almost felt as if the mana energy was sucked into the staff, and the feeling of sudden drainage startled her for a moment.
They had arrived at the burned out section of jungle not too long after midday. The conflict with the fire creatures hadn’t taken all that long, although it certainly felt long in the throes of fear and adrenaline. Triage and medical care had taken another couple of hours, and now the sun was beginning to dip towards the horizon. It was getting late in the afternoon.
The wind shifted, carrying the smell of smoke and ashes in their direction. The air felt hot and heavy, and there were flakes of ashes floating in it like dirty snowflakes.
They took what gear they wanted with them out of their packs, which they planned to leave behind on the boat. There was little need to carry so much weight on what should be a short day trip.
Elitheris got her potions and power stones out of her pack; she wanted those with her, and she held the collection of items loose in her hands.
Elias, ever the helpful and friendly sailor, saw Elitheris holding her pile of loose items. “I’ve got my bag of yarns and such,” he told her. “You can use it, if you like.”
She nodded, and he pulled out his knitting materials, shoving them under the cargo tarp to keep them dry until he could get his bag back. He handed the empty shoulder bag, about the size of a large purse, to the Elven woman.
Elitheris put her gear in it, then slid the strap over her head, hanging the bag on the opposite side from her quiver. It would make getting her knife out a little slower and more troublesome, but it was better than obstructing her access to her main weapons.
The plan set, they had Captain Gwendal get the boat over to the burned out shore so they could go over the side and splash their way to the ash-covered landscape. Itura wanted to go with them. She had a beef with those fire sprite things; she didn’t take their attacks on her and her crew mates lightly.
Besides, she was an Orc. She could see heat with her Orcish eyes, and since these things were literally fire, she might be able to see them before anyone else might.
As they walked from the water to the riverbank, they scanned the area ahead of them for any fire sprites. If at all possible, they wanted to sneak up on them one by one. Individually, they seemed fairly weak. They got dangerous in large groups, and avoiding that possibility was the order of the day.
They stood on the riverbank. It was rocky, strewn with rounded pebbles ranging in size from pea-sized to stones the size of their heads. All were coated in a greyish layer of ash, liberally mixed with black grains of charcoal. Around them were the burned out remains of tree trunks, some still standing like black, skeletal fingers, but most fallen over and forming a labyrinth of treacherous, crumbling obstacles.
The only flame sprite they could see was several hundred meters away. It was moving from place to place, and they only got short momentary glimpses of it before it was hidden again by a hill or fallen tree.
They could also see flickers of movement up in the burned out trees, off in the distance. If the sun wasn’t setting, and the landscape throwing the area into shadow, it was unlikely they would even had seen that. But the flickers of movement were glowing, making them stand out against the darker background.
As they watched, the little flicks of motion would arc up off a branch, dip down, then back up again to a nearby branch. But they were too far away to get any real detail.
Itura was glancing all around them. “There are lots of things around here,” she said nervously. Both her arms pointed from one spot to another, ranging all around them, and fairly close by. “They are small. About the size of my fist.”
Everyone immediately started scanning the area for movement, and at first, no one saw anything in the jumble of charred logs and branches.
“I see it!” Ruby exclaimed. It was a small rodent. It had darted out from beneath a burned stump, hopped over a fallen branch, and disappeared under a pile of charcoal and rubble.
It had appeared to be a rat, about the size of someone’s fist, with a long tail. And glowing orange eyes.
“What was it?” Taid asked.
“Some kind of rat. With fiery orange eyes,” Ruby replied, her head swiveling, trying to find it.
“Well, that’s different. Shapeshifted fire mage? Damn, do we have to kill this rat now? Gods damn it.”
“Possessed?” Elitheris asked.
“Maybe?” Taid replied. His head was on a swivel too. It was possible that these rats, which Itura could sense, but they couldn’t yet see, were enemies. He gripped Maggie tightly in his gloved hands.
“Maybe it’s been granted fire abilities.”
Taid grit his teeth. If we lose to a rat, we’re going to turn around and get back on the boat, he thought. He advanced towards where Ruby had said she’d seen the rat, leading with his halberd.
Elitheris pulled back the arrow she’d had nocked, but undrawn, aiming past Taid in case she could see the target. A rat wasn’t diffuse; she figured an arrow would ruin its day right quick.
Ruby, being an animal lover and a Hobbit, always carried a bit of food with her. Some of it was for her, when she started to feel peckish. But most was for whatever animal she came across. She always felt a bit of pleasure when she could feed some wandering animal. There were some chunks of ship’s biscuit in her snack pouch, she got a smallish piece and tossed it midway between where she saw it disappear into the pile of branches and where they stood. It hit the ash-covered ground, bounced with a puff of grey ash, and came to rest next to a piece of charcoal that had been part of a tree trunk.
It took a moment, but then the rodent popped its head out from its hiding place, sniffing the air. It hadn’t been a trick of the light, or a reflection of flames; the eyes were definitely glowing orange. In the early twilight, they could see that they shed light, its little rat face tinted orange. They could also see that smoke curled off of it, as if it were an ember just starting to catch fire.
Sniffing the air, its whiskers twitching, the orange-eyed rat hopped out from its hiding place, grabbed the chunk of hard bread in its tiny, little hands, and scampered back under the pile of rubble.
“Give me a chunk of that biscuit,” Taid said to Ruby. She wordlessly grabbed a chunk and put it in his outstretched hand. “I want to pick it up and see if it does anything to us.” Then Taid walked towards where the rat hid. He was hoping to grab it, but didn’t think it likely that it would just stay there and let him. But maybe he might get lucky.
He crouched down and put the bread at the entrance of the rat hole in the pile of burned branches. His other hand he held above the hole, ready to grab the rat when it came to get the bread. He could see the twin flames of its eyes just inside the opening under the rubble.
Then his vision was engulfed in the flames that jetted out of the hole. He screamed and reeled back, his hand in front of his face taking the brunt of the fire. It had breathed fire at him, and his glove was burning. He could smell the burned meat of his hand. Flames leapt up from his glove, singing the gambeson sleeve on his arm.
As he retreated from the ungrateful rat, he patted the flames out, smothering the fire in his gambeson skirt. His glove was ruined, and he couldn’t really hold anything in that hand. It bled from the burns, mostly on his palm.
Eykit had seen something like that before, up close and way too personal. A Goblin mage priest named Nopozu had come at him with a pair of jets of fire and had tried to kill him with them. But Eykit had wrestled with him, keeping the mage from being able to aim them at him. He still occasionally had nightmares about it. It had been a close thing.
“Think it might be the byproduct of what happened here?” Eykit asked. “An accident? Or something more purposeful and sinister?” He gave his companions a lopsided grin. “I don’t think it’s a shapeshifted mage. Would a mage go after a crust of bread? That seems more in line with an actual rat.” He was familiar with rats, at least the urban ones. This orange-eyed one didn’t seem that much different, excepting the fire breath. It seemed to be behaving like a normal rat.
“Yeah, I think it’s just a rat,” Elitheris agreed, “with some enhancements.”
At that, the rat hopped out, grabbed the toasted biscuit chunk, and leapt back under the pile of burnt branches.
Taid finished extinguishing the flames on his hand and glove. “Well, I’ve been injured, but we’ve learned a lot right here. The damned thing is clever, and dangerous, so that’s good to know.”
He looked around, out over the charred, ashen landscape. “I’m just wondering if this is a look at things to come. If a rat can fuck us up like that, what does that say about the rest of what we might find?”
“Well,” Elitheris said, “we don’t know what happens when we try to kill it.”
“From now on, we’d be smart to use Ruby’s spells of fire protection. And spread out and keeps some distance between us. No need for them to be able to catch more than one of us at any one time.”
There were nods all around. The rat had a significantly powerful attack, given its tiny size. Its breath weapon extended over ten times its body length, more than double that if its tail wasn’t included.
Elitheris wasn’t done talking about killing it. “Can we kill it like any other rat, or is there something special we’ll need to do?”
That question only elicited questioning looks. No one knew the answer to that yet.
“Guys,” Itura said softly, “there are more of them.”
The others looked up from where the rat had hid, scanning around. They could see two more pairs of glowing orange eyes staring in their direction. With sidelong glances at each other, they increased the distance between them, spreading out a little to reduce spillover flames.
“More rats,” Taid said. “If we leave them alone, will they attack us?”
The rats didn’t seem to be doing anything immediately threatening, but maybe they were just waiting for more reinforcements. More likely, they had been alerted by the big flare up of flame, and were assessing if they were in danger as well.
The rat breathing fire on Taid had turned what Ruby had thought might have been a cute little animal into a dangerous monster. “Taid, I can cast the spell of Resist Fire on you, and then you can stomp these little shits with Maggie.”
Elitheris turned to look at Ruby. The Hobbit was an animal lover; that sounded so unlike her normal disposition. But then, maybe these things were no longer animals in the natural sense….
“Can do,” Taid replied.
Ruby cast her spell, settling the protective magics over Taid. “Done,” she said, and the Dwarf nodded his bearded head.
He took a step forward, readying his halberd in his one good hand. It was clumsy, and awkward, but he was strong, and managed, if barely.
But Elitheris was faster, and her bow and an arrow were ready. She aimed, then let fly. The arrow struck the rat at the junction of its rear leg and body, the impact of the arrow spinning it through the air. The finger thick, 72 cm, 60 gm arrow had effectively pinned the struggling, dying rat to the ground. It struggled to move, dragging the heavy and awkward broad head arrow with it, its damaged leg held on only by a flap of tissue. It squealed in pain, its other three legs scrabbling at the ashes and dirt.
Taid heard the twang of Elitheris’ bow, then the squeal of the rat she struck. He swung Maggie down at the rat in front of him, the cheeky one that had fried his hand. That pain was still there, still smarting, and he could only barely steady the shaft of his weapon with the back of his burned hand. But gravity was working with him.
The axe blade came down, striking the rat through the dubious protection of the burned branches. They hardly slowed the blade at all, and Maggie turned the rodent into two uneven pieces of rat. As Taid watched, the smoke that had been curling off of its fur increased, then the two pieces burst into flame, consuming themselves like paper thrown into a fire.
“Well,” Almë said, “that’s unnatural. I think some shit is going on here. Have a bad feeling about this.” He started looking around, trying to see any rats that might be trying to sneak up on them.
Taid stepped over towards the rat that Elitheris had pinned with the arrow, and put it out of its misery. He left that one in two pieces as well. The pieces smoked, then burst into flame, just like the first one.
Another thing that they noticed was that they weren’t being attacked by the rats; the rat had only breathed fire when it felt threatened. There didn’t seem to be any army of rats attacking them, pissed off because some of their number had been attacked by the invading two-legs.
So, they didn’t think they really needed to worry about them, as long as they didn’t act in a threatening manner. At least, they hoped that was the case.
They moved inland, staying as quiet as they could, moving from cover to cover to keep from being seen. Taid, of course, had the hardest time being stealthy, but even Eykit, as naturally stealthy as he was, couldn’t keep his maille from being more jingly than he would like.
Now that they had entered farther into the burned out area, they could see the flames in the trees better. They appeared to be flaming birds, flying from tree limb to tree limb. If two got too close to each other, they screeched and fought, so they were obviously territorial.
They endeavored to stay away from the birds. There was no telling what a fire bird might do. They moved single file, keeping some space between them. Taid led, and Itura wanted to be up near the front, given her vision. Ruby and Norolind brought up the rear, where she could see everyone.
They didn’t want to arouse the danger sense of the birds at all, and, for the most part, they succeeded.
Almë’s foot came down on a burned branch, and it snapped under his weight with a sound that seemed louder than it probably was. But the birds heard it, and one flew over him. As it did, a meter diameter ball of fire formed under it, and dropped towards Almë’s head.
He sidestepped, trying to get out of its way, but it was too large and too fast, and it enveloped his head and shoulders. The stink of burning hair completely overshadowed the smell of cooking meat, and the tall Elf looked like a mobile torch, the back of his head and his upper back and shoulders aflame.
He kept his eyes tightly shut, and he hoped that the leaping flames hadn’t blinded him.
Taid reacted quickly, casting a spell of Create Water to douse Almë’s head and upper body. The water formed over his head, the moisture pulled from the surrounding environment, coalescing into an amorphous globule of water, which once formed, fell onto Almë’s head and shoulders. Taid followed it up with his hands, patting out the remaining embers.
Most of Almë’s hair was damaged, leaving a misshapen mass with various chunks fused together, all of different lengths. He still had half an eyebrow above his left eye. But most of his gambeson was still in fair shape; Taid had extinguished the fire before it could burn through the second layer of linen.
The bird was circling around, possibly for another attack.
Alme saw it coming, and held his staff by one end up over his shoulder, as if waiting for a pitch in stickball.
Taid held Maggie above Almë’s head one handed, ready to thrust the top spike and skewer the bird if it got too close to either of them. He was starting to think about having some pre-cooked rotisserie fowl. Roasted firebird might be nice with some white wine, or a good ale.
The burning arrow sailed off into the clutter of the landscape.
Almë swung, a great, two-handed swing, which mostly whistled past the bird, but managed to clip its leg, causing it to tumble in the air.
Taid, reacting quickly to the wild course change of his target, skewered the bird on Maggie’s top spike, where it hung, limp and burning. With a quick flick of his arm, he flung the dead, burning bird into a pile of burned tree branches. It lay there, burning for a moment, before flaring up and being consumed like the dead rats.
He grunted. Using a long polearm one handed was tiring and difficult, even for him. One-handed, it made a very top-heavy spear.
Almë did what he could to fix his hair; his scalp was tender, but he got rid of the fused, clumped bits of what used to be his hair, leaving only the patchy, unburned hairs of various lengths. That completed as best as possible, he nodded for them to continue.
They moved onwards, mainly towards the large central fire on its tree stump, but detouring towards the fire sprites when they could see them. Itura was key, here: her infrared vision alerted them to hotspots, such as the birds and the rats, allowing them to move around them and keep their distance.
When they crested ridges, they could occasionally see the fire sprites here and there in the charred landscape, generally moving towards the edges of the area. It seemed as if they had been sent out to expand the area of wildfire, eating away at the jungle, slowly spreading like a tumor.
They could see a fire sprite up ahead of them, moving transversely across their path towards the jungle. They crouched low, behind cover, trying to not attract its attention. If they could get to the central tree and bonfire without having to alert any of the smaller fire elementals, it would avoid some potentially nasty fights.
They made their way stealthily towards the tree with the bonfire. They carefully avoided the rats and the birds, and also saw what appeared to be lines of fire moving through the undergrowth.
“I suppose we’ll find out,” Ruby said, as if resigned to that fate. So far, she hadn’t felt anything, and she liked to think that she knew enough to at least get some kind of warning.
“Yeah, I’m sure we’ll find out,” Elitheris replied. “I am just hoping that we can avoid that.”
They could see the tree stump with the fire on it. The fire, at first, seemed like a normal fire. But after watching it for a little while, they could tell that it didn’t move quite like a normal fire. With a little imagination, it almost looked like it had arms, and almost seemed to point in different directions, as if giving orders. At other times, it seemed to lean in one direction of another, as if it was paying attention to something. The more they watched it, the more it seemed like there was some kind of intelligence behind it.
No one objected, and they crept into the ravine, using the burned fallen trees as cover. Once there, they drank, and rested. Having the mages at full power could be the difference between life and death. It was, apparently, a large fire elemental. And they had no idea what it could do. They stayed there for a half an hour.
Taid held his hand out in front of him. He hadn’t bothered to take off what was left of his glove; the palm was gone, as were a lot of the inside of the fingers. It barely stayed on his red, tender hand. His skin was cracked and bleeding. And casting healing spells on one’s self was…risky. Doable, in a pinch, but much like surgery, easier to do on someone else.
“Elitheris, can you give me a hand here?”
Elitheris looked at his hand. “Looks like a bigger injury than the spell of lesser healing can handle. Looks like I’ll get some practice with the greater healing spell.”
She took her time; she didn’t want to accidentally hurt Taid. Whether it was luck or careful preparation, her spell went off without trouble, and the mana flowed from her into her friend’s hand. The cracks in the flesh sealed, and the red, inflamed flesh became a more normal color as the swelling went down.
Taid flexed his hand, fingers curling. “That’s much better, thanks.”
Almë spoke up, “While you’re handing out the healing, mind helping me with my burned shoulders?”
“Ah!” Elitheris said in alarm. “In all the confusion, you got overlooked.”
“Others needed help more than I did,” Almë responded with a shrug. He winced. Shrugging hurt. “But if we’re going up against that thing, I want my shoulders working properly!”
“Yeah, pretty hard to swing your stick around with hurting shoulders,” Taid said.
Elitheris took a look at his shoulders, after he had unbuckled his gambeson and slid it off of his shoulders. He wasn’t terribly hurt, but the skin was raw and tender.
She cast a healing spell, and the skin became Almë’s normal, tanned color. He flipped his gambeson back up over his shoulders, rolling them to see how they felt. There was no more pain, so he rebuckled his armor. He made a few practice passes with his staff.
He grinned. “Back to my usual self!”
They climbed up out of the ravine, keeping low amongst the ground clutter as they made their way towards the large fire on the tree.
They stopped behind a pile of rubble. It smoked, and there were embers still glowing in and around it. They could feel the heat coming off of it. The smell of burnt wood was thick and sharp. The large fire in the tree was about twenty meters away. They could hear the roar of its flames, rising and falling, almost like it was conversing. If they went any closer, it was sure to see them. If “see” was the right word. It had no eyes that they could see.
“Ruby,” Taid said, “can you give me fire resistance again? I’ll just go out and scout and see what’s what. If it hits me, it hits me. But we need to see what the hell it’s going to do, if it’s going to do anything. There’s no reason for all of us to be out there and get hit by it.”
“Sounds good,” Ruby replied. “A moment.”
Taid cast the spell of Icy Missiles on Elitheris’ bow. Then he ran out from behind cover, charging the tree, his legs pumping and hopping over the larger clumps of branches and clutter.
When he was about six meters away, the living bonfire threw a ball of fire at him.
He dodged to the side, almost losing his footing on a pile of charred wood that crumbled under his weight. But he moved far enough that the ball of fire whizzed and flamed past his head. The ball of fire hit the ground behind him, flaring up in a pyrotechnic explosion. The blast rocked him, forcing him to take a pair of steps to stay on his feet, and he could almost feel the heat envelope him. He didn’t have any exposed flesh from that direction, not that it would have mattered. He could have been naked, and the flames wouldn’t have hurt him.
But he was exposed. He looked at the tree, but there was no place he could stand at its base where the big elemental couldn’t get him. He didn’t see any cavities in the trunk, either, at least not from where he currently was.
“Shit,” Almë said, “should we spread out? We’re clustered here. If it realizes we are here, he could get all of us in one shot.”
Almë started casting the spell of Haste. If he was going to be out there in the open, he wanted a bit more speed.
Elitheris drew and aimed at the big fire.
Ruby cast the spell of Fire Resistance on Almë. He looked like he was about to run into combat.
Taid started casting the spell of Icy Weapon on his halberd. It would take him a few seconds to finish, assuming the large fire being let him.
Itura had a short sword out and ready, although she really wasn’t sure what she’d be able to do with it. But it made her feel better to grip it. She scanned the area, wary of things trying to flank them. She had to peer over her sunglasses every now and then in order to check her surroundings for heat signatures. They were her primary protection whenever she glanced in the direction of the living bonfire.
From their position crouching behind the fallen logs and debris, they could see the large flame on what was left of the tree. They could also see a second, smaller flame forming at its side, swirling and pulsing.
Almë broke cover, running towards Taid and the large bonfire creature, his speed greater due to the spell he’d cast upon himself. He ran straight at first, then started zigzagging in order to make himself a harder target.
Elitheris loosed her arrow. It flew towards the bonfire, trailing a haze of mist like a streamer. It flew through the large fire, and seemed to create a momentary hole in it.
Ruby cast the spell of Fire Resistance on herself.
The large fire flared up a bit, then moved. It moved off of its tree, appearing to slide down the trunk, then came towards Taid, the secondary swirling fire at its side increasing in size. The flames roared, seeming louder now that it was moving across the ground.
The flaming elemental threw the growing ball of fire at Taid. It hurtled towards him, roaring, flames trailing behind it.
Taid saw it coming, and quickly sidestepped, the ball of fire whistling past his shoulders as he turned the upper part of his body to avoid it. It continued through the air, hitting the cluster of debris the rest of his friends were hiding behind, where it splashed harmlessly on the charred wood.
Eykit, Ruby, Elitheris, and Itura didn’t know that, though, and they all flinched, raising their hands to protect their faces. Eykit squeaked in fear as it hit. Unlike the first ball of fire from the large elemental creature, this one didn’t explode, although a few of the branches were now aflame.
The elemental moved closer to Taid. Around it, he could see objects, mainly mostly burned branches, spontaneously burst into flame. The effect seemed to extend a meter or two from it.
Elitheris drew out two arrows from her hip quiver. She nocked the first one, drew back the string, and aimed at the large fire creature.
Eykit scanned the area, judging distances between him and the fire creature, and spinning his head around to make sure they weren’t being flanked. He didn’t see any as his eyes passed over the landscape. It was just them and the big flame creature, at least at the moment.
Taid completed casting his spell, and a rime of frost sped from his hands, up the shaft, and covered the head of his halberd. Maggie shed a cool mist that evaporated almost as soon as it left the axe blade.
Ruby turned to her immense mastiff. “Nori,” she commanded, pointing at a spot two meters behind him, “sit.”
There was a moment as Norolind processed the command, then he rose, turned, took a few steps, then sat down. He looked at her, awaiting her next instruction.
“Good boy,” she said, smiling. Then she turned back to the fight.
She saw the elemental move up to Taid.
Taid could tell that he was in the area of shed heat; things around him were popping and sparking into embers, but he himself felt nothing. Intellectually, he could tell that the elemental in front of him was giving off incredible amounts of heat, but the spell that protected him negated all of it as far as he was concerned.
Elitheris loosed her arrow. The bow thwanged, and the arrow leapt towards its target, trailing a streamer of mist that evaporated in moments. It struck the elemental squarely in the center, forming a hole that soon filled with more fire.
The flames roared louder, as if the elemental screamed in pain. Whatever else the arrow did, it seemed to have hurt it, or at least made it angrier.
Eykit’s head was swiveling, trying to see everywhere at once. He saw a flash of light about fifty meters away, and he focused on it, noting that it was one of the smaller fire sprites. It appeared to be moving in their direction.
It was too close to Taid for him to have room to swing his polearm around, so he hopped back, following that up with a cleaving swing from the axe blade.
But the large flame being was too fast, and it managed to get out of the way of the icy steel weapon.
Ruby started another casting of the spell of Fire Resistance, this time on Elitheris. Because she had to see the target over the barricade of burned branches, she was more exposed than the rest of them. It made sense to protect her. Alas, due to a portion of her mind controlling three other spells, it failed.
The fire elemental spewed out a gout of flame all over Taid, who barely even flinched. The fire cascaded over him, harmlessly. He smiled grimly, mentally thanking Ruby for her protective spell.
With a shout, Almë charged into combat, sprinting at the elemental with his staff above his head. He swung his staff in a downward, horizontal arc, the staff passing through its fiery body without resistance. He was unsure whether he had done anything to it or not.
Elitheris took the second arrow she had drawn before, set it to the string, and drew back her bow. She sighted down the shaft, aiming past Taid and Almë at the side of the fire elemental. She was a good enough shot that she was fairly sure she wouldn’t hit either of them.
“Itura,” Eykit asked, “you see anything?”
Itura shook her head. “Nothing closer than about ten meters, and those were just those rats. There might be a snake over yonder, but I can’t tell with all of the ground clutter.”
Taid took another shot at the elemental, but it moved out of the way of the icy blade. Taid swore.
Ruby tried the spell casting again, on Elitheris. This time, she was able to focus enough to get the spell off. Elitheris became fire resistant.
The fire elemental, spewing out a jet of flame three meters long, targeted Almë. The short one didn’t seem to be affected by fire, but maybe the tall skinny one would be….
No such luck. Almë was fire resistant as well, thanks to Ruby’s spell. Almë cackled, the flames enveloping him in an embrace he couldn’t even feel. He wished he had some bread. Or some marshmallows. Put the stupid fire to some good use.
The tall Elf went at the elemental with his staff, striking quickly with first one end, then the other. The fire elemental, fast as it was, couldn’t get out of the way of both attacks. The end of the staff passed through its body with little or no resistance. It was like passing a stick through the flames of a campfire.
“We’ve got incoming,” Itura said. “Fire sprite!” She gripped her short sword in her dark skinned hand, the knuckles paling.
Elitheris’ arrow flew through it; its attempt at avoiding Almë’s attacks had put it into a position where Elitheris had a better shot. A gaping hole was the result, and instead of being refilled by the flames of its body, the remaining flames appeared to get sucked up behind it and extinguished. The elemental was gone.
Coming up behind them was one of the smaller fire elementals. It appeared to know they were there, and was coming after them.
Ruby moved to meet it; it was still a ways out. She was thinking that maybe a spell of Extinguish Fire might hurt it.
The fire sprite moved up to Ruby, throwing a ball of fire from point blank range. It hit her square in the chest, splashing flames all over her body. But she was resistant to fire, and didn’t even feel the heat. It had been a harmless attack, no better than a simple illusion.
His foe evaporated, Almë took a look around, mainly to see if his friends behind the rubble were okay. From what he could tell, they weren’t in any danger.
Eykit saw Ruby go out to meet the incoming fire sprite. Then he saw it blast her with its fire. He wanted no part of that. He didn’t have the comfort of fireproofing. He valued his skin too much to want to risk burning.
Elitheris spun to face the sprite and drew out another two arrows, fitting one to her string and drawing the bow back.
Taid went towards the tree.
Ruby cast the spell of Fire Extinguishing on the small fire sprite that hovered just above the ground in front of her. The spell made the fire sprite shrink, as if parts of it were extinguished. It seemed to be an effective spell against these things, and much better than her mage’s staff would ever be.
It responded by jumping onto her leg, then, like a flame traveling up a tree trunk, it crawled up to her chest, where it sat, burning. Except that Ruby wouldn’t burn. A small ball of fire started swirling at its side. Ruby, startled, turned to face her friends, the flames obscuring her vision.
Almë saw her turn around, the flames making her look like he did when he was on fire. Her head looked like it was on fire.
“Are you okay?” he yelled. “You’re looking hot, by the way!” He had the feeling she had cast a fire protection spell on herself, so he wasn’t really worried. Or perhaps Ruby’s lack of screaming in pain tipped him off.
“Ha ha,” she replied, deadpan. “Funny, beanpole.”
Eykit ran towards Ruby. He wasn’t exactly sure how effective his knives would be, but he’d at least try to help the Hobbit. The short folk had to stick together in the land of the biggens.
Elitheris aimed at the fire sprite. The problem was that it was on Ruby’s chest, and Ruby was facing the archer. This meant that if Elitheris shot the fire sprite, the arrow would pass through it and into Ruby. Even if her armor saved her from the damage, Elitheris was reluctant to put an arrow into her friend. She moved, trying to get a better angle.
Ruby cast the spell of extinguish fire on the fire sprite that rode her chest. It went off, and the flame puffed into nonexistence. It barely even left any smoke.
Itura was watching the heat signatures the ranged about them, but none seemed especially interested in coming any closer to them. The fire-animals seemed to be acting like animals; unless threatened, they didn’t seem overly aggressive. But the Orc woman kept her eyes on them anyway.
Taid eyed the tree as he approached it. It was charred, and only the trunk had burned down to a stump some four meters high. It was about two meters in diameter, with a few of the lower, larger branches, devoid of any smaller branches, still attached. He moved around it, looking at all sides, looking for the best place to climb it.
On the far side was a crevice in the tree, like a cave opening into its trunk. He could see a hollow space inside. It was dark, both because it was charred, and because the sun had dropped below the level of the treetops, and everything was in shadow.
He looked around. There were broken and burned branches all around him, some still with little flames struggling to stay alight on them. He picked one up, and used it as a torch. The meager light was enough for his sensitive Dwarven eyes.
Just inside, in what appeared to be a little alcove, was a cluster of five candles, nestled in all of the charcoal. He stuck his head in to get a closer look. It was a severed hand, with the stump of a wrist, with each finger a lit candle. Over the smell of the charcoal and burnt wood, he could smell the distinctive scent of tallow.
The hand looked like the hand of an adult, probably male, covered in soot. It was also magical; Taid could tell that with his mage senses.
He grabbed it by the wrist, lifting and drawing it out from the hole in the tree. The flames on the tips of the fingers were still burning.
Almë made his way over to him, looking at the hand in Taid’s hand. “Huh,” he said.
“Maybe this is what summoned the fire elemental up above,” Taid said.
“Anything else in there?” Almë asked.
“This was it. We got robbed. I was hoping for a big chest of treasure. Like in the tales.”
“Fat chance. This is real life. Besides, how would a fire elemental carry a chest? Maybe he carried his coins in a little pocket of fire.”
“Hah! That would be hilarious. Probably melt the coins into a useless lump.”
Almë eyed the tree where the elemental had sat. He climbed up. The top was a charred bowl, formed by the burning fire elemental.
Almë climbed back down, and the two of them went back to the rest of the group.
“Well gang,” Taid said, “I’ve got to hand it to you.” He held out the burning candle-hand. “Anyone know what the hell this is?”
“Why would somebody summon this bullshit here?” Almë asked rhetorically. “It makes no sense. To disrupt traffic on the river or something?”
“It disrupted us,” Itura said with a shrug. She looked over at the hand. “That thing is gross.”
“So,” Taid said, “we have a hand.”
“And it’s still burning,” Elitheris said, “but I don’t know what that means.”
“What happens if we blow out the candles? Does anyone know? Ruby?”
“No idea,” the Hobbit mage said. My studies didn’t delve deeply into that kind of thing. More of an off-hand reference. It’s not the kind of magic I studied.”
“Well, I didn’t have any problem keeping it lit while walking over here.” Normally candles didn’t fare well in the open air, what with all the breezes suddenly coming up.
“I say we blow them out before it summons anything else,” Almë suggested.
“The question is, does that cancel its magic, or whatever.” Taid looked intently at the hand, and the candle flames. They didn’t even waver in the slight breeze.
“Probably not, but we don’t know,” Almë added.
Taid came to a decision. “All right, let’s blow them out.” He blew his breath at them, as if he were blowing the candles out on a birthday cake. The flames wavered a bit, but didn’t go out. Taid frowned, and blew harder. Again, they wavered, but didn’t go out.
“Well, damn,” he said.
“Do it with your fingers,” Almë said, miming pinching out the flames.
Taid removed his remaining glove. He pinched the flames, but they didn’t go out. “Damn,” he said, sucking on his fingers, “that hurt.”
“Need to get back to the smithing,” Eykit said. “Build up your heat tolerance.”
“I could cast the spell of Fire Extinguishing,” Ruby commented.
Taid thought about it. “Nah. I say let’s leave it on. We’re getting close to Dwarfchat. Let’s leave it until we get into Dwarfchat. Maybe we can find out if it’s actually useful in any way. It clearly doesn’t want to go out by itself. So let’s leave it on and see if that’s part of the magic.”
“Okay by me,” Almë said. “Maybe it’ll go out when we leave the area.”
“I’ll put it somewhere on the boat. Let it glow and do its thing.”
“You can try putting it in the water. See what happens when you hold it in the river.”
That decided, they moved back towards the river and the boat, sneaking past the remaining fire sprites, avoiding the areas where the fire birds were, skirting the places where the fire-breathing rats were, and skillfully not aggravating the flame snakes. Soon they stood on the muddy, ashen bank, the boat moored on the far bank. Once the crew on the boat saw them, they rowed over so they could get back on it.
“Dip it in the water,” Almë said.
Taid looked at him with an “I don’t think that’s a good idea” look.
“Just for testing reasons. For knowledge.”
“I know, but we could lose our magic ability on this and lose its value.”
Eykit nodded. He didn’t like the idea of getting less for it if they sold it. That thought was antithetical to his philosophy.
“Then we turn it on again,” Almë soothed.
“What if it was lit by some special incantation?” Taid asked.
“We’ll figure it out.”
“All right, I don’t care.” Taid dunked it in the river. The flames went out. The river was delightfully cool on his hand. He pulled the hand of glory back out, where it dripped in his grasp. The flames didn’t re-light.
“Can you re-light it?” Elitheris asked.
“Is it still a hand of glory now?” Taid asked.
“I’d say that’s a future problem,” Almë said. “Let’s board the boat.”
In the distance, flitting from tree branch to tree branch, the fire birds went about their business, whatever that was. Putting out the Hand of Glory hadn’t seemed to affect them. They couldn’t see any of the rats or snakes, but it stood to reason that they were unaffected as well.
It was getting dark. “I want to get back on the boat,” Elitheris said. “I’m getting hungry.”
“Yeah, me too,” Ruby said.
They got back on the boat, and Captain Gwendal guided the boat upriver. They sailed until they got the edge of the burned out area, moored on the opposite bank, and made camp for the night.
They could see small fires burning away at the edges of the area, and every now and then, they could see one of the small fire sprites, happily consuming the jungle, extending the burned out area.
“We didn’t kill the little elementals,” Elitheris stated. “They area still damaging the forest.”
“Yep,” Almë said. “I’d love to just say ‘not my forest’, but it’s all my forest.”
Elitheris nodded, knowing that the tall Elf didn’t mean it in a possessive way. He meant it as a duty. She felt the same way. But they weren’t going to do anything about it that evening. Whatever they did, it would have to wait until dawn.
Taid, Almë, and Ruby spent the evening channeling power into their staffs, to refill what had been used. It took maybe two hours, total, to do that. It was tiring work, but they had all night to rest, and they felt better having the insurance of extra magic power when they needed it.
Velisday, Leafturn 26, 879 AFE
They awoke at dawn. Some had slept on the deck, some in hammocks strung from the mast to the bulwarks, and some had slept on shore. Most were stiff, and the air stunk of smoke. The edge of the burned area had expanded overnight, and was ten meters farther upriver. It seemed to be a slow, but inexorable creep, the jungle turning to ashes and charred wood.
Almë looked at the ashen landscape, then up at the pall of smoke that hung above their heads like dirty overcast. Dawn’s light was watery and thin, and tinted a grayish orange. He scrubbed at his face, and the remains of his hair; ashes fell out of it like grungy dandruff.
“I could turn into a bird, and fly over there and scout it out,” Ruby offered.
“I’ve got an appointment with a Dwarven woman,” he said. “So I’m voting to move on.”
Elitheris gave him a look, but he was still looking out at the landscape, so he missed it.
“It’s clear that the thing we took out—“ Elitheris started.
“The Hand of Glory?” Taid asked.
“Yeah. Doing that didn’t affect anything else that’s going on in this jungle. The fire birds are still fire birds, the fire rats are still fire rats. Whatever that thing cast, it isn’t done. Even if we killed that big elemental.”
“We probably have to get the Hand farther away from it,” Almë said. “Then it will sort itself out.”
“We’ve got it outside the area already. It’s still doing its thing.”
“Maybe it needs to be farther. Like in Dwarfchat.”
“I think Ruby’s idea of flying over it isn’t a bad one. Maybe we missed something.” She turned to Ruby. “If you’re willing to fly around, I say go for it.”
"Okay,” Ruby said. “Anyone else have an opinion?”
“I’m fine with you going,” Taid said. Eykit nodded.
“I just feel that we’ve already invested all this time in this area,” Elitheris said. “We should…kind of finish it. Might as well not be half-assed about it, since we’ve already done as much as we have.” Besides, she didn’t like wildfires, with a deep and personal intensity. And this one was growing, even if slowly. That could simply be from the ambient moisture in the area, but they’d been rising in altitude this entire boat ride, and getting closer to the mountains.
She knew it would get drier and more temperate, losing the defense that moisture and saturated plants had against flames. And then it was highly likely that the slow creep of the burned border would change to a faster, more dangerous race. Wildfires, she knew, could outrun a person. And if the small fires she could see joined into larger ones, then even larger ones, it could turn into a raging firestorm. She shuddered. She definitely didn’t want that. Now was the time to take care of the problem. Not when it was bigger.
She couldn’t fathom why an Elven plant mage, of all people, wanted to leave this as it was.
Ruby cast her spell, and her pudgy Hobbit form changed into a sleek falcon. She preened her feathers, then leapt into the air on broad wings. She rose in a circle above the boat; she wanted plenty of altitude before she traversed the skies above the burned landscape.
It didn’t take her long to notice a few things about the area she viewed from above. One was that the area seemed to be centered on that tree that had had the elemental perched on it. The second thing she noticed was that the burned out area was almost perfectly circular, the final shape being modified by the variations in the landscape.
She could also see the flames, burning at the edges of the circle. And she could see seven of the fire sprites. It took her a while to spot them, because the only difference between them and the more normal fires were that they moved about. They skirted the edges, moving back and forth, causing fires to start.
The fires tended to be pretty small, and usually burned themselves out in minutes, but the fire sprites would just keep going over areas, relighting the fires, until those sections had burned to blackened wood and grey ash.
She could see the fire birds, roosting the burnt out remnants of trees, and every once in a while they would fly over to a different perch. Sometimes, if they got too close to one another, territorial fights broke out.
She could see the fire snakes, moving around the landscape like curvy glowing lines. And, every once in a while, she thought she could see the glowing eyes of the rats, but they mostly kept out of sight.
What she didn’t see were any structures, or any other trees like the one in the center. While some trees were still standing, most had fallen over when their trunks had burned through. The ones still standing were thin, black spires, with only a few black branches still attached.
Having seen enough, Ruby banked, turning back towards the river, the boat, and her companions. The flames, small and scattered as they were, still managed to provide a few updrafts. It didn’t take her long to get back; at the cruising speed of a falcon, it was the matter of about a minute.
On her way back, she saw a stag near the edge of the area, standing in a pile of ash and charcoal. Smoke came from its nostrils, and patches of its fur, normally a warm-toned brown, was becoming distinctly reddish.
She shifted back into her normal form and told them what she saw.
“So this thing isn’t just burning down forests,” Elitheris said, “it’s taking over the animals as it goes.”
“If you want, you can go kill them,” Almë said. “I would like to refill the staffs.”
“Captain,” Elitheris asked, “how much longer to Dwarfchat?”
He scratched his beard, looking upriver towards the mountains. “Four or five.”
“Ah,” she said, disappointed. “I was hoping that we could report this to somebody who would go back and do something about it.”
“Look,” Taid said, tired of the discussion. “We know how to kill them. Ruby can make us fire proof, and I can make our weapons effective. I don’t think it will take much to kill the fire sprites. In a one on one fight against us, they don’t stand a chance.”
“Fine,” Almë said.
After all was said and done, Elitheris, Taid, Almë, and Ruby made their way across the ashen landscape, being as stealthy as they could to avoid alerting the sprites, the birds, or stumbling into any of the snakes.
They got close to the first of the fire sprites, and Ruby cast her spell of Fire Resistance on Taid, while he cast his spell of Icy Weapon on his halberd.
The fire sprite realized that Taid was there moments before Maggie, trailing a streamer of cold mist, descended upon it. In its last moments, it threw a fireball at Taid, striking him in the chest. It lived just long enough to see that the fire ball had no actual effect on the Dwarf.
The second sprite dropped just as fast. Third did as well.
Ruby stepped on a brittle, burned branch; it snapped with what seemed to be a loud crack. They all paused, looking around, trying to see if anything noticed or was reacting in any way. Almë saw, or thought he saw, some glowing eyes in the shadow of a pile of debris dart away. But nothing else seemed to notice. They continued onward, towards the next fire sprite.
Ruby cast Fire Resistance on Taid again, like all of the other times. His Icy Weapon was still going, feeding off of the ambient mana around them. Given the hot, 34° C day, the coolness coming off of it felt welcome.
“It’s nice being invincible,” Taid whispered as they made their way towards the next fire sprite. “Takes a lot of the fear of death away.”
“You think?” Almë said with a grin.
The fifth fire sprite appeared to be climbing up and down a tree at the edge of the area, spreading its flames up and down the trunk. Again, Ruby made Taid immune to flames, and he crept up to the fire sprite. He got within five meters of it before it saw him.
It threw a fireball at him, and he reflexively jumped out of the way, despite his immunity. Had he just let it hit him, he would’ve merely felt a light breeze. But his military training bypassed his conscious mind, and his body reacted. The ball of fire hit a pile of ash and embers, and sparks puffed up from its impact point.
A few seconds later, and the fifth fire sprite had felt the icy touch of Maggie. They moved on, following the jungle’s edge.
Behind them, Elitheris could see a doe, possibly the mate of the stag Ruby had seen. Its fur was red, with what appeared to be embers at the ends of the hairs. As it moved, the tiny points of orange light flexed and shifted, appearing as if it wore a skin tight fabric made of glowing topaz. It didn’t seem to see them, though.
The next one died quickly too. They had lots of practice with these things. It was almost too easy. The seventh, and last one that they could find, died quickly too.
They were close to the downstream edge of the burned out area; to get back to the boat they would have to walk upriver for about two kilometers. They set out, still paying attention to avoid the birds, snakes, and whatever else might have been corrupted by the area. They had to stop and wait for a snake to get out of the way ahead of them, but that only took a minute or so before they could continue onward. None of the animals, corrupted or not, seemed all that interested in attacking them.
They did notice that the fires along the edges of the jungle guttered and burned out, likely due to how wet the plants were. Without the fire sprites to reignite them, the fires had too difficult a time staying lit for very long. And none of the other corrupted animals appeared to be actively spreading any fires. They knew that they could, given their fiery modes of attack, but any fire was more likely a side effect, rather than a motive for it.
About halfway back to the boat, they saw a trihorn antelope leap its way across the blackened landscape. Its fur was orange, and its antlers were aflame. Its fiery crown didn’t seem to bother it at all.
Elitheris saw it and shook her head. “I’m hoping that by killing the sprites we’ve stopped the spread of this area, but apparently we can’t really do anything about the animals it has already corrupted.”
Taid shrugged. “Unless the fire sprites had been the ones maintaining the spell, or ritual, or whatever had caused this area to appear.”
They made it back to the boat.
Taid put the Hand of Glory down by Wilbur’s hooves. He kicked it out from under him; he wanted nothing to do with it. Taid rescued it from under the deck boards. If it decided to relight itself, having it wedged under the deck boards would be a bad idea.
Once on board, and the boat was headed upriver, Almë decided to do something about his damaged head of hair. And he had just the spell to do it.
The spell of Hair Growth makes the subject’s hair grow about a million times faster, resulting in an inch of growth every five or so seconds. But hair is keratin, and the spell doesn’t discriminate, so his fingernails were growing at about an inch every thirty seconds. Fortunately, without continuing to power the spell, it only lasts for five seconds. If he’d let it go on long enough, he’d have have to remove his boots, because his toenails were growing too.
All of his body hair had grown over ten centimeters long. Since he wasn’t an old Elf, his face remained free of facial hair. But the long hair on his arms and legs made his sleeves and leggings itch, and he really didn't want to discuss how his crotch felt.
Taid wasn’t impressed; proper people had beards, and the longer the better.
Almë used his knife to trim his fingernails; they’d grown out 4 millimeters. “Hey,” he called out, “anyone on this boat know how to trim hair?” He'd take care of his abundance of body hair later, in a more private setting than an open boat.
Artur ran his hand over his black bald head and grinned. “I can. But you went to all the trouble to grow some more hair; you don’t want me touching it.”
Alexa looked up from her oar. “I’ve got some scissors. I’ll take care of it when I’m off shift.”
“She’ll make you look pretty, Elf-boy,” Elias said. He, like Artur, didn’t need her hair cutting services; he was as bald as Artur.
They made camp without further incident.
Ralsday, Leafturn 27, 879 AFE
Taid had taken first watch. Elitheris had the dawn watch. As the sky was starting to lighten with the first light of false dawn, she noticed that several of the trees nearby had greenish, glowing runes on them.
She rose, and walked over to examine them more closely. They weren’t carved into the trees, it looked simply like a light projected onto them. She didn’t recognize them specifically, although she had seen sigils similar to them along the borders of magic texts.
The trees weren’t in any kind of discernible pattern.
As she approached the first tree, she could see that the trees were exuding some kind of thick goop from the runes. It was thick, and ran down the tree like sap. But it wasn’t sap. But it was magical, and her mage senses registered it, like they did with enchanted items. She could just feel it. And it was right most of the time. The mucus-like sap didn’t seem to be affecting the tree in any way.
Elitheris looked at the ground around the affected trees. There were no obvious prints, no footprints to show that someone had been there putting the runes on the tree. She did find some deer pellets, and found a couple of deer prints. But nothing to indicate who had made them.
She woke Jory up.
“What? What?”, he mumbled, alarmed. “Something happening?” He rubbed sleep out of his eyes. It wasn’t usually a good thing when the sentry woke you up in the middle of the night.
“Yeah, something’s happening. Get up. I’ve got something to show you.” She backed off, giving him room to emerge from his tarp shelter.
He stood, stretched, and looked up at the sky. It was almost dawn.
“Sorry I ruined your sleep,” Elitheris apologized. “Grab you sketchbook.”
“It’s fine,” he said around a yawn. “Looks like I was going to get up in a few minutes anyway.” He reached into his pack and extracted his sketchbook. “What needs to be drawn?”
“Come,” the Elf said, leading him out from the camp.
He trudged after her, his eyes mostly closed. He was about four meters away from the first rune when he looked up and realized it was there. “What the heck is that?” His curiosity piqued, and his sleepiness forgotten, he walked up to the tree for a closer look. His finger touched the goop, and he rubbed the residue between his finger and thumb. “Ah! It tingles!”
“You haven’t sketched them yet, dumbass!” Elitheris said, exasperated. She didn’t know what that goop did, and if it dissolved his fingers before he drew the runes, she’d be pissed. “Sketch the runes.”
“Alright, alright,” Jory replied, opening his sketchbook.
“You had one job!”
“You should have stopped me from touching it, then!”
It didn’t take him too long to sketch the rune and a fair representation of the tree it was on, and the goop that dripped from it. When he finished, and his focus shifted, he saw the others. “Oh gods! How many of these things are there?” With that, he wandered over to the next tree, and sketched that one.
He went from tree to tree, sketching all of the runes. They were all different, all of about the same general size, and all with similar design motifs.
“What is that goop stuff, anyway?” he asked Elitheris, as if she were the expert on it.
“I don’t know.”
“I can still feel the tingling on my fingertips. Doesn’t hurt; it’s like when your foot falls asleep, sort of.”
“Interesting.” She looked around, finding a bush with the typical large, dark leaves of understory jungle plants. She picked one. Then she found a stick, and used the stick to scrape some of the goop into the leaf. It sat there on the leaf, a clumpy, colorless, translucent sap-like material. It smelled of bitter mint and menthol.
She knew just who to wake up. Surely he would know what this stuff was? Or, if not, would at least be interested in it.
She and Jory walked back to camp. She nudged Almë with her boot.
“Hey hey hey hey hey!” he said, fending off her foot. “I’m awake! Get your toes out of my ribs.” He crawled out of his bedroll. “What?”
“I’m here to put your skills to good use for a change.”
Groggy, Almë mumbled, “What am I putting to good use?”
“I need to show you something. Come. Get your pants on, man. I’ve got to show you something.” She walked back out of camp.
Skeptical, he followed, putting his pants on as he went, hopping on one foot, then the other.
It didn’t take him long to see the runes. They were brightly glowing, at eye height, and a beautiful teal color. He could see the goop, too. And he, like Elitheris, could tell it was enchanted. He could feel it.
He examined the tree, but there was no evidence of any damage to the tree. He was pretty confident that whatever this was, it wasn’t a natural process. He touched the goop with an outstretched finger, and pinched off a bit, rubbing it between his fingers. He felt a tingling sensation, almost like his fingertips fell asleep. It wasn’t unpleasant, just tingly.
He tasted the residue on his fingers. It tasted like bitter mint. And his tongue and lips now tingled as well. It didn’t feel numb, just…tingly. The tingling sensation went away after about thirty seconds.
Frowning, he looked around. There were six trees that had the glyphs on them. There were three different species of trees represented, of varying ages, although all were “adult” trees, not saplings. Similar trees were all around him, so the chosen trees didn’t really stand out in any way. They seemed like plain old normal trees.
He went back to camp, knelt by Ruby’s shelter that she shared with Nori, and gently woke her. “Uh, Elitheris found something. There are runes on trees. She didn’t blow us up this time, but maybe you can figure out what is going on here.”
Ruby got up, scrubbed the sleepy gunk out of her eyes, and went to go look at the runes.
They were about sixty centimeters above her head. Glowing a greenish color, and causing the tree to exude some kind of unguent-like substance. And it was a magic unguent, although it didn’t match any alchemical elixirs she was aware of. She was pretty certain she’d never come across this before in any of her alchemical studies. Or, for that matter, he magical ones.
“If it makes any difference,” Almë said, “it has the taste of bitter mint. And it causes a tingly sensation.” He had a thought. “I wonder if this is the result of an Elven ritual?”
Ruby looked at him and shrugged. “You’d know better than I would.”
“Ah, fuck it,” Almë said, and he scraped off some goop off of the tree with his hand, then ate it, swallowing the thick, mucus-like substance. It went down, slowly, tingling the whole way.
What felt like warmth at first flooded out from his stomach. The grogginess he felt from being woken too early disappeared, and his eyes dilated and became very wide. He started moving in quick, jerky motions, like he was hopped up on an entire carafe of the strongest coffee. He had the jitters.
He practically ran the ten meters back to camp, rustled frantically through his pack, and came back with a ceramic jar. He then ran from tree to tree, quickly scraping every scrap of the goop into the jar that he could. Even when standing in place, he bounced, unable to contain the frenetic energy that seemed to consume him. He wan’t even breathing hard.
“What did it do to you?” Ruby asked him.
He didn’t answer, he just continued scraping the goop into the jar. He looked around, trying to find landmarks. He wanted to harvest this stuff again.
He had an idea. He ran back to the riverbank, and found a sapling. “Perfect!” he said, and cast the spell of Plant Shaping. When he was done, it formed a large letter A. That should mark the spot well enough. The trees with the glyphs were only about twenty meters from the riverbank.
He did notice that there was some kind of variation in the physical conditions that spell casting cost him. It didn’t seem as bad. It wasn’t much, but it was noticeable.
He was still full of energy. He helped the crew break down the camp, even before they had fully awakened.
With Almë’s frenetic help, the camp was packed up in about half the time. Part of it was Almë’s example, which encouraged everyone else to go faster than usual. But they were on the boat and sailing upriver very quickly. They ate a breakfast of cold traveler’s rations on board.
Rewards Granted
Hand of Glory (not lit)
Some doses of herbs
Some goop
3 CP
Some doses of herbs
Some goop
3 CP
Missions/Quests Completed
They have progressed farther upriver on their journey to the city of Dwarfchat. Captain Gwendal had estimated it to be a 17 day journey from Lytan's Mill; however, they spent an extra day at the site of the fire elemental created wildfire. They killed all of the elementals; they did not kill the creatures corrupted by the region (a nearly impossible task, given the number of small critters hiding in the nooks and crannies).
Character(s) interacted with
Members of the crew of the Dossit Float.
Report Date
18 Jan 2024
Primary Location
Secondary Location
Related Characters
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