The Return of The Eagle – Chapter 27

*Scene 01* – 10:10 (Containing the Threat)

Twilight settled over the ancient woods of Kilrane, and a hush fell as if even the wind dared not disturb the secrets hidden in the tangled undergrowth. Deep within the vast forest, at the foot of a moss-choked hill, the mouth of a yawning cave gaped—black as midnight–exhaling a chill that hinted at more than mere shadows.

Around the cave, a ring of scouts made their silent encampment. Armor muted beneath layers of forest green; they moved with the careful discipline of those who knew that vigilance was not just a virtue, but a necessity. Their task was clear: no living thing must emerge from the labyrinthine tunnels beneath their watch, for below them lurked a creature whose hunger could engulf the land.

A large net covered with leaves and vines woven through it had been pealed back from the mouth of the cave revealing its hidden stone entrance.  The vigilant watchers needed a clear view of the opening so that whatever creature emerged would be visible once it came near the cave’s entrance and be met with a fusillade of arrows and spears to herald its coming.

It had been a long trek back down from the fronting mountain pass from the summit of Mount Zefat, and these men were weary and ready to return back to their homes, wives and children.  They had not expected to find their company’s return to be delayed and barred from entry by a beast lurking within the inner passages up to the secret underground gates of Azragoth.

When they entered the hidden path along the outer edge of Kilrane, a narrow trail behind a hedge of thick brambles that ran a few hundred yards parallel to the clearing, they found a messenger from the hidden city waiting for them bearing a warning.  He was to accompany them back through the winding woods to the underground entrance to Azragoth but had a message to be given to The Eagle from Lord Nem that made their desire for a swift return to hearth and home a little less immediate.

A burrowing monster was confirmed to have entered the caves and tunnels beneath the hidden city.  Lord Nem’s suspicion was that the creature was a surviving relic of The Pan’s tunnelling behemoths that he had once used for mining.  A massive beast that shunned the daylight, thrived in darkness, ate through the land, subverting it with sink holes, and fracturing foundations.  Such a beast was ruinous to a city, especially one built over lower tunnels, buried ruins and cavernous voids.  The messenger also told them of the recent arrival of Surface Worlders that preceded the detection of this beast beneath.  And that one man had been sent below to deal with the creature and distract it until they could find a way to root the beast out from under the city.  The man in question was someone that The Eagle had met in battle and knew from long ago.  A man, now going under the name O’Brian.  A wanted man, hunted by Xarmnians, who had disappeared twenty-one years ago, formerly known by the name Brian David.

The Eagle’s expression was unreadable when told this news.  He grew very quiet, seeming to be deep in thought.  Wherever Brian showed up, trouble usually followed close behind.  And this time was no different.  So, this “O’Brian” had finally come out of hiding and brought an earth-eating dragon with him, had he?  There was enough trouble with the landing and approach of the Capitalian army, no doubt armed and stirred to suspicion by the pernicious and inflammatory letters sent to the Capitalian monarch charging Lord Nem with plotting sedition and rebellion.  Letters suggesting that Nem masked his objective for rebuilding and refortification efforts for the city of Azragoth and exploited the king’s trust and provision.  The king’s records would surely show that the old city had once been a thriving commercial center bringing in much revenue to the Capitalian kingdom when it was seeking to establish itself on the other side of its mountain redoubt, during the present monarch’s father’s reign.

King Artemis Xerxes well knew the bloodied history of dealing with Xarmni, and that the cities of the highlands had not always been the allies of the Capitalians before the battles with The Pan and its Half-Men began.  Alliances were made only after The Pan and its hybrid creatures had been routed and driven to the shadowy lands of the north.  When the brotherhood of Xerxes and Xarm split and began to be strained, the old cities realized that Xarm’s ambitions threatened them.  Capitalia sought to make peace through trade with the native cities and was successful in doing so.

King Xarm was a sly ruler who envied the prosperity of Capitalia but in his own pride, he refused to follow its methods of building wealth through alliances and mutually beneficial trade agreements.  Xerxes was a mighty king, who had once fought The Pan and his Half-Men creatures with his brother Xarm and had driven them out of the highlands into the northern lands into the region called The Moon Kingdom.  A place that seemed to exist in a perpetual twilight and was congested with ancient growths and diseased woods blackened by frosts and irregular seasons which hindered growth.

Xarm believed in the divine right of rulership.  That a monarch was owed both wealth and service by those under his rule.  That his subjects should serve his interests, rather than that the king served at the pleasure of his people.  With the inability to see how this notion failed to gain true loyalty or foster trust, his demands for fealty and service gained him little respect.  So, he opted for a campaign of rule through threat, terror and seizure of all means of production, making those under his rule dependent on the mercy of the state for their needs.  He razed fields, stole cattle, he demanded tribute and extorted money from the smaller towns and hamlets, sending out his thuggish squads to monitor and protect the king’s interests.  Capitalia objected to this encroachment, and brutal means to amass lands and properties.  But they chose not to intervene until their lands and those of their alliance lands were threatened.

But King Xarm would not let the Capitalian lands alone, nor refrain from threatening the lands and towns thriving under their trade alliances made with the Capitalian King Xerxes.  Xarm was constantly seeking to subvert Xerxes and provoke him into battle, until King Xerxes finally decided to close the mountain pass.  King Xarm took the closing of the sole pass beyond and through the formidable Walls of Stone mountains to be a sign of cowardice, thinking that they had won the battle of wills with the Capitalian King.  Only to be unprepared when Capitalia engaged them in a final assault to put down the aggressors and regather his kingdom into its newly established fortification and close off all dealings with its contentious provocateur, the ever-fractious kingdom of Xarm.

Capitalia soundly defeated the forces of Xarm but failed to stomp them out completely.

In the intervening years, Xarmni regained its strength through cunning and subversion.  In the years following, their only symbolic defeat had been at the siege of Azragoth as it succumbed to plague and a fusillade of battering through its out walls, eventually demolishing the inner courts and residences, as far as catapults and trebuchets could cast their cut stones.  When the Xarmnians’ moved in to take the spoils, however, they learned the harsh truth that the city had fallen under sickness.  It waters were polluted by an infestation of rats and decaying corpses left to rot, stink and decompose in the streets from the prior assault.  The Xarmnian soldiers who had made the initial incursion were falling as well under the spreading disease.  Xarmni then fled the field and were further driven back by weakened survivors who had managed to turn their catapults and use them to fling their dead soldiers back into their encampment.   Xarmnian soldiers and some of the princes were beginning to fall ill, having contracted the disease from exposure to the pitched corpses landing in their midst.

Eventually the catapults and trebuchets were dismantled and used for firewood in burn pyres and pits along with those Xarmnian trenches dug to hold the dead of the fallen city.  The Eagle had contributed what he knew to the knowledge of the comprehensive history of both of these major kingdoms and the young man named Sage, recently arrived, had filled in the gaps from his father’s records and intimate knowledge of Xarm’s palace intrigues.

Now a further threat from beneath again threatened the beleaguered city of Azragoth.  A beast that lingered from the Mid-World’s past, when The Pan and his creatures first brought instruments of warfare to this world beyond the threat of tooth and claw.

How odd it was, The Eagle thought, looking intently into the revealed cave mouth, that the past conflicts should keep curving back as obstacles of threat to the present, with him being now on the opposing side of the threats rather than allied with them.  A fleeting thought passed through his mind before he dismissed it away.  Perhaps, he should have killed Brian when he last had the chance.

*Scene 02* – 05:23 (Battle Dress)

“I really don’t feel like training today,” Cheryl said, as she pulled on and laced her footwear that morning as she and Christie dressed in the room they shared in the upstairs of Jalnus and Judith’s tavern.  “The leg still bothering you?” Christie asked as she fastened the front piece of her formed bodice with string ties.  “A little.  The bruise is still there.  It’s getting better, though, I think.”

“I’ve noticed you’re not limping as much as before,” Christie said, trying to inhale and pull the strings through their corresponding eyelets.  She squinted and tugged the ties, trying to hold in her breath.  “Ugh!  I’m not sure how one breathes in this thing,” she commented dryly, “much less fights in it.”

“They said its s’posed to protect you.  Made out of hardened and dried wool soaked in seawater, someone told me,” Cheryl observed.  “Hard enough to turn and arrow shot or turn a blade, so they say.”

“I’ll take their word for it,” Christie said. “I’m not anxious to test the theory. At least these are lighter than iron and do seem to breathe a little.”

Cheryl sighed, “I thought medieval women wore long luxurious gowns, with elaborate head pieces, and went to balls and such.”  Christie chuckled releasing the ties, catching her breath again, “Yeah, well doesn’t look like we’ll be going to any balls soon.  More likely to get one thrown at us, than attend one.”

“Well, these boots don’t help.  Shouldn’t we have asked for glass slippers or something?”

“Yeah, if you want your feet cut.  Glass slippers wouldn’t be practical here.  We won’t be doing much waltzing in the Warrior’s court today, I think.  No matter what Ezra says about foot placement and so on.”

“Don’t cross your legs, girls!” Cheryl said in an attempt at a deeper masculine tone, trying to imitate Ezra’s baritone.

“That’s only when you are fencing.  Etiquette suggests otherwise when sitting.  Something those boys should learn.  You’ve seen how they slouch and sprawl.”

“Yeah, well none of them have to wear a skirt and bodice.  Or a corset for that matter,” Cheryl responded.

“I’ll wear this protective equipment, but a corset is where I draw the line,” Christie sniffed, “You can’t fight, if you can’t breathe.”

“Why do we have to fight anyway?” Cheryl queried. “Seems like every time we go out, someone or something is after us.  Maybe Laura had the right idea.”

“Well, you can’t run forever,” Christie sighed, “At some point we will have to take a stand, and when that time comes, I’d like to be prepared for it.  Did you see Maeven with the bow and arrows?  Or Nell with those throwing knives?”

“Yeah, I watched Nell prepare breakfast.  The way she handled a cleaver dicing and slicing gave me a sense of her skill, but I admit I was surprised by her precision throwing blades.”

“When I saw her knives bouncing off this molded tunic it convinced me.  However snug it may be, I figure it is worth a little discomfort if it can deflect a knife like that.”

“Aren’t we all supposed to be in the Warrior’s Court this morning?  I’m surprised they haven’t come to get us before now.”

“There was some secret meeting this morning,” Christie remarked.  “Ezra said he would send Maeven to come get us after.  For once, just be thankful that we got to sleep in.”

“Yeah, well I’m getting hungry, and we usually only have breakfast after a morning exercise.  What’s it supposed to be today?”

“For breakfast or for the exercise?” Christie favored Cheryl with a quizzical look.

“The exercise,” Cheryl fastened the gathers on her waist coat.  “Whatever’s for breakfast, I’m eating it.  Look here, I’m starving.  Either I’m shrinking or these gather strings are getting longer.  I don’t know what to do with these long loops once I tie them.  Even double knotting the loops doesn’t seem to matter.  If I triple knot them, I’ll never get this thing off at the end of the day.  Might as well bathe in it.  Do you think I’m too skinny?”

“I think its archery with Maeven, …and no, I don’t think you’re too skinny.  But I think we will all get a lot leaner before this is over.  Appreciate the meals here for food will be harder to come by on the trip ahead.”

“That’s what worries me,” Cheryl sighed.  “What d’you think we will be eating once we leave here?  Will we have to kill something?”

“Unless you know of a way to pack a vegetable garden, yeah.  Probably.”

“Not sure how I feel about that,” Cheryl lamented.  “But starvation might motivate me to try it.”

Christie picked up her knap sack and turned her shoulder into the loop, “Which is why we need to pay close attention to Maeven’s archery lesson.”

Suddenly, there was a loud commotion coming from downstairs.  And a shriek that seemed to come from their hostess lady, named Judith.

“Everybody out!” a man’s voice shouted.  “Quickly!”

Christie and Cheryl threw open the door to their bedroom and clambered outside, coming to the wooden railing overlooking the dining hall below.  Others emerged from the apartment rooms.

“What’s going on?” Cheryl asked.

Below the corpulent owner of the tavern and inn waved hurriedly to them.  “Come on! Come on!  Hurry, before it’s too late.  This building may collapse at any moment!”

*Scene 03* – 12:24 (Into The Mouth of Madness)

The supernatural arrows flashed as they sped through the air, hissing with a kinetic energy that blazed through the visible and invisible spectrum of all light.  With razor precision, they found their marks even as the beast twisted away from the threat they posed.  One buried itself in the corner of its jaw, piercing its scaled lip, and lodging in its blackened gums.  The other glanced off its hard beak-like proboscis, and entered the flared slit of a nostril, causing it to ululate with an ear-splitting shriek and roll violently, thrashing and whipping its bladed tail, scattering rocks and debris as it raged.  For a fraction of a second, hunting for an opening I found the moment I had been waiting for.  The dust dragon’s serpentine tongue unfolded from the cleft in its open maw, seeking to dislodge the arrow that had pinned its lip to its gum, its vile sulfurous breath whistling like a gale past the arrow lodged in its nostril.  The creature rolled on its back over the crumbling mound of rock, twisting and shrieking like a dog with back fleas, its large talons raking the air and walls like the harvesting blade of a grim reaper.

I mounted the hill again, seeking a way through the slashing claws, trying my best to avoid the obsidian eye that was soon to find me and focus this terrible rage on my person.  Its jaw was agape, unable to break the shaft of the arrow of truth that prevented it champing and gnashing its dangerous, rock-cutting teeth.  I held the honor sword in my right hand, slashing my way towards its twisting head, avoiding the jutting spikes that could skewer me in an instant.  My attacking sweeps failing to connect and break through its scaled skin and tough hide, making my approach much more difficult.

The beast’s body slammed against the stones, sending jagged fragments spinning and rocketing into the air as its crushing weight broke the larger stones apart.  A sharp fragment of flint caught me in the torso, cutting through my tunic, abrading my ribs and cutting a shallow gash into my side.  I felt the wet heat of my blood flow down my side, the abrasions burning as if I had been stung by an angry swarm of hornets.  The dragon tried to snap at my arm, as I hammered the honor sword into its beaded fleshy gill, trying to get closer to its mouth and cleave its dervish-tongue.

A powerful claw dug deeply into the ground next to me, its talons grasping and burrowing into the sand.  Its body contorted like a cat and righted itself, the other foot and claws slamming down on the opposite side of its body and its tail gathered in double-arcs below.  The force of the forelegs hitting the rocks shook the mound upon which we fought, and I stumbled, grazing the side of my head as I fell, knocking the wind from my lungs.  I lay gasping, knowing that at any second the creature could take my life.  My pulse pounded like a kettle drum in my ears, my muscles, starved for oxygen, making it hard to make my limbs move enough to scramble to safety.  The end would be swift, I hoped.  Otherwise, I would slowly bleed out, with parts of my body crushed, should the creature thrash about once more.

But that was not what it had in mind.  Its intent was far worse.

The coiling tail flexed, its forearms crouched gathering power and positioning the weight of the monster for a mighty lunge upward.

“no, no, no, No, NO, NO!” I heard my own voice gaining in volume as oxygen returned to my lungs.

With the strength that remained, I twisted and pulled my knees under me, my free hand pulling my body upon the boulder that I had clipped on my way down, fingers sliding in a slickness where my head had struck.  I could not let this monster get into the city above.

Abandoning all caution or thought of self-preservation, I gained my feet, setting my bruised and bloody side afire in pain.  Adrenaline pumped into my arms and legs, like a fuel injection system, and my battered form raced forward in spite of the pain and I leaped onto the fringed neck of the creature, striking its hard-plated flesh with my sword, pummeling it with my free fist trying everything I could to keep it from what it was about to do.

My left fist was raw and bloodied, because the hide of the beast was like that of coarse grit sandpaper, and had no feeling of muscle or soft tissue below it.  I grasped at anything I could, flailing with the honor sword, but gaining control again and beating upon the beast with the flat of the blade since the edge and point could find no soft entry.  In an instant, my fingers closed around the bristling shaft of the arrow that had materialized out of the words of truth that I had brought to mind.  As my grip closed, I felt the ground beneath me suddenly fall away, and my arm was very nearly pulled

From its shoulder socket.  Two verses, quick as thought, raced through my mind as the pain of the pull nearly caused me to lose consciousness.

“(For the weapons of our warfare [are] not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)” [2 Corinthians 10:4 KJV]

“…so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” [Isaiah 55:11 NIV]

Such pain as I had never felt before, burned due to the torque and twisting of my arm and from the pull of my bodyweight downward.  My feet dangled as the ground fell away, and my sword arm flailed, yet my unyielding left fist clung unrelentingly to the shaft of the arrow in its cheek. The pain threatened to cloud my mind with dark oblivion, as I was wrenched back and forth, as the beast caught itself on the edges of the cavity created by the collapsed ceiling and with powerful arms and claws dug upward into the narrowing shaft above.

The light streaming in from the hole around the buried outside wall and the cellar room interior, now darkened with the door closed, was still above us about forty feet in distance.  A considerable amount of rock and earth had fallen from the cavity crater which had formed the mound of rock and debris piled on the tunnel floor below us, yet the cavity narrowed the closer it came to the surface.  At some point soon, the monster would have to dig the rest of the way through to get into the city, and as the walls of the chute rapidly narrow around us, I knew I would be crushed against the walls as soon as the dust dragon drove its head into the tightening space and had to eat away the earth to move ahead.  With an arrow bristling from its nostril, I wondered if the beast would be able to clamp its nose shut against the dust that would inevitably clog its airways, and with the arrow lodged in its jaw, I wondered how well it could eat through the earth and expel it out of its gills if the creature had difficulty closing its mouth.  Did this beast even feel pain?  Of course, it did.  That is why the raging and writhing occurred when those arrows struck, but I wondered about the true nature of that pain.  Was it physical alone, or some other part of its being feeling these piercings in a way I could not easily imagine.

I swung my honor sword upward, grateful for the binding of the bloodline to my wrist and forearm.  Without this binding, I knew I surely would have dropped this weapon long before now.  I needed to wedge the sword into the hinge of the beast’s jaw to relieve the weight of my entire body hanging from my left arm alone.

The creature’s powerful arms and claws pushed and dug into the ceiling chute walls, creating a lunging upward and downward motion, tossing my body upward with momentum fighting the pull of gravity.  The temporary weightlessness allowed me to slash the sword sideways, over the beast’s auguring teeth and into the corner of the creature’s gaping mouth.  The slinging motion propelled my body over the arc of the sword, aided by an upward thrust forearm, giving me a temporary foothold, and I was able to swing my body into the creature’s gaping mouth, barely avoiding its jagged teeth.

As I may have stated before, the creature’s head was about the size of a serial killer’s panel van, and its mouth was the size of its cargo area.  So, there I crouched, in what felt like this killer’s bloody abattoir, rocking from side to side, as its enraged driver rocketed through the ever-narrowing tunnel like a madman.  I freed my honor sword from its clamped jaw, just as I heard a sickening wet noise in the roof of the creature’s mouth directly overhead.  Its slimy black tongue was being freed from the flapped cavity and with it, the back of the creature’s throat, previously clamped shut, was opening like a dank, vile-smelling, dark chasm.  Its gullet and digestive track were not involved in its consumption and expulsion of dirt and rock, for the channels routing to the creature’s acidic salivary wash and crushing gill slits were being diverted in favor of a pathway through its razor-lined gullet directly into the pit of its vile, stomach.

The tongue of the beast felt horrid, and there was something round and hard buried within its oily, mucous covered black flesh.  The creature used its tongue for more than just detecting scents.  The embedded stone was used as a wrecking ball to smash and pulverize whatever unfortunate victim found its way into its mouth.  The first pass of the tongue rapidly acquainted me with these features as it whipped around and struck me with an incredible force that cracked one of my ribs with an audible snap.  I gasped and fell to my knees, the sharp pain blinding me for an awful dark fraction of a second, that felt like all time and existence had stopped.

My honor sword blazed anew, and I felt the overwhelming power of the quickening surge within me, sending fiery pulses into my aching muscles such that I was numbed to the former pain.  The quickened energy crackled along the blade, igniting the runes and tracery with white fire, and my right arm was in motion before I was even aware of it.  My blade struck the dragon’s tongue, arresting its movement, the edge of the blade searing and cleaving through the thickly muscled meat and colliding with the stone-like sphere inside it.

Black, oily blood gushed forth from the cut, a deluge of foul-smelling liquid heat, engorged the creature’s mouth, streaming down into the back of its open throat, soaking me in stinking sewage.  I felt the creature tremble and wretch, and its body convulsed as its gaping jaws, at last closed over me, shutting out all light, enveloping me in smothering and final darkness.  In a shuddering, fleshy cocoon that I believed to be my coffin, I felt the monster’s forward momentum slip.  My body became weightless for an instant, and then we both began to fall backward, me trapped within the tumbling beast as it rebounded off the tunnel walls, into the abyssal depths below.

*Scene 04* – 13:07 (Nurse She-Bear)

I do not know how long it was before I was found.  The last thing I remembered was the fall, and the sickening feeling of being pulled backward by gravity into the abyss.  Whether it was the abyss within the creature’s stomach sluiced along by the stream of black blood jetting out of its tongue, or the abyssal pits in the tunnel network beneath the city of Azragoth, with my body still trapped within the creature’s closed mouth, I could not tell.  I did not remember the actual impact as we hit the floor of the caverns, because the smell of the gorged death coming from the creature’s belly overwhelmed me and I lost consciousness.

When I regained awareness, I was being turned over on my side and wiped down, the vile black blood cleared from my face, hair, and beard.

“Where am I?” I croaked.

“Lie still, Mr. O’Brian,” a woman’s voice spoke, “You’ve been through quite an ordeal.”

Disoriented, I tried to sit up but felt a severe flash of white-hot pain take my breath away.

“I said, lie still!” she scolded, “Do that again and I’ll have them tie you down.  You’ve got some bruised ribs if they are not broken.  You’re lucky they didn’t pierce a lung.  You’ve got multiple abrasions and contusions. A shallow gash down your left side and you’ve lost quite a bit of blood.  I’m not sure what this crap is all over you, but I’ll bet it does no good for your open wounds.  Your left arm had been pulled out of the socket, but I had the guys help me get it popped back into place while you were still unconscious.  You can thank me later.  Now do what I say and keep your butt in bed for a few days, until we can get you thoroughly cleaned up and bandaged.”

I started to say something, but she shut me up.

“Argue with me, and you’ll wish you hadn’t.  I’m a She-Bear, remember?”

Christie, my mind formed the name, and I realized that somehow, I had been found and carried out of the underground and back up into the city.  I was in a room I did not recognize, and a steady cooling breeze blew in from an open window.  I could see that the honor sword lay on a table not far from me, its scabbard cleared of all cavern dust, its metal cap, hilt or cross-guard, and surfaces cleaned and buffed to a restored polish.  No trace of the gore remaining on the scabbard, hilt or bloodline sash, now wound back neatly around the cross-guard posts.  The very sight and knowledge that it was within reach comforted me and set my mind at ease.

“How did you find me?”

“Find you?” Christie laughed, “You and that dragon scared the living you know what out of the townsfolk.  It wasn’t that hard to find you.  How did you get down there anyway?”

“Well, it wasn’t my idea,” I answered with a deep sigh.  “You might say I sort of fell into the conflict.”

She stared at me half-smiling, “I can’t seem to figure you out.  I don’t know if you have a persistent death wish or are just clumsy and accident prone.  Others saw you.  They say it looked like you were trying to fight it.”

I learned from Christie that the conflict below had drawn a crowd, as soon as the story of a certain pub owner named Jalnus and his wife Judith came running in a panic into the Warrior’s Court, crying about a monster in their cellar who ate a gaping hole in the floor.  No one could make sense of what they were saying, with the husband Jalnus and wife Judith talking over one another, the man in befuddled shock and the woman crying and shouting for someone to help them save their food stores.  It took some doing, but Ezra and his attendants finally got them calmed down enough until they began to make more rational sense.

Jalnus had been sent by his wife down into their food cellars to bring up a bottle of wine and some cured beef for some of their guests.  When the man returned empty-handed and white as a sheet, his wife had a fit, called him a catalog of names, and attempted to go down herself, but her husband was adamant that she didn’t, insisting there was something down there she did not want to encounter.  Unable to stop her, however, she marched down to the basement and threw open the door.  The people up in the restaurant above and the people two streets over said they could hear the scream.

Townsfolk came to their aid, but not before Jalnus, and his wife Judith had rocketed out of the lower stairwell and rounded the corner of their pub, almost falling into the sinkhole crater that gaped along the side of their building.

A terrible noise arising from the hole suddenly suggested to other townsfolk that the pub owners had the right idea.  Some fled the area with them, while others gaped and gawked trying to figure out what was going on below.

The hysteria of the couple might have been dismissed, had it not been for the other townsfolk who arrived shortly thereafter to corroborate their story.  Christie and Cheryl had been among those witnesses. She and Cheryl had occupied one of the upper bedrooms in Jalnus’ Tavern and they heard the commotion from below.  There had been some delay in both being called to the Warrior’s Court that morning.  They heard Judith’s cry of shock and Jalnus, fearing the further collapse of his establishment, had frantically urged everyone out, thinking the entire structure might sink into the pit below, or be torn asunder by the great beast he had encountered through the gaping hole in the basement.

Judith remained in the doorway, sobbing and waving frantically.  When all had been cleared from the tavern, the crowd and onlookers outside further discovered the gaping hole next to the wall of the couple’s Alehouse.  And it seemed just as probable that there was a portion of that same gaping hole extending under their lower cellar subfloor.

The city’s warriors quickly assembled, and those of my own company who had previously arrived at the Warrior’s Court, fell in along the quick procession to the alehouse and pub belonging to the couple.  What they witnessed from above was the noises of a protracted battle, as the creature below writhed and wretched, and stumbled about in a blind stupor, after having crashed back down to the floor of the tunnel cavern below it.  The force of its final crash had broken the creature’s backbone, and it had expelled what was my battered body upon the embankment of a deep, cave pool of boiling hot water.

The pub owner, Jalnus Freeweather, had insisted that he had seen a man down there with the creature, but his wife, Judith said that he was prone to seeing things once he’d had a pint or three.  Lord Nem was told of what transpired, and, to Christie’s mind, seemed not to be shocked by it, and conceded that a party should be sent down to find the man that Jalnus had spoken of.  In fact, he said that one was already within the caves and should find out soon enough.  And that, of course, is how I was found and recovered and brought back up into the city.

And she said, by the way, did I know that the Eagle had landed?

I blinked.

“What?”

The seeming switch in topic caught me off guard.

Seeing my puzzlement, Christie laughed, “C’mon, you know. The Eagle has landed.”

When my face also clouded with befuddlement, she sighed and clarified, “One small step for man…?  The Apollo program.”

“Oh, I get it.  In the uh…” I gestured upward.

“Back in the Surface World, yeah.  But not exactly.  The moon landing.  I’ve always been sort of a sci-fi nerd, I guess.  Always wanted to say that phrase.  Kind of hard to work it into a normal conversation, but it seemed to fit here.  When wiping my kids noses when they were little, I would take a tissue and say, ‘Beam me up, Snotty!’  Then I caught them running all over the house with a tissue box, tossing tissues in the air yelling ‘Beam me, Snotty!  Beam me, Snotty!’”

Christie smiled and sighed at the pleasant memory, “It’s funny the things kids pick up on.  They made quite a mess, but it was kind of hard for me to get onto them for it.  Little stinkers knew if they could make their momma laugh, I couldn’t punish them.  Now, here I am wiping you up.  Being in this place is sort of like being on another planet, though.  A twin Earth but with weird creatures and strange lights.  Don’t you know your own history?”

“Of course, but I’ve kind of been preoccupied dealing with my history in this place.  Especially since a part of it almost ate me.”

She laughed, “Well at least it seems your sense of humor is returning.  That’s a good sign.”

“Christie, how do you…I mean…how am I…?”

She was always quick on the uptake, I remembered, and able to complete my thought, even though I had difficulty formulating it.

“How do I know about your condition and how to treat you?”

“Yeah, that.”

“Because, back in the Surface World, I am a registered nurse, and I am good at it.  Besides having two exceptional children who had their share of scrapes cuts and bruises growing up, and two very big brothers who I took care of as their big sister, I have been around enough broken bones, barbed wire cuts, pocket knife injuries, and a few kicks by the horses to have seen my fair share of nursing before I even got into the profession.  Years of fieldwork had already prepared me for this.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“There’s quite a bit you don’t know about us, Mr. O’Brian.  Maybe you should just ask.  Get to know all of us a little before we go off on this quest.”

She paused and then added, “And for that matter, we all still know very little about you, Mister O’Brian.”

I smiled.  “You do get right to the point, don’t you?”

She smiled back.  “I’ve always been sort of a get-to-the-point, no-nonsense, girl, Mr. O’Brian.  It’s called being a straight shooter, where I come from.”

“And once again, you couldn’t be more right.  It is time I got to know all of you a little better.”

She stood up and tossed the wet and blackened cloth, she had been cleaning me up with into a pail in the corner of the room.

“First things, first, Mr. O’Brian.  Let’s have another look at that wound on your side, then you’ll need to get some rest.  The one they call the Eagle has been eager for you to wake up, but I have kept him out for now.”

“Why does he want to speak with me?”

“He says, you’ve met before.  But under very different circumstances.  He doesn’t want to alarm you if you see him first, so he has asked that I tell him the moment you wake up and have him summoned here, at once, before you get out of bed.”

Something about her words troubled me, but I was too tired to think about how I might know or remember someone called ‘The Eagle’.

My hand slipped under the coverlet of the bed I was lying on, as she pulled the sheet down from my torso, and examined my bloodied gash, wetting another linen cloth with a bottle of spirits, intending to wash out the wound further.

I was feeling vulnerable, and the honor sword lying on the table suddenly seemed too far away to reach.  Then, with eyes widening, I realized there might still be another reason beyond my weakened and wounded state, causing my sense of unease, and I blushed.

My hand surreptitiously felt down under the sheet confirming what I suspected, while she was preoccupied with cleaning the gash.

“Christie?”

“What is it?” she asked, mopping dried blood away, and tossing yet another filthy cloth into the waste pail, and then wetting another fresh cloth with the spirits.

“What have you done with my pants?”

As if in answer, she pressed the spirited cloth into the encrusted wound, causing me to gasp.

“Trust me, Mister O’Brian.  They were burned along with everything else you were wearing.  You will never want to be wearing those again.  Now shut up and lie still.  She-Bear.  Remember?”

“When will I get some new pants?” I asked meekly.

“When I say, it’s okay for you to get out of this bed.”

“That’s piracy.  I need some pants.  I can’t be held here a prisoner of my own modesty.”

“You’re a patient, now lie still or this will hurt more.”

I gasped. And through gritted teeth said, “Aye, aye, Captain She-Bear.”

She poured some of the spirits directly into my wound convincing me further that I should’ve kept my mouth shut.

*Scene 05* – 06:03 (Actio Mortis)

Deep below the citadel of Azragoth, in the network of tunnels, near a steamy, bubbling, volcanic pool, the broken body of the mysterious Dust Dragon twitched in the darkness.  Its upraised claw slightly expanded and retracted, responding to the dying synaptic pulse of the beast’s fading muscle memory.  Its elongated neck and thorned head twisted at an odd angle, its rib of back spines driven into the floor, staking its form to the ground under the weight of the beast’s bulk.

Its odd eye stared unseeing into the darkness, a webbing film occluding its large moistened glaucomic bulge.  And then, for the briefest fraction of a second, the iris of that eye changed once more, from deep space black to a glacial blue, and then withered to opaque black, lacking the darkling gleam it once had before.

The mound of monstrous muscles, beaded-flesh, glassy-scales, crushing granite-like teeth, bony plates, and diamond-hard raking claws, blackened, seeming to resolve into the shadows as its hard massive eyes sunk and withered into its head, leaving gaping black sockets.

A strange and unnatural sort of rigor mortis had set into its body, beginning the inexorable process of slow decay, signaling the dwindling of a dying fire within.  Each twitch and shudder gave off a pulse of light that flashed between the photosensitive scales of the beast, sliding like St. Elmo’s fire down its reptilian body. The flash was not limited to the body alone but leaped from it into the excretion weeping into oily puddles spreading from beneath its mysterious and monstrous body.  The globular glow transferred, by electrophoresis, into the mucosal smears that had tracked from the creature’s slithering progress through the tunnels.

Its body jolted once more, and a brighter electric pulse cast a strobe-like sheen over the great beast’s scaly hide.  A fractured and fibrous image arose from the wet gloss then moved as a phosphor vapor down from its body into the slick crisscrossing oily substance that the beast had left on the tunnel floors in its destructive passage beneath the city.  As it left, the body of the beast then fractured and began to crumble into dust, and rock.  Appearing like nothing more than the tailings of mine-ejected scree.

The strange light projection warped, splintered and rewove itself, moving away from the prone hulk of the beast and down through the slick trail like an electric current passing through tangled wiring.  Light pulses of energy, rushed in a succession of waves, pushing the projection and following a path deeper into the caverns below.

Charged particles of fine dust and powder were drawn after the pulse, swirling and forming a magnetized dust cloud that lifted off and from between the glass-like scales of the monster.  These flakes swirled and puffed into the stale air but were drawn after the rolling pulses like a conical cloud being drawn by the downward push of a cold airmass.

These grainy contrails follow the course of the moving projection like a wake following a speeding boat across water. The final pulse moved swiftly, tracing the erratic course along the cavern floors, casting odd vaporous shadows on the cavern walls and uneven rises and dips in the floor.  Their strange phrenetic course disappeared into another cavern with what appeared, in the brief flash of light, to be a room cluttered with hundreds of small, pillared stalagmites.

The phosphorous glow fanned out through the rows and ranks of columns, lighting up the field with crackling arcs.  Each column trembled as the flash fire swirled around it as winds swirling above the cavern’s ceiling descended growing from gust to gale.  The flecks of magnetized dust scoured the tops of each stalagmite, abrading the face of each, opening a slash of a hole revealing that the stalagmites were hollow.  The winds coalesced into swirling cones and poured into each of these hollow cavities, rushing down the throat of each pillar.  The column began to slough off the rough, mud-like exterior, as electric blue arcs of light flashed up and down each column.

Finally, the foremost column, closest to the tunnel where the amorphous blue light had first entered the broad cavern, began to close the slashed gap where the strange wind had entered its hollows.  A ring of dirt slid off of the upper portion of the column forming an ovoid sphere, making the column appear like a large pawn piece on a massive chess board.  The ovoid flaked cracked and fell away revealing the rudimentary shape of a human face.  Two concavities sunk into the surface of the ovoid shape and a small vertical plane pushed forward.

Then, with a hissing pop, two eyes sprang open from deep within the concavities, as more of the surface layer sloughed away.  The cheeks on either side of the vertical plane bunched, the slash aperture of the mouth turned upward, and the revealed face of an old woman smiled into the darkness.

*Scene 06* – 08:08 (Rock-a-bye, Baby)

When Grum-Blud returned from scouting the perimeter of the old city ruins, Briar met him coming around the path in the shadow of the remains of the old outer wall.  He was grinning in as much as ever a troll with a natural scowling face might be said to grin.

The wall over him, appearing to be covered by spreading ivy, suddenly rustled and the crawling vines whipped around him, arresting his gamboling gait.

“What did you learn, frog?” Briar’s dissonant voice came from out of a bunched gathering of leaves, followed by her human face, her green irises adjusting from the shadow—Her alabaster skin first appearing devoid of color then finally obtaining a faint blush on her cheeks, lessening the strange greenish tint they initially bore.  The ivy framing her face, enshrouding her feminine body receded somewhere into her open back, and her delicate gossamer gown once again shimmered out of the folding and entwining leaves.

Briar’s womanly beauty was stunning, but ghostly in some ineffable way resisting adequate descriptors.

“It’s a ruse,” Grum chuckled.  “There is more to these old broken walls than meets the eye.  An inner wall has been built, coated with this!” Grum-Blud held up his hand stained with a sticky black substance, that made Briar step back from him instantly.

“Blood?!”

“Not blood, but something like,” Grum bared his teeth in a sneer, again attempting to approximate a grin.  “I wouldn’t advise risking moving against this city with your kind, just the same.”

Grum-Blud then proceeded to explain to her what he had seen of through the opened door as a man passed through it into the inner courtyards beyond view, and of his mind on how to attack the city, if the monster they had perceived below it, was not up to the job.  The city within did not appear to be under alarm and he had heard no sounds of distress walking along the inner black wall and donning his stone cloak from time to time when he suspected he might be spotted.  There was enough interior rubble remaining from the siege of many years prior, that he felt comfortable blending in among the weathered rocks and debris, without the worry of being spotted.  Mats and tangles of creeper vines and forest shrubs peeled through the old stone pavements allowing a short fellow to easily scurry under the cloaking vines when needed.

Briar seemed to approve of Grum’s plan and escorted him back to where the others had awaited them.  Only, when they returned, there was no sign of the sleeping Shelberd, or the two onocentaurs, Brem and Bray, annoying as they may be.  When venturing a comment about their absence, he was told only that they had been “tucked away for safe keeping.”  Hesitating to pry further on what “tucked away” might mean, he shuddered, thinking that to these wood sirens, that just might include one of those hanging blood bags they had witnessed in Rim Wood above deep in the highlands.

Sylvan seemed pleased with herself, not having to carry his chum Shelberd anymore as they turned to go.

Grum-Blud’s pulse quickened, and his stomach soured as he felt vines slither around his waist and his weight shift forward on dragging toes.

“Come!  The Pan awaits!” Briar commanded her followers, now including about six more of the sinister but beautifully deceptive wood sirens, sidling alongside them, winking at Grum-Blud as they lifted him aloft.

Two days of travel ensued once they left the forest of Kilrane, and they edged along the valleys, and over the plains of Ono.  They plunged through other stands of trees, picking up other sirens along the way, receiving words of the march and progress of The Pan and his coming with a retinue of satyrs, hulking centaurs, and about twenty of his fierce part lion, part human, part insectile creatures called manticores.  Carrion birds and scavenger creatures followed, for they knew that wherever The Pan went, there were sure to be feasting and copious instances involving the spilling of blood.

***

High in the treetops, in a makeshift sort of cradled bower, Shelberd squirmed and stretched, then smacked his lips in sleepy satisfaction, unaware that he was thirty feet off the ground slung and wrapped with vines, swaying with the creak and bend of the tree upon which he’d been unwittingly perched.  A leafy branch tickled his bulbous nose and sleepily he laughed and snorted, still oblivious to his own precarious situation.

The two onocentaurs sat on their haunches, beneath the tree, muzzled and tied by twist vines in tandem to the base of the tree’s trunk and thick knuckles of protruding roots grappling with the ground below.

“Can you make him, shut up?!” Brem groused.  “He’s going to attract attention with all his snoring and grunting!  And here we are, left to nanny that squatty little booger!”

“Ain’t no use getting to him.  Trees to thick to shake him down, and I don’t suppose you’ve every tried climbing one in hooves.”

Brem sniffed.  “S’ppose so!” he snuffed, rolling his shoulders, attempting to stand again, but failing to free the vines that bound him.  “Ugh!  Blasted wood women!  Who’d’ve thought they could tie a hobble so effectively!  I can’t even gnaw through this one, it’s so bitter!”

“Just be glad they didn’t hang us up in a blood basket, mister big mouth! You beat everything, y’know that?  Talkin’ as if you wuz so fascinated by them wood witches!”

“Well, it did serve to scare those trolls a bit back into simmer rather than boil.  Like nice little cabbages.”

“Cabbages?!  Don’t start in on cabbages, mister!  I ain’t et nothin’ since yestiddy mornin’.  Trolls were stingy with the rations.”

“The rations!” Brem perked up.  “The packs on our saddle.  Can you reach one?”

Bray twisted in the vined hobble and strained a hand out from under one of the tight wrapped vines.  “I think I just might…”  He writhed and twisted, managing to get one knuckle and then another through the braided vest, flexing his fingers.  The vine frayed a bit, and with some further straining, bray freed an arm, panting in triumph.  “That does it!” Brem encouraged.  “Now reach back here and pull that strap loose.  I saw the littler one tuck a knife in this bag.  That should be easy enough to get to.”

Grunting, twisting and turning, eventually allowed both Brem and Bray to untangle themselves from their bindings and cut away from tree where they were charged with holding a vigil for their chubby rock-a-bye baby.  Either one of which would have been all too happy to give that snoring Shelberd’s bough borne cradle a shake and a break.

Now freed from their bindings, they would have happily abandoned their post, however, neither were they sure that one of those wood sirens would not have remained to keep them under watch.  Now freed of the vines and happily crunching on the contents of one of the food packs, the onocentaurs gave a start when they saw a shadow pass overheard amid a fluttering of wings.  Three harpies, oblivious to their presence, flew over the tops of the trees of Kilrane and landed somewhere in the trees beyond them.  They both looked at one another, knowing that harpies and the wood witches’ presence in the same forest did not bode well.  Trouble was brewing.  And things were about to heat up once either of the two groups became aware of one another.

*Scene 07* – 05:10 (Meeting the Eagle)

I was only able to rest for a few days more before the word reached the man called the Eagle that I was up and convalescing.  On the day I was to receive him, my wounds had begun to heal, and I had been treated with poultices, and herbs, and various and sundry medicines procured from the local apothecary and field herbs that both Maeven and Christie brought in.  I was given a new shirt, and had pants tailored for me, and was given a sort of jacket with buckles to bind and continue the healing progress of my broken ribs.  According to Christie and Maeven, two of the most well-meaning but bossiest nurses when paired together, I was not permitted to move around too much or travel for at least another three weeks.  And, for goodness’s sake, I was to not so much as look at a saddled horse for another four.  I thought savagely of them as “My Two S’mothers”, though, I knew better than to voice that appellation out loud.  I would most likely get whipped for that quip, and I was not sure I had gained the strength to defend myself yet from their indignant assault.

I was restless.  Anxious to be up and about.  To be rid of the bed and free to walk around unchaperoned.  I was sore but felt that the soreness would fade if I could just get some fresh air and move.

But that was not meant to be.  Both of my “s’mothers” were too worried that I would reopen my wounds and risk infection.  Bless their hearts.

When I was finally…temporarily…discharged from their infirmary, based upon my own recognizance and an oath of good behavior, I was led and helped into the town courtyard for a meeting with The Eagle, and the town leadership.  I wondered how my meeting with Lord Nem might go, since the last time I saw him, he armed me and pushed me down into a dry fountain to confront the Dust Dragon.  If his intention was to get rid of me, I was only too happy to disappoint him in that.

Still and all, it felt good to be back on my feet, but I realized the tightness in my chest, bound wounds and the bruising would limit me on the road ahead.

No sooner had I arrived at the meeting than there was a shout with news we had all feared hearing.

A messenger from one of the outer wall posts came running across the courtyard, and breathless he said, “The Protectorate’s in the backwoods!  They are half a league’s distance (0.7 miles based on Ancient Roman leagues [approximately 1.4 miles]), following the trail of our guests.  The scouts heard their monster dogs in the woods.”

“What will we do?”  Calum, the treasurer, asked, wringing his hands.

“We shall do as we have done before,” Ezra answered calmly, “Wait and watch.  Arm and hold our position.  No need to reveal by overt action, what may not be known yet.”

“What with Tobias and others stirring up trouble, do you think they suspect our being here in such numbers?”

Lord Nem interjected, “At this point, it is unclear what they know, so Ezra’s counsel is best.  We wait and watch.  The wall is sound.  They will not easily find a way in to Azragoth without constructing ladders or a siege ramp.  They will find the old walls but not encounter the new construction unless they reach the pitch walls.”

“Are you sure they are following the back trail?” Ezra asked the messenger.

“We spotted them working through the brush of what remains of the old side road.  They were confused when the road seemed to fade and could not find the side bridge that used to cross the northern ravine.  But one of their dogs must’ve picked up some linger scents through the brush onto the hidden back trail.  Those scents should have faded by now, but those Cerberi are trained trackers.”

“The dogs will either lead them to the sally-port or the postern gate.  Both are watched from cover and heavily fortified,” Lord Nem added.

“How many strong?”

“Last count was about twelve men all told—four on horseback and eight afoot.  Best we can tell, but there may be some lingering in the fields beyond the highland road.  One rider was seen leaving.  He would’ve been the thirteenth, but he was going west in the general direction of Xarm City.”

“That’s a good five- or six-days ride from here.  He may be gathering a contingent.” Corimanth suggested.

“Who have we got manning the gate?” Lord Nem asked.

“Captain Thrax and company.  Lorgray’s men are stationed near the outpost at Trathorn falls and stand ready to close the rear flank at your word.”

Maeven stepped forward, “The Lehi and I stand at your service.  Tell us what needs to be done.”

Lord Nem turned and spoke quietly to one of the city soldiers, we had met before named Morgrath.  “Has The Eagle been summoned?”

“Here he comes directly, my Lord.”  Morgrath said, turning with a gesture.

And beyond them, a man I had long thought was dead, stepped forward, bearing a breastplate insignia emblazoned with an Eagle, talons forward in attack flight.

A man I had known to be one of the most cunning and feared Xarmnian warriors.