“Meddling Outworlders! I am going to tear your eyes out!” Dellitch screamed as she swooped in out of the smoke, claws flared dangerously.
Jeremiah raised a gloved arm and the harpy brutally raked her claws across it almost wrenching him out of the climbing harness.
With the gaffs set in the trunk of the tree, and my body pivoted out in the slip-belt, I reached for the hilt of the honor sword but felt it impeded by the strap and the scabbard, bound by my body weight. I twisted to my right to unimpede the blade, and a gaff spike pulled loose of the trunk beneath my left foot, causing me to smash my face against the tree. My cheek and brow were abraded by the rough bark. My nose sprouted blood as I hooked the trunk with a flailing arm, wheezed in a shaky breath and slammed my dangling foot and the metal barb back into the trunk. My face throbbed and stung and I knew there would be bruising if we survived this fight. I took a fast, deep breath and angled towards the tree, catching a small tap branch jutting from the trunk and pulled my weight forward, allowing my crossed arm to tug at the sword hilt again, knowing that I would not get another chance before the harpy returned.
I had the sword half-way out when she swooped back, striking me hard with the bony extrusion that capped her wing’s alula (also known as the bastard wing). Some of her kind had ground that bone cap into a hook, others to a sharpened spur, but this creature obviously preferred the savage shock of a blunt pummeling force. Clearly, she was a more seasoned battler, for the hooks and points of her sister-kind did not prove to serve as well as one might assume in an aerial battle. Hooks and barbs were best suited for ground fighters, and the harpies’ advantage was clearly in flight. Skewer something with a point, or hook it with a curved spike and it weighted and impeded wing movement. This one knew that a fast strike made quick assaults leaving them to strike and evade as needed until they beat their quarry senseless and could sink claws into them and rip them apart. Lacking the sharp beak of a true bird, the old crone could not peck or tear flesh as their avian relations might. Since humans were not susceptible to their bizarre lactation, like the dryads were, the harpies had no choice but to fight us using flight, strike, and claw. And these she used again and again. Hitting us hard, swooping away into the smoke, driving us to brace against the tree, preventing our safe descent. Wearing us out with each brutal salvo.
The honor sword proved to be more of a hindrance than an asset, for I could not identify from which way she would launch her assault out of the smoke, nor could I get a good chance to bind the bloodline to my wrist and forearm before she came storming back. Each swing and slash of the blade threatened to throw me off balance again and loosen the cleats holding me up into the harness. I could not cross and deflect with the blade, because she moved so swiftly, and the blade only parted feathers of her spanned wing, but never fully connected with her body.
Jeremiah attempted to strike her with the weighted bolo weapon, but it sailed off and dropped harmlessly into the smoke, having the slight effect of throwing a glancing rock at her and nothing more. She cackled at the attempt, and Jeremiah received the brunt of the next pummeling salvo, twisting in his harness below me. I could not get past Jeremiah while he was below me, and our downward progress was poor, maybe only a few feet, but nothing more significant.
When she broke off again, Jeremiah hissed up at me, “Cut the belts,” he panted, “It’s the only way we’re going to make it down.”
“We’ll break our necks,” I retorted.
“We have no choice. The hill is sloped and covered with leaves. The ground is not that hard and we’ve got a far better chance on the ground under the cover of the smoke.”
Our breathing was labored, the smoke stole oxygen from our lungs and desiccated our throats, as we tried to gain just a few more feet down before attempting the fall.
Jeremiah looked up to gauge how much further I was above him when he noticed the leather pouch fastened to my belt.
“What do you have there in that pouch?”
I glanced downward and then felt a sharp thud crack against my skull. The harpy laughed and swooped by again, her bony alula cap wet with my blood and a snatch of hair. I was stunned and my whole head throbbed, ears ringing as I swooned from the blow.
My eyes watered, and the tree flashed with ghost negative images, my legs turning to rubber. I almost dropped the honor sword but was able to cradle the blade as I took in deep breaths, trying to keep my feet from buckling.
I began to sag and then felt someone coming back up behind me, pulling my calves outward, preventing me from folding.
In a moment I felt his shoulders under my knees driving upward.
Faintly I asked, “What are you doing?”
“Getting your feet clear of the tree. Pull those spikes out. Sit on my shoulders and let that slip-belt slide down. I’ll get us out of this tree.”
My feet suddenly pulled loose of the trunk and I fell backward in the slip-belt, having only Jeremiah bearing my weight.
“Put that sword away. You’re gonna need both hands to hold on to that belt. We’re gonna do a skid-fall.”
I slid the honor sword back into its scabbard on my belt while he unfastened the calve belts of his footwear and lashed the loose strap-belts together joining them with a thick brass ring. Then he pulled his own wide strapped belt loose and strapped it behind the bend in his knees so that the belt pressed against the trunk of the tree between his knees.
“What exactly is a skid-fall?”
Avoiding my question, he glanced at the two bare gaff-spurs curving inward from the bottom of my feet, dangling wickedly close to his ribs and said, “We need to get these off.”
He quickly unbuckled the harnesses from my calves, as we heard first a plaintive voice shout something up to us from below. The voice shifted in tone and then shouted up again in anger.
“I should have gagged him,” Jeremiah muttered, but said nothing further, continuing to work with his preparations as swiftly as he could.
We could see nothing below.
A dense, frothy river of smoke streamed beneath us, so thick it appeared to be a writhing soft down blanket covering the forest floor. The fires roared up from the declivity to our left filling the gully that descended down towards the Trathorn river and the stepped descent from Azragoth. Heat washes from the fires were mixing with a cooler prevailing wind that streamed down from the hill leading up to the old city. The falling breeze ran unobstructed through the now spartan breaks and fire stripped woods catching the rising backend of the fires and twisting in a cloudy thermal battle of their own.
Quietly, I pressed him with the questions again, “Jeremiah, what are you not telling me? Who do you have down there, and what is a skid-fall?”
“To the first question, I don’t know and to the second…believe me, it is really better if you did not know,” Jeremiah responded, “Now lean back into the slip-belt and don’t let your face hit the tree.”
He entwined his forearms around both my slip-belt and his and pressed his gloved hands against the bole of the tree. He pressed his knees into the belt straps running against the tree and behind the bend and above his calves, dislodging first one of his tree gaff spikes and then the other.
At it took was one slight jerk of our combined weight downward to break the pivot hold and suddenly, I felt us drop in tandem, and my stomach roll up into my throat.
Gravity seized us with a vengeance.
Jeremiah was right. It was better that I had no idea what he’d planned to do.
***
The golems skulked through the smoke and smoldering detritus of the fire path. Something had fallen from the smoky canopy above, landing with a loud crack upon an outcropping of stones and they swiftly moved to investigate. Sounds of a fight ensued above, but they could not see what was making the noises. Ahead and lower to the forest floor they heard the groans and struggling noises of what appeared to be a bound figure writhing at the base of a tree.
***
Will had been through so much that he found himself shivering despite the gathering fires in a cold sweat of panic.
“Get me outta here!” he yelled.
“Hey! You! Tree man! Get down here!”
Small fires were growing around him flaring closer and closer, eating up the ground and rapidly closing off the possible routes of escape.
Will rocked from side to side, lying on his belly, his feet tied to his wrists behind him, his face smudged and dirty from the swirling ash and smoke. Unable to right himself he raged against his bonds as the fires steadily crawled towards his position.
Squinting through the haze, he coughed and choked out a groan as three ash-covered figures approached him cautiously through the smoke.
“Get me outta this, please!” he begged, trying to get a better look at the figures through watering eyes.
Solemnly without a word, the three figures came forward and stood about six feet from him, their gray shrouded bodies appearing like spectral corpses who had recently crawled out of a fire-decimated graveyard.
One of the silent figures had something in its hand and slowly moved forward towards the pleading man, raising it as he approached. A glint of firelight gleamed upon it for a second and Will realized suddenly that the three figures had not come over to help him at all.
***
We plummeted for what seemed like twenty feet, engulfed and buried within the river of smoke. The hot air seared us.
With a sudden grinding jolt and a heavy grunt from Jeremiah, we finally slid to a sudden stop buried deep within the cloud. My spine ached from the impact and I could tell Jeremiah had suffered the worst of the fall. His gaff-cleats had cut gashes and furrows in the trunk of the tree, and the upper metal staves had hooked up on the belt around his calves and had formed a kind of belted sled, down the trunk of the tree, until the gaff points drove deeper into the tree trunk enough to bring our rapid descent to a grinding halt. The shock of the fall and stop on Jeremiah’s hips and thighs, may have debilitated him, snapping his thigh bones like mere twigs, and having felt to the pain of my spine jabbed down on Jeremiah’s shoulders, I could hardly imagine what he must have felt.
We hung there like dead men from the climbing straps, like sides of beef drying in a smokehouse, only as painful as it was, we still breathed, and were silent for a while, barely able to believe we had survived.
“That was a horrible idea,” Jeremiah croaked, made breathless with the pain and shock of the impact on his torso, shoulders, spine, and legs.
His gauntlet gloves, though thick and padded, were worn smooth and thin from the rough bark, by pressing his hands down the side of the trunk during the fall to keep us from being bashed against it. The leather was hot from the friction. And he carefully tugged at the fingers to pull them loose and allow his blistered hands to cool and breathe.
We had no real idea how far down we had fallen, or how far we had yet to go, but what we did know is that in this disorientation and cloak of dense smoke, perhaps, at least the harpy would not be able to easily find us.
That was until we heard the flapping noises above us and her angry and frustrated, screeching.
***
Thwock!
The arrow-bolt launched from the line of the crossbow, sailing through the air with a slight hiss, and embedding itself into the ash-gray back of the figure raising the dagger blade over the bound young man at the base of the tree.
If there was one shot that needed to count, perhaps, Captain Logray thought himself that was it.
He shoved the crossbow back into the sleeve, pulled the securing flap up and mounted his horse. Preparing to ride up the hill, through the forest to see what kinds of creatures these were to molest and murder a helplessly bound man in cold blood.
***
Dellitch swooped down through the smoke, barely able to see where her quarry had gone. They had both been there for a moment and then they had dropped out of sight, into the cloud of smoke below.
They would not evade her so easily, she vowed, as she flared her claws and descended down into the thick of the smoke after them. If indeed they had chosen to fall to their deaths, she would at least bring their bodies back as evidence to The Pan that the meddlers were back in the Mid-World, and they were still intent on carrying out the quests that had brought them there.
She knew she somehow recognized at least one of them. Jeremiah, leader of the failed second quest.
***
Blind as we were, and without strength or the power yet to descend further, we sensed a large shadow pass by us within the smoke, swirling just out of reach, but close enough to know that it was the harpy seeking us to finish us off.
***
Captain Logray was careful to approach the remaining two ash-covered creatures standing over the fallen body of their comrade. The creature had fallen forward, its knife released from its hand as the crossbow bolt drove deep into its side. Something strange was happening to its body as it fell across the bound man it had moved in to kill. Smoky dust leaked from its side, with a hissing noise, tendrils of silver smoke rose from the wound swirling like an inner fire had been released from its body and was draining from the hole created by the arrow-bolt bristling from its back. Its form began to crumble as if formed of wet molded sand. A golem, Logray recognized. Some creature which was an amalgam of wind and malleable clay formed and molded by a Dust Dragon from the netherworld in the between realm brought over unwittingly by Surface Worlders. A follower and pursuer, given leave to impede the calling of the One, by buffeting those quest-called Surface Worlders with their own fears and doubts. Azragoth was still in danger as long as the Cordis stone remained within the hidden chamber beneath it. The General had foreseen such and knew that it was time Jeremiah took back the stone once again. Perhaps this bound man whom he’d just rescued might provide him with the answers and whereabouts of Jeremiah that he sought.
***
Dark flared claws and a black feathered form swooped out of the lowering smoke cloud above. A dark nimbus of hair flowed from its head and its black angry eyes raged below furrowed and feathered brow as the flying nightmare slammed into the back of the two standing figures, sunk a talon into the back of one and a grappling toed-claw around the arm of the other and snatched both upward, with great gusty downbeats from her broad wings.
“You will not escape me!” she bellowed and laughed in a high-pitched screech as she lifted both into the air with a pulled retraction of her legs. The one whose back had been pierced by the sharp talon began to smoke and leak the same substance that drained from its arrow-pierced counterpart, dried powdery substance falling like sand from its form as the harpy and her captured prey disappeared into the smoke cloud above.
***
It had happened so fast, that Captain Logray had not been able to get near the creatures in time before the large flying creature had seized them and carried them off through the smoke. Perhaps he had been mistaken. Perhaps the other ash-creatures had not been entirely in league with the one he’d shot, but clearly one of the two was another golem. So intent on catching her prey, the flying creature, which could only have been a displaced harpy, had not been aware of his presence, nor aware that a young man lay hobbled beneath the disintegrating form of the other golem. She’d descended out of the thick smoke, so most likely she’d been disoriented and partially blinded by it, but not enough to dissuade her in her vengeful pursuit. He’d heard her screech in triumph as she’d retaken her prey and carried them off.
The tree trunk above the prone man, stretch up into the dark smoky cloud, as embers within the forest continued to drop from the top of the tree, like flecks of golden rain. Logray dismounted his horse, gathering the reins and led the mare up the hillside toward the base of the tree, carefully avoiding the burning brush around him as he went. He needed to get the young man safely away from the tree and back onto the cleared road, where there was less chance of the fire cutting off all possibility of escape. He knelt, grabbing the rope that bound the man’s hands to his feet, and the young man bristled and cried out, “No!”
“Relax, young man. We need to get you back to the road. I’ll cut your bonds, but you will need to be straight with me and tell me who did this to you. Got it?”
He drew forth a dagger from his side and sawed at the rope until it unraveled and snapped.
The man stretched out, sighing from the ache of being trussed up for so long as he was at last able to extend his legs and arms.
“Get me outta these,” he thrust forth his hands, indicating the rope that still bound his hands and ankles together.
“I’ll decide when those come off, young man,” Captain Logray answered in a tone that would brook no further argument.
“For now, I’ll give you your feet,” and he reached and sawed loose the binding that held the man’s ankles together.
Logray stood, leaned down grabbing the man’s forearm and hauled him up to his feet.
“Can you walk?”
The young man felt very weak in his legs but nodded.
“What is your name?”
“The last one to ask me that, tied me up.”
***
We heard the noises of the harpy attacking below. We heard its boast as it captured something or someone and fly past us once again. It did not make clear sense to me, but Jeremiah sighed heavily.
“Who was down there?” I asked again, “I really need to know.”
“I found a young man who had been captured by a harpy. I picked him up on the trail to find you. But it seems I’ve lost him again.”
“A young man?” I muttered, “What did he look like?”
“Oh, he was a little shorter than you, dark hair, really surly attitude. Surface Worlder. Belligerent and ungrateful. A harpy and a dryad nymph were fighting over him.”
“Will.”
“What?”
“His name is Will. I sent Maeven looking for him, but you said she returned and took the others to the Faery Fade.”
“Yes, she did. She must not have found him before the harpy got to him. Makes sense why there would be no ground tracks to follow if that thing carried him. Are you planning to go after him again?”
“I don’t think we can. If she doesn’t kill him, she’ll bring him to The Pan and he most certainly will. I have to think of the others now and release his life into the hands of the One.”
“Now you’re finally talking like a leader. I don’t know about you but I am about sick of being in this tree. Ready to get back on terra firma.”
“Do you feel up to it? How are your legs?”
“Don’t ask. I’m operating on adrenaline only. They are numb, but I think I can still get us down.”
Jeremiah carefully lifted his left leg out of the cut groove that had arrested their fall. “Oh, man that hurts,” he moaned as he attempted to massage his thigh to get feeling back into his leg. He bore his weight on his right leg and swung his left leg lower, gaining about another foot in descent. The muscles of his right leg and ligaments spasmed and he gritted his teeth and winced with the pain.
“If I ever suggest something like a slip-fall again, just remind me of this,” he hissed through gritted teeth.
Another voice spoke quietly below, and Brian and Jeremiah froze.
“What is your name?”
A younger voice answered, “The last one to ask me that, tied me up.”
***
The bewildered beings hung slack as Dellitch the harpy ascended into the roiling cloud bank of smoke. She had swooped in fast behind them, clasping both figures before they could crouch, run or put up much of a struggle. They were covered in ash, but so had she been, flying through the smoky ash pursuing them down to the base of the tree. She had felt her claws satisfactorily sink into the flesh of one, catching him under his scapula and wrapping her upper talons around the top of the man’s shoulder, wounding and immobilizing him with one strike. The other she had caught behind the arm in a half deflective turn, reacting to the sudden seizure of his partner, but not soon enough to prevent her swift attack.
With a mighty down thrust of her wings, she’d seized and jerked them aloft, dangling by the piercing of her claws, unyielding iron-shod shanks, and the forceful grip of her powerful, grey-skinned knuckles.
She had exulted to herself, enjoying the savagery of her triumph at the moment, savoring their brief writhing under her vise-like grip and the diminishing feel of their following sagging despair, resigning themselves to their fate. But, that lasted only for a few moments. When Dellitch suddenly felt one of her captive’s body begin to crumble and dissolve into dry powder under her claws, she knew something was terribly wrong.
Could it be that these prisoners were not who she thought they were? She clutched her pierced captive harder but could feel its arm dissolve into grit and grains of dust, sifted through her claw.
Startled and panicked she almost released them to fall to the forest floor. No. Surely, they had not had time to get away. She had only been blinded for a moment, flying through the haze of the smoke, but she’d emerged swiftly, responding to the two upright forms below. When there was a brief thinning in the swirling smoke, she stole a quick glance down at her remaining captive, its face expressionless, though it looked to be that of the man she had borne up into the tree, there was an uncanny difference about him. This one lacked something. And then she realized what she was holding and why the other had literally crumbled and dissolved in her claws. These were not outworlders at all. These were from the in-between, ether-natural vagrants—squatters—haunting a mud-cake replica of a man. Banshees. Wind spirits. Howlers. ‘Damn!’ she cursed.
Nevermind, she vowed. They would not evade her for long. She would turn the whole vengeance and violence of the half-men kingdom against them. Their blood would be offered in appeasements to The Pan for his use in the mystic pools. The two would flee and inevitably lead her to the others that had been sighted in Kilrane. Rather than being a pariah, she would be praised and heralded before the evening descended on the wood.
***
Captain Logray looked up, hearing an odd ‘Thunk-jingle-Thunk!’ noise, coming down from the tree above them. He drew out his sword, ready to confront whoever or whatever was making that noise until he saw human legs with foot spikes coming down the side of the tree. A man of almost equal size sat upon the larger man’s shoulders, working a slip-belt down around the bole of the tree.
When Captain Logray saw who it was, he laughed aloud.
“Well, this is fortunate!” Captain Logray clapped his hands together, “The very man I am sent to find, appears before me, climbing down from the treetops performing a very impressive display of strength.”
“Captain Logray?” Jeremiah answered still slowly working his way down to the ground.
“And who is this you have with you, besides your belligerent prisoner?”
My face was covered in smeared blood from a swollen nose and my brow was abraded by the rough bark. Given the opportunity, I realized that I would perhaps find it hard to recognize myself in a mirror or pool of water. Bracing myself against the tree, I pulled a leg over Jeremiah’s arm unbuckled the slip-belt and slid down to the ground.
“They call him Mr. O’Brian,” a familiar voice snarled to my left, “but I’m inclined to call him something else.”
I turned.
“Will.”
“Yeah. Surprised?” he sneered.
“Relieved,” I answered, “I sent Maeven to find you.”
“Well, you found me. Where are the others, fearless leader? Did you lose them too?”
I stared at him a moment and he glared back, daring me to counter his insolence.
I turned to the man Jeremiah had called “Captain”.
“I’m sorry, Captain, is it?” I offered my hand.
“Logray,” he took it in a firm, strong grip, “Captain of the Forest Guard. We observed you and your company in the backwoods of Azragoth in the company of The Storm Hawk. You’re pretty bashed up there. Are you all right?”
“Honored to meet you, Captain. I’ll be fine, it’s Jeremiah that needs our help.”
“I’ve got it,” Jeremiah growled, sighing to catch his breath, “Only a few feet more.”
His legs were trembling and his body sagged in the climbing harness.
Brooking no argument, Logray and I came up behind Jeremiah and allowed him to rest his weight on our shoulders to loosen the tension on the slip strap fastened to his climbing belt. Painfully, he tugged at his leg to loosen the gaff spike under his foot and allowed it to dangle.
Taking in another deep breath, Jeremiah unfastened the slip strap and sank to the ground with an involuntary hiss and groan, but we caught him putting our shoulders under his arms to ease him down.
“Jeremiah’s legs are in shock,” I explained, “We fell quite a way coming down and I am afraid he will have some difficulty walking. May we trouble you for the use of your horse, Captain?”
“She is at your disposal, my friend. As is my sword.”
“We need to get back to the road and to a guarded place within the forest.”
“He speaks of the Faerie Fade. Storm Hawk and the others should be there by now, waiting for us to return,” Jeremiah huffed, barely able to breathe through the pain as he leaned against the base of the tree and tried futilely to undo the climbing harnesses on his feet and around his waist. I reached down to help him, but he fended me off.
“I’ll be alright. I just need to catch my breath.”
Logray ignored Jeremiah’s protest and bent down helping him remove the footgear and harnesses. I took the gear and held it out to Will to carry so Logray and I could assist Jeremiah further. Will only glared at me, so I just set the gear down, as Captain Logray and I assisted Jeremiah, lifting him on either arm and guiding him towards the horse.
“We must get out of here quickly. A harpy attacked us above and could come back at any moment. Are you alone or are there others in your company?”
“I stand alone on this charge.”
I nodded and took out a short knife and moved towards Will. He drew back from me, evidently thinking I meant to do him harm.
“Give me your hands.”
“What for?!” he hissed, “Why should I follow you any longer? Look at what it has got me. Everywhere I turn you bring bad luck on us!”
“Give me your hands,” I spoke quietly and firmly, looking him directly in the eyes.
“I will not hurt you. I just want to set you free. You can come with us or go your own way. I am not compelling you to follow, but there are many things in this wood that will kill you if you choose to leave now. Come with us and we may get out of this alive.”
Will hesitated but finally thrust his bound wrists out at me. As I loosed him, I heard Jeremiah speak in low tones to Captain Logray. “It’s been a long time since we last spoke, Logray. How did you know where I would be?”
“Friends are never really that far away, Jeremiah. We have kept an eye on you for some time. I knew that you would be near the cache supplies when the fires started. The General knew as well. He told me that you and he spoke when he was returning from the overlook. He ordered me to give you some time to work out your thoughts. We know you’ve been secretly aiding us in the resistance, in your own way.”
“But why come out into the fire? Why risk it?”
“Because I knew you would risk your life trying to salvage the cached supplies. You cannot continue to do things alone. But more to the point it was also because General Mattox has been shot,” Logray announced to our shock and dismay.
“What?!” I turned.
“Two arrows to the chest. Barely missed his heart. He’s badly wounded but was under the surgeon’s care when I left. He is a strong man and a determined fighter. His personal guard said he was insistent on my bringing you back to Azragoth as soon as possible.”
“But we just left,” I answered.
“Not you. My General wants Jeremiah.”
“Me? What for?”
“I think you already know why. The time has come, my friend. You cannot run from your calling forever. You have left something in our keeping that you need to take up again.”
Jeremiah was silent, his expression signifying an internal struggle whose outcome was still uncertain.
“Who shot him?” I asked, wondering who would dare attack Mattox.
“It is not particularly so much of a who, as it is a what. If I did not know how to recognize a Surface Worlder when I see one, and if I did not clearly see your face is bleeding one might think that you did.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We’ve captured and are holding two of them and the guards dispatched one upon the city wall. But where one of this kind shows up, there are always more in the shadows. What I find particularly interesting is that these creatures we have clapped in irons all seem to resemble you, Mr. O’Brian.”
He let that stunning bit of information sink in for a moment.
“We have seen their kind many years before. We call them golems. And Jeremiah, you were the one who helped us deal with them then. That is why we need you again.”
I looked up and Jeremiah had turned in the saddle and was staring hard at me. He seemed highly agitated and distracted.
“This is something new,” Jeremiah said gravely, “Golems do not take the faces of the living. Or at least I have never heard of it happening before.”
“It is rare indeed, unless…” Logray’s words trailed off as a look passed between Logray and Jeremiah, communicating much between them, but revealing nothing to me.
I looked from Jeremiah to Logray and back to Jeremiah again.
“What do you mean they resemble me? I’ve never seen a… What did you call it?”
“A golem.”
“You mean the skinny little creature…”
“No. The word is much older than its use for the character in Tolkien’s tales,” Jeremiah interrupted me, “It appears in the original written language of the Ancient Text meaning ‘formless body’. But even in that state, as shaped by The One, it has purpose, meaning, and identity.” [Psalms 139:16]
Logray turned back and fixed me with a hard, scrutinizing look, “Mr. O’Brian were you ever in the presence of a dragon?”
Excavatia 