Like ghosts arising from a graveyard mist, shadowy forms appeared from either side of the road and a large dark figure loomed in the smoky woods behind them. The girl stood in our path holding up and fingering what appeared to be a small bejeweled purse in the shape of a heart. A strange red light emanated and pulsed between the joined jewel casing. The casing could not fully contain the light throbbing from within.
“Hello, Mr. O’Brian,” she said simply, though her voice was accompanied by an odd jaw popping noise.
“I promised you I would find you again,” she smiled slightly, “…and that you would pay for the body you took from me with your own.”
She nodded just behind us, indicating that whatever forms were waiting and watching the interaction from within the shadowed haze should now come forward. Rather than turning, I locked eyes and unsheathed the Honor Sword wrapping the bloodline sash around my forearm as she spoke. She was distracting us. Lulling us into a dead calm before the strike, but I could sense and feel the pressure building. Captain Logray had his sword out as well, silently and cleanly removing it and raising it to the ready.
Out of the smoke, the forms clarified into nasty dark, goat men. Their foul stench masked by the swirling smoke. Their ash-streaked bodies and char-marked faces grinning at the prospect of tearing us apart.
“Though you may have survived in the mouth of the dragon long enough to imprint this dirt sack, I need your death to retain it. I will finish what that dragon prince has left undone. I have come to collect my due.”
Shadows darkened around us, yellow-eyes gleamed, and the satyrs attending what appeared to be a sweet, innocent child, chortled with savage glee.
“To that end, I’d like for you to meet some of my friends.”
Ugly, bestial faces resolved out of the haze around her, their teeth bared, there dark eyes shining with cruelty and a savage glee. Their fur bristled along their backs, in anticipation. Their hooved feet stamped impatiently in the ash dust of the road as they chortled, delighted with the contrasting effect this disturbing semblance of a young innocent girl created with her calm threatening words.
Her gaze shifted from me to Jeremiah and her eyes narrowed above a slight smirk.
“Jeremiah,” she cooed, “So very nice to see you again. Have you been in hiding?”
“Who are you?”
The young girl clicked her tongue chastising and shook her head, “Perhaps, you knew me with this face?”
Suddenly her young cheeks sagged with age, her forehead wrinkled above greying eyebrows, her mouth drew in with sallow cheekbones rising, and her hair lengthened into graying ropes of braided cords and tired grey-blue eyes shone within time-weathered sockets that had seen too much pain and heartache in the days etched on her visage.
“Noadiah!” Jeremiah exclaimed with a start, shrinking back in the saddle.
The old face appearing on the body of such a young girl was unnerving.
“I have so missed you, my elusive friend. So much that I thought I would bring you this gift you misplaced beneath Azragoth.”
She carefully reached with the purse and drew out a glowing ruby stone.
“You dropped this, remember? Such a pity you were so haphazard with it,” she said turning it in her hands, watching its red throbbing light pulse through her fingers.
Jeremiah stared at the stone and the light from the interior gleamed reflectively in his eyes.
“I think I shall keep it for the time being. Just to keep it safe,” she said tucking it away, smiling at the effect her presentation of it seemed to be having on Jeremiah as she mocked his mission with its final failure.
“If there is nothing further, then, I will leave you to my friends. They’ve been dying to meet… Wait, no sorry, that’s not how it goes. It should be, you’ll be dying to meet them,” she said beginning to laugh her visage returning to that of the young girl again.
Jeremiah had surreptitiously slid his hand into the saddle sheath and retrieved the crossbow. There would be no chance to wire an arrow bolt from the brace, but it could be used as a bludgeon. He remained calm, though disturbed by the sight for reasons this golem creature would be unable to guess.
The girl and her “friends” posed a direct danger, but he was also concerned about the indirect danger of the uncertainty of his own party.
Will had eventually fallen behind and it unnerved him.
The young man could not be trusted any more than could the disturbed young girl standing in the middle of the smoky road ahead of them or the sneering goat-men creatures curling out of the smoke behind her, flanking them on either side.
What was about to happen was going to be very, very bad and he saw no way out of this one. They would die today. The third quest would at last surely end here in blood and in fire.
“Pretty, pretty horse,” the satyr snarled and chortled, its black sooty hand rubbing its muscle-twitching flank, as the stallion rumbled displeasure deep in its chest, its eyes rolling to follow the quick furtive movements of the two satyrs circling it and Jeremiah astride him. Jeremiah held the crossbow easily, readily and wary of their fleeting, jerky movements. He’d misjudged their swiftness before, and it had cost him his own stead. A mistake he would not repeat with the one he now rode on loan.
Jeremiah recognized one of the satyrs sneering at him from the shoulder of the road. A dark scar had marked its cheek and its side. Wounds it had received from him during a prior skirmish earlier in the day. Jeremiah’s jaw clenched and unclenched, this was one of the raiding troops that had maimed his horse.
As if upon the moment of Jeremiah’s recognition of him, the scarred satyr lunged from the roadside and Jeremiah drove a foot into its face as it leaped for him. And with that action, the battle was on.
This was shaping up to be a very bad day indeed.
***
At the base of a tree, along the leaf-strewn roadway, the satyr that Jeremiah had bound awoke.
Firelight flickered in his eyes as he blinked away the grogginess from having been struck. His sharp teeth champed as he struggled against the chain wrapped around him, twisting and jerking and grunting to wrench himself free. Black twisted embers gilded with bright orange flame floated around him, dancing in dervish twirls upon the heated wind.
He grunted and lunged against the chain again, but this time was rebuked by a harsh voice.
“Stop thrashing, Banalus!” the voice hissed, “The forest maidens will come for you, but not if they suspect us.”
The satyr left for dead in the roadway winced as the arrow that pierced his flesh shortened each breath he took but could not quell the animal eyeshine in his golden eyes as he licked slavishly at the aphrodisiac pollen that covered the rocks where he fell.
“Gwemmel, I thought you were dead,” the bound satyr hissed back, “Get me loose. These dead harpies ought to be good for at least a romp with the maids. I don’t need to be bound for that.”
“Did you lick these rocks?”
“What? I barely got a taste.”
Gwemmel shifted over still lying flat on his belly, crawling forward, his short hooves clawing at the dirt.
As he turned his head back to the golden dusted stones, a massive black cloven hoof silvered with wear and age descended just in front of his face. He blinked rapidly at the sight and then shuddered in terror. He knew what he would find when he followed the hoof up to the broad muscled fetlock and knees and muscled thighs and beyond to the shaggy mane and broad chest eleven feet above the ground, and the hoary grizzled head and cataracted eyes staring sightlessly down upon his quaking form. One false move, or one whimper, and that would be the last time he ever saw the light of day.
“I smell the scent of blood in the air. These ears have heard the sound of two imbeciles who should have reported back to me long before now,” the large, sightlessly blinking and intense gaze narrowed to the shuddering arrow shot satyr at its feet and took in a long, deep, inhale through widely-flared nostrils, “Yet I smell the spore of rutting dryads all around me. What do you two have to say for yourselves?”
“Humans, my Lord,” Banalus squeaked, and then cleared its throat, “The outworlders have returned. I recognized two of them. One was the leader of the second band whose men passed that worthless red stone to you. He has become a forester, perhaps he is the very one the dryads have long spoken of. The one they call ‘The Fire Walker’.”
The Pan did not turn when Banalus spoke, only listened and flexed and unflexed his massive hands and corded muscled arms thinking brooding and dark thoughts but continued to glare downward at the form he sensed lay huddled at his hooves.
“And the other?” he growled.
“A woman, sire,” Gwemmel squealed through trembling lips, “She is the one the others call ‘Storm Hawk’. I recognized her sweaty, female scent. She bathes, sire. It is not as strong as it is with other females. Her face, however, was uncovered. I saw her face, my Lord. I can certainly recognize her again…if…” he trailed off, trying to reign in his desire to plead for his life and provoke his master further.
“And why was I not informed of this sooner?” he rumbled low and dangerously.
“I am bound to this tree with linked chain, my lord,” Banalus offered, “the forester…”
The Pan raised his hand swiftly, cutting him off mid-sentence.
“And you, my groveling friend?” he knelt slowly down, knee-joints crackling, nudging at the prone creature with his extended shaggy arm and curled knuckles.
“An arrow pierces my back, sire. The woman she is artful and swift with a bow. She killed one of the harpies that were fleeing.”
The Pan reached out and felt the haft of the arrow jutting out of the satyr’s back, its grimy blackened fingernails brush the fletching feathers of the arrow, causing the Gwemmel to writhe and wheeze through clenched teeth in short rapid breaths. He closed his massive hand around the shaft and swiftly jerked the arrow upward, out of the satyr’s back, causing Gwemmel to whimper and bark-cough in pain. The Pan’s nostrils twitched as he lifted the black-bloodied point to his nose and then ponderously rose to his feet, scenting the sour-milked odor of the two dead harpy carcasses strewn about the clearing as well.
“Your tales ring true this time,” he rumbled and then conceded, with a slight hint of disappointment, “You will both live this day. Join your brothers. There is a dangerous place within this forest that these outworlders are most likely headed to. There is a wind spirit-creature that we were supposed to meet that would show us the way. She said she would be waiting in the forest in a form we would all recognize from before. If we are swift, we may yet prevent them from getting there. Besides this creature swore an oath to me to restore my sight and she will deliver on that promise or there will be no place or help from us.”
He raised his fist and five satyrs emerged from the surrounding woods, two set about freeing Banalus from the tree, the others helped Gwemmel rise to his feet on trembling legs and unsteady hooves.
***
Azragoth was teeming with a rapid and quick activity. In the mere hours following the moment that the raging fires first roared out from the front of the city igniting and repelling both the encroaching forest which had for the greater part of twenty-years grown wild and organically surged against its outer wall and the ferocious Manticores attempting to scale its pitch-coated, ebony walls, there had not been such apparent flurry of hurried life to the outside world. Truly the inner city now roused and in motion within the dead outer ring of the old city was symbolically represented by the large wheel-within-wheel chandeliers that lighted their grand reception hall. A circensian circus in its original sense, whereby all the surrounding communities which had once benefited from Azragoth’s commercial greatness, could now witness from the lower galleries, the veiled curtain of the forests of Kilrane thrown back with dramatic flair and witness its rise again from the ashes of its former grave.
Captain Thrax stood at the doorway to the surgeon’s cottage, arms folded, his large thick eyebrows shadowing the shallow caves of his intense eyes as he waited on the final news of his General’s condition.
Kadmin, the thickly-built shorter bodyguard of the General emerged first from the cottage door, his bow already in hand, an arrow notched as he swept the portal field with his eyes and then rested them on the imposing figure of Thrax and lowered the post of his pointed arrow. A line of soldiers stood at attention ranks, just beyond Thrax, eyes forward but stealing furtive sidelong glances at the front portal of the cottage.
Kadmin raised his fist, signaling to the interior of the house through the partially open doorway at his back that, in his assessment, the way was clear of any immediate foes.
To the surprise of all, General Mattox, “The Eagle” emerged from the house, flanked slightly behind and on the left by Jesh, his taller, equal statured bodyguard. The General stood tall just beyond the doorway, his chest emblazoned with the fierce and proud red eagle crest, with only the gauze bandage peeking out from behind the shoulder of his tunic, and a slight and barely perceptible twitch in the corners of his eyes signifying the pain from his recent ordeal.
An older, balding fellow with silver-hair, pleaded with him, “General, respectfully I must insist that you get bed rest for at least three days following such an extensive surgery.”
The General stepped forward out from under the stoop of the surgeon’s cottage, “And I told you if Azragoth does not have three days to rest, then neither do I. I thank you for your skill and concern, but I have my duty to fulfill.”
With those words he strode forward towards the surprised Captain Thrax, signifying that he would brook no further argument from either the well-intentioned healer or from his own soldiers and guards under his command.
“How stands the city of Azragoth?” the General asked, “Were the beasts fully routed? Has Morgrath reported back from The Keep and the tunnels below? Where have the three treacherous creatures been taken? Where are they being held? Where is Corimanth? Has Logray returned to the city with the Forrester?”
When there came no quick answer to the general’s questions, he walked closer to smiling Captain Thrax, irritation apparent, “Has everyone gone deaf and dumb, since I’ve been down?”
“No, General, we are all just very stunned to see you return back from death’s dark road so swiftly, and all very glad that you have.”
“Glad?!” Mattox asked, turning towards his guard and the ranks of soldiers standing just beyond Thrax, “Well, so far, I see very little to be gladdened about. I’ll tell you what would make me glad. It would please me ever so much to see these men stationed out on the wall watching for the enemy and remembering that they have a city full of people to protect, rather than attending an old worn-out soldier who deigns to try and lead this rag-tag bunch. That,” he punctuated with a raised finger under Thrax’s nose, “IS what would make me glad. Not this show of…of…”
“Loyalty and devotion, my General?” Corimanth offered, stepping out from the ranks of soldiers.
General Mattox turned on him swiftly, “Foolishness, is the word I was searching for, mister.”
“It’s good to see you too, General,” Ezra stepped forward as well smiling at the General who was now clearly back in his command element.
“Where have you placed those three creatures, Ezra? How have you secured them? These are not what they may appear to be and will elude your men if they are not watched carefully and cautiously.”
“We have placed them in the oubliettes,” Ezra answered, “Three guards stand over their iron gratings, ready to sluice them with the blackened sludge-waters, should they stir or attempt to escape.”
Mattox thought on this a moment before he lifted his eyes to Ezra again, “Captain Thrax and I will go to them, and see what further can be learned. Corimanth, get these soldiers back up to the wall to stand watch. I am assuming Logray has not returned, but when he does bring him and Jeremiah to me quickly. I would hear from Morgrath soon if you can get him. The city should be prepared for retaliation from the Xarmnians soon. I believe Tobias and Sandballat may have already betrayed us to them, but in either case, we must be ready as the curious and the malicious come forward to observe the city of fire. Go to it.”
The men broke ranks and hurried off quickly towards the inner walls of the city to relieve the armed citizens who had volunteered to stand watch in their place.
***
The sentries stood firm. Legs apart, armed with sharpened Monk Spade weapons ready to thwart any outside assistance coming to affect the release of the strange identical beings locked in the street holes beneath them. Their eyes were watchful, vigilant and their muscles were taut, flexed and ready gripping their deadly blades ever so tightly. So focused on the walls around them, and cautious of every soul that would dare look their way, they failed to notice what was going on beneath them in the oubliette cages below.
Ants. Thousands of them. Swarms of them crawled up onto the grating swarming and covering the splayed legs of the soldiers above. These tiny frenetic creatures crawled out of the suppurating eyes, nostrils, and mouths of the golems beneath them. Crawled up their extended arms, out of their ears and through their hair and up onto the grating in swarm stacks of ant bodies linked in living chains to torment their captors above.
The ants flowed through the myriad tiny tunnels and wind capillaries of their host’s golem body, contained within the mud mounds the Dust Dragon creature that birthed them brought within itself in its trek through the Mid-World pursuing the latest members of the Surface World quest. It imbued these hostile living nests within the hollow belly of each golem, crazing them with chemical pheromones as the wind spirits flowed into the corpus and moved these chemicals into golem’s hollow circulation. The frenzied ants merely need to find a way out of the golem body and would sting repeatedly anything and everything they found in proximity upon their release. It wasn’t long before the first guard who had confined the initial golem to the prison well began to feel the tingling itch and prickle of several somethings crawling within the seams of his outer clothing and hardened leather armor. Seconds later, the other guards began to feel similar sensations. When they finally looked down their legs and arms were covered in living carpets of biting and stinging creatures wild with chemical-crazed fury.
***
When General Mattox, Captain Thrax, Ezra, Jesh, and Kadmi arrived in the courtyard where the oubliettes were kept, they found three guards on the ground writhing in agony, crawling with thousands of tiny brown creatures, their Monk Spade weapons having fallen to the ground as ineffective against such tiny insidious enemies.
The three oubliette holes lay open, their metal gratings were thrown back, and trails of fine-grain sand led away from each prison hole.
They rushed forward to the holds, fearful certainty already confirming that the three former imprisoned occupants were long gone.
When they lifted their eyes from the courtyard holes, they noticed a series of dark-cloaked silhouettes perched upon the courtyard walls.
Their pale-white faces and hard glaring black eyes, and black-feathered capes revealing the identity of the second wave assault force lying in wait to terrorize and rip apart the city of Azragoth.
Harpies.
Forty or so, by best estimates.
Excavatia 