Disclaimer: I hold these truths to be self-evident, that 1.) I do not own Dungeons and Dragons, the Cartoon, that 2.) I own no part of the estate of H.P. Lovecraft, that 3.) this was written by a fan for simple enjoyment, that 4.) I make no profit from this story, and that 5.) I would greatly appreciate not being sued over it, thankyouverymuch.
Author's Note: You need not have read any of the works of H.P. Lovecraft to understand this, but it might help to know that he was an American author from Providence, Rhode Island, who wrote groundbreaking fantasy and supernatural horror in the early part of the 20th Century.
Dedication: This is a slightly late birthday present for my friend Robert. At the same time, a special thank-you goes to my friend and co-worker John, who must take full responsibility for insinuating Lovecraft into my brain like this. Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!
O.O.O
Stones of Flame
Chapter 1: Discovery
O.O.O
"Watch out!"
It all happened too fast. Presto wasn't even sure which of his friends had shouted the warning. It was timely enough to allow him to pull back from his attacker's cudgel, preventing the crude weapon from connecting disastrously with his head, but he could not dodge the blow completely. Instinctively, he'd thrown up his arm to shield himself, so, instead of dashing his brains out, the metal club impacted his shoulder with a sickening crunch. The force of the blow was enough to stagger the Magician back several steps.
Unfortunately, he did not have several steps worth of solid ground to stagger. He'd been standing near the low bank of a clear lake, taking an afternoon break from endless miles of marching, when the group of aggressive humans had abruptly descended upon them.
Their attackers had not been dressed for stealth in the woods; yet no one had heard them coming, and certainly, no one knew who the hairy men dressed in red scale armor were. The only warning the kids had of their approach was a sudden start and frightened bleat from Uni, who likely had scented this decidedly smelly group. Then chaos erupted, and the entire focus of Presto's world suddenly narrowed to the explosive agony in his shoulder.
Falling back awkwardly, Presto lost his footing, spun his arms in a lopsided but frantic windmill, and unceremoniously fell three feet into the shockingly cold water of the lake.
One of the girls screamed his name; again, he wasn't sure which. But, knowing he'd been about to fall into the water, Presto had bought himself a minute by drawing a deep breath just before he'd plunged in. He wasn't the strongest swimmer, but under normal circumstances, even with one desperately aching and possibly broken arm, he should have been able to get his head above water. What he hadn't counted on was the billowing length of his robes. As he floundered about, trying to right himself, he felt the heavy fabric tangling dangerously around his legs.
Crap, I've got to get out of here, the Magician thought, in a near-panic as he pulled frantically at the material trapping his ankles. Though his lungs were already beginning to burn, strangely enough, it was not the fear of drowning that worried Presto. All he could think about was getting to the surface so he could help defend his friends in this sudden battle.
As hard as he struggled to free himself, Presto only felt his feet getting bound further. Abruptly, his hand closed on what felt like a submerged branch, and he realized with a thrill of panic that his robes were not only tangled, but firmly snagged. Faced with the real possibility of drowning, the Magician inexplicably felt a sense of complete fury rather than fear.
Stupid branch, stupid lake, stupid ambush, stupid Venger, stupid Realm, stupid STUPID EVERYTHING! Presto thought angrily, assigning blame for his dangerous circumstances randomly and, quite possibly, undeservedly. Grasping the branch in both hands, he gave it a sharp twist. The last of the air in his lungs bubbled out of his mouth with the exertion, and he still wasn't free.
Do or die, then. Marshaling every last bit of his strength and a great deal of uncharacteristic fury at the attacker who had put him in this situation, Presto gave one final twist to the submerged branch, and felt it giving way with a waterlogged snap. Having been caught less than a foot underwater, Presto instantly shot to the surface gasping.
Two deep breaths and a round of coughing later, the Magician was recovered enough to realize three disturbing things: One, that he'd lost his glasses in the lake. Two, that he'd also lost his Hat. And three, that the battle was still raging, and though his friends were fighting fiercely, they were simply outnumbered. Unless they broke their cardinal rule of never using lethal force with their Weapons, they were going to be overwhelmed in a matter of moments.
Blinking rapidly, trying to focus through the baby-oil haze that was his uncorrected vision, Presto was fairly certain he saw a small, green smudge floating just a few yards away. Hoping that it was his Hat and not a clump of duckweed, Presto flailed quickly towards it, and was rewarded by the feel of heavy, wet fabric between his grasping fingers.
"However you do it, I don't care! Hat, get our enemies out of here!" Presto shouted furiously to his soggy Weapon.
Presto's lungs were still aching. His throat still burned. The rhyme had stunk. Altogether, the words never stood the chance of sounding quite right, so, naturally, the Hat followed the mispronunciation to the letter. The shouts and clashes of battle instantly became the screams and rushing of pure panic as the red-mailed attackers howled and beat at their suddenly flaming heads.
Heaving a raspy sigh, Presto watched the blurry, burning men run in painful, blind disarray, disappearing into the woods they had emerged from. Then, the Magician glanced wryly at the Weapon still dripping in his hands. "I said get them out of here, not get them out of hair," he explained wearily to the Hat.
"Hey, Presto, care to join us where it's a little less damp?" Diana's voice called, and Presto looked up to see three vaguely human-shaped blurs standing on the bank of the lake. One blur was mostly green, the next was a darker brown, and the third was a riot of bright, primary colors, so the glasses-deprived Wizard was fairly certain he was looking at Hank, Diana, and Eric.
"Well, if you insist," Presto answered raspily, awkwardly dogpaddling his way towards the shore and quietly cursing his billowing robes for the third time in as many minutes. "So, the bad guys are, like, gone?"
"Sheila's following them for a little bit to be sure," the green blur that was Hank answered, with a familiar movement of his head that Presto did not need his glasses to recognize as a concerned glance in the invisible Thief's last known direction. "But you did a pretty good number on them. They didn't look like they'd be in any shape to come back and give us trouble any time soon."
When he had floundered close enough to the bank, blur-Hank and blur-Diana knelt down and each grasped one of the Magician's hands. "Okay, on three," Diana instructed. "One, two, three!" When his two friends gave a coordinated pull, Presto did his best to assist by climbing the rocky, nearly vertical bank with his feet. Halfway up, he felt Eric grab the sash around his waist to lend an extra hand, and the next thing Presto knew, he was sprawled face-first in a bedraggled heap with his friends kneeling around him in concern.
Suddenly realizing just how tired he was after his brief ordeal, the Magician decided it would be really nice to just lie there for a minute or two and recover. He managed to roll over onto his back, closing his eyes against the fuzzy brightness of the suns as he did so, and found enough energy to cough a few times.
"Hey, buddy... you okay?" he heard Eric's voice ask as someone shook his shoulder. Presto was very, very thankful that it was his uninjured shoulder.
"Yeah, I... I guess," The Magician said slowly. Now that he was safe, he found himself realizing just how much an unexpected plunge into a cold lake could make a person hurt. His head throbbed and his chest ached like someone was sitting on it. Breathing wasn't quite as easy as it should have been; he might have inhaled some water after all. And that wasn't even including the injury to his arm. Truthfully, it had all happened so fast that Presto still wasn't sure how everything had transpired. "So ... uh ..." he asked through another bout of coughing, "what happened just now?"
"Well, you scared us pretty bad there for a second," Hank explained when Presto trailed off with a weary sigh. "We thought you were going to drown, and nobody could get away from those guys long enough to help you. Good thing you got to the surface and set their hair on fire like that."
"Yeah, I, uh, maybe I kinda feel kinda bad about that," Presto apologized, wondering just how much damage his slip of the tongue had done to their opponents. "I coulda killed somebody. I mean, that was kinda close to deadly force, wasn't it?"
"Well, desperate times, desperate measures," the Ranger answered, a nonchalant shrug carrying in the tone of his voice. Obviously, their leader wasn't too upset about the underhanded tactic, which, in itself, didn't come as much of a surprise any more. Though they knew of no one who had died as a direct consequence of their actions (the end result of their encounter with Lolth still being in question), Presto had noticed some time ago that the group's aversion to possibly killing someone was beginning to pale in comparison to their simple need for survival.
"'Sides, think about it this way," Eric volunteered cheerfully. "You did those guys a big favor by curing any head lice problems they had."
Presto tried to smile at Eric's snarky irreverence, but he only managed a ghost of the intended expression. His hand drifted up to rub the bridge of his nose gingerly as he asked, "Any idea who those guys were?"
"None at all," Eric answered, sounding more concerned than chipper this time. "And I'm gonna say it again, are you okay, buddy?"
"Um, no, not really," Presto answered. Swallowing down the spiral of panic that had been coiling in the back of his throat, the Magician finally opened his eyes and pointed out the obvious, which none of his friends had realized in the midst of their greater concerns. "I, uh ... I kinda lost my glasses in the lake."
"Wha - ? Oh, yeah, I guess you did," Eric replied lamely.
"Don't worry about it, I can find them, no sweat," Diana volunteered immediately. "The water's maybe only a couple yards deep, and it looks like the bottom's more rock than mud." Climbing quickly to her feet, she added, "They can't have gone too far," before lightly springing into the water and slipping easily beneath the surface.
Presto sighed, drawing his knees up to his chest as he sat up, accepting his friends' assurances that Diana would be back with his glasses any moment. Eric knew – they all knew, in fact – just how afraid he was of losing his glasses, but he doubted any of them really understood just why it terrified him so much. They'd never experienced the complete and utter helplessness of not being able to see more than a foot beyond their own noses, to not be able to tell who or what was right in front of you or right beside you. Back home, his severe astigmatism was a frightening inconvenience that could thankfully be cured by a trip to the Optometrist. Here, in the Realm, it was a matter of life and death. If he couldn't see, if he couldn't tell when a bloodthirsty enemy was pursuing him or if he was about to stumble into a deathtrap, then being without his glasses greatly reduced his chances of living another week. The very best he could hope for was to be relegated to the status of a near-blind charity case that some village supported out of pity. Presto's terror at the thought began to gain momentum.
"So, Eric, did those guys say anything to you that might give us a clue what that was all about?" the near-panicked Magician vaguely heard Hank ask over his head.
"Not that I could make heads or tails of," Eric replied. "One guy yelled at me that 'the road ghoul won't answer to you,' whatever that means. You?"
"One of them said that we should give up the search," Hank answered. "He didn't say much more because I was pounding his face into the ground at the time."
"Yeah, remind me one of these days to ask you why you went out for football and not wrestling," Eric commented wryly. "How 'bout you, Presto? That guy that hit you say anything?"
Presto just gave a one-shouldered shrug, trying to focus on the conversation and not allow himself get too worried just yet. Diana would find his glasses, she just had to. "Um, he said, 'DIIIIEEE!' That's about it," he answered. For a moment, the Magician perked up, catching fuzzy sight of what he thought was the Acrobat breaking the surface of the lake. But she must have just come up for air; his hopes deflated when she merely bobbed for a few seconds before slipping into the water again, empty-handed.
"Well, at least that guy was pretty clear on what he wanted," Eric said lightly, trying to humor his forlorn friend. The attempt was obviously lost on Presto, who only grunted half-heartedly.
This was followed by an awkward pause between the three of them.
"Hey, Bobby?" Hank called before the silence got too uncomfortable. "Any sign of them coming back?"
"Nope. At least, Uni doesn't think so," the little Barbarian answered from closer to the tree line. Presto idly noted that the kid actually sounded disappointed that he wasn't going to get to bust any heads today. "Ya want me to go after them or something?"
"Bobby! Don't you dare!" interrupted a familiar, feminine voice, scolding Bobby while reassuring everyone else that Sheila had returned safely from her invisible tracking foray. "Besides, you'd never catch up to them. They got on their horses and rode off while I was watching. But that doesn't mean we're safe, so don't go wandering off, do you hear me? We need to stay together to make sure they don't take us by surprise again."
"Yeah, sure, whatever, Sis," Bobby answered, clearly sounding more confident in his ability to smash the bad guys than the rest of them were.
"I mean it. You stay right there and keep watch," Sheila ordered. "I need to go see how Presto is."
Sheila knew more about first aid than the rest of the group, so, coupling that with her tendency to fuss over everyone like a mother hen, Presto had been expecting this. In fact, a long time ago, he'd just given up and quietly accepted that she'd essentially adopted him as a second little brother to care for. Actually, the sentiment was kind of nice. But that didn't mean he was thrilled with the concept of her poking and prodding his very painful arm to determine if it was broken.
"Okay, it was pretty crazy for a minute there," a pastel blur that was Sheila said gently, coming to kneel beside the dripping and glum Presto. "I couldn't see everything that happened, but it looked like that guy knocked you into the lake. Where did he hit you?"
"Arm," Presto answered, wincing painfully, but dutifully holding out his left arm for inspection. There was no point to insisting that he was fine; he didn't even need to see clearly to know that Sheila was wearing that mulish look which said she wasn't going to accept a show of bravado as an answer. "Just below my shoulder. Hurts like the dickens."
"I'll bet it does," Sheila answered, poking and prodding just like Presto had expected. "But you can move it, that's something. All right, can you wiggle your fingers?"
"How 'bout he makes a fist instead?" Eric quickly and only half-jokingly suggested. "You never know what a random finger-twiddle will get from our pal the Wizard."
Making a face in Eric's direction, Presto very deliberately wiggled his fingers as Sheila had asked. His best friend could be a bit of an insensitive boob sometimes, and the magic-gone-awry jokes got old after a while. All the same, the accident-prone Wizard was secretly relieved that the gesture didn't end up causing a spectacular scene of magical mayhem after all.
"Well, I don't think it's broken," the Thief assessed after a moment. "But I'm pretty sure you're going to have a nasty bruise, at the very least. Probably wouldn't be a bad idea to get it in a sling for a few days ..."
"Hey, guys!" Diana's excited voice interrupted as she splashed to the surface of the lake again. "You've got to see this!"
Presto brightened instantly. "Did you find my glasses?" he called hopefully.
"Yeah, and something else," the Acrobat answered, kicking herself easily through the water. When she reached the edge, she hauled herself nimbly up to the bank without any of the assistance that the waterlogged Wizard had required. "Here," she said immediately, handing Presto his precious eyewear. "And take a look at this!"
Presto could see that Diana was holding up something glittery red, about the size of a football. What it was, though, he could not make out, even after he put his glasses on. Muttering darkly, he pulled the streaked lenses off his face and tried to wipe them on his robe, only to remember that his clothing was as soaked as his glasses. With a frustrated sigh, he grabbed the corner of Eric's cape and started drying. The Cavalier didn't even seem to notice as he stared at Diana's mystery object, making sounds of awe along with the others.
Cleaned and dried glasses back in place, Presto finally took a good look at what the Acrobat displayed, and gasped in wonder with the rest of them. It was a statue of a dragon, wings outstretched, frozen in an eternal pose of raging at the sky. Even though it was patchworked with clumps of algae from the lake, the sculpture was clearly crusted entirely with faceted rubies.
"Whoa," Bobby commented. "What d'ya think it is?"
"I think it's a gazillion-dollar ticket to the easy life," Eric answered, the dollar signs almost visibly flashing in his eyes as he blatantly assessed the object by its value alone.
"You think so, huh?" Hank countered coolly. "Personally, I think it's the thing Dungeon Master sent us looking for."
"Huh?" Eric asked, seeming to snap out of a daze with a shake of his head. Scrutinizing the sculpted dragon a little more closely, he mused, "Hm ... stones of flame ...? Yeah, I guess it could be, couldn't it?"
"I think so, too," Diana said with her usual enthusiasm. "What did Dungeon Master tell us about it? You said it just now, didn't you? Something about stones of flame?"
"A sleeping fury will soon wake and gaze upon the Realm through stones of flame," Eric immediately quoted, sounding uncannily like their mysterious guide at that moment. "Should those who have sought the stones for an age discover what they desire, the red fury will be fanned a thousandfold. Seek not to quench the fire once it has begun, but instead, prevent it from ever igniting."
"Stones of flame, I guess that describes rubies pretty well," Sheila agreed when Eric had finished his recitation.
"Yeah," Presto agreed, noting the way the gemstones shone in the suns-light as if the little statue was on fire. Remembering a previous encounter while the gang had hitched a ride on the back of a surprisingly compliant roc, he added, "And red dragons, those are, like, the fire-breathers, and pretty nasty-tempered, too, so, um, yeah." While that tidbit of information added a few interesting pieces to the puzzle, the original question remained unanswered. "Uh, like Bobby said, what do you think it is?"
"I don't know," Hank admitted thoughtfully, "but did anyone else notice that those guys who attacked us were wearing armor that looked like red dragon scales?"
"Great!" Eric answered, throwing his hands into the air with patently false cheer. "A bunch of dragon fanatics out to score the super-rare red toy from the McDragon's Happy Meal!"
"Cute, Eric," Hank sighed in response. "What I was going to say was that they were probably the ones Dungeon Master said were looking for this thing too. He didn't make it sound like they were up to any good, so whatever else we do, we shouldn't let them get their hands on it."
"But what are we supposed to do with it?" Bobby asked, voicing one of the many questions that Dungeon Master had, as usual, left unanswered. "Is it gonna help us get home or what?"
"Um," Eric hedged, pausing to stare off into nothing as his lips moved slightly, silently reciting to himself everything that their guide had told them on the subject. "Actually," he added a moment later, "Ol' DM didn't say anything about that this time."
"Okay, so, like, why are we gonna do this?" the stubborn Barbarian asked in response to the unsatisfactory answer.
"Because we can probably sell this thing for a boatload of cash when we're done!" Eric replied cheerfully, trying to snatch the priceless treasure from Diana's hands.
Eric's attempt at larceny was stopped cold by one of the Acrobat's magnificent scowls. "Maybe we should start by figuring out if this thingy's supposed to do something," she suggested. Holding the statue up to the suns-light, she looked for all the world like she was searching for operating instructions or a battery compartment.
"Well, since His Shortness didn't give us much of a hint," Eric reasoned, also staring at the statue with a calculating expression, "and it looks like it doesn't come with a user's manual, maybe we're going to have to find someone who can I.D. it for us, or at least tell us what it's worth."
"If we get back on the road and keep going the way we were going, we're bound to run into a town at some point," their leader agreed. "It's a pretty well-traveled road, so I'm sure we'll find somebody. That is, if you feel up to some walking, Presto?"
Gingerly flexing his injured arm, Presto took careful stock of how badly it throbbed with each movement. It hurt, sure, but it was probably going to hurt just as much whether he was sitting here resting or trudging down the road. And setting out on a search to find someone to tell them about the statue was a far less embarrassing prospect than having one of his friends decide to ask him to identify it by magical means. "Um, as long as we take it easy and we don't, you know, get into any more fights or anything, I think I'll be okay," he answered after careful consideration. "But walking that far in wet robes, now that's not gonna be any fun."
"At least you're not wearing drenched furs," Diana ribbed immediately, cheerfully reminding the Magician that he was not the only one who had gotten soaked in the lake. "Nothing like running around, smelling like a wet dog for the next hour or two."
"Well, still," Sheila began, and Presto mentally sighed and prepared himself for the next round of humiliating fussing. "Like I said, I think you should get your arm in a sling or something, just to give it a rest and remind you not to swing it while we're walking. Does anyone have a …?" The Thief trailed off, looking around quickly, but apparently did not find what she was looking for. Then, her face brightened when her eyes fell back on Presto. "Your sash. That'll make the perfect sling. Here, give it to me."
Quietly, obediently, knowing there was just no way out of this while Nurse Sheila was on duty, Presto unwound the sash from his waist and handed it over. Trying but failing to disguise his wounded dignity, Presto soon found himself trussed up like a roasted turkey. True, it did offer his aching arm a little relief, and he knew he'd come to appreciate it more as they traveled. On the other hand, now his robes were not only wet, but lacking anything to control their billowing fullness when they finally dried.
How was it that despite the fact that he'd just saved all his friends in the battle and had, in a roundabout way, helped find the object they'd been looking for, he still ended up feeling like a dork?
O.O.O
"So, guys, what do you think?" Hank asked when the group finally came to a halt. It was ten miles and several hours after the battle at the lake.
"Nice," Eric assessed as they stared up at the gates of the small city situated along a wide and raging river. The walls surrounding the settlement were made of block granite, not terribly elaborate, but clearly well cared for and even carved with careful decorations in places. What little could be seen of the roofs over the walls indicated cheerfully-painted buildings constructed of milled lumber, with high, shuttered windows. Somehow, it had the feeling of a quaint Bavarian town often pictured in brochures promoting an Oktoberfest celebration. "Looks like a pretty well-to-do place."
"Okay, if they're rich here, then remember," Diana advised with a completely deadpan expression, "pillage first, then burn."
"Cool!" Bobby crowed eagerly.
"She's joking," Hank sighed, without even turning around to see the grin of anticipation spreading across Bobby's face. "We're just here to find a jeweler or historian who might be able to tell us what the dragon statue is. Okay?"
"Okay," the Barbarian answered glumly, his face falling. He already sounded bored with the task.
Presto stifled a laugh, knowing that it would make him cough again. Aside from a slightly irritated throat, he felt fine after his dip in the lake, but he'd quickly learned that one single cough would send Sheila into a tailspin of fussing and everyone else into another round of not-quite-disguised worrying. Instead, he simply added, "Or maybe we can find a really powerful Wizard or, you know, like an arcane scholar or something. I kinda think that thing might have some sorta magical power." In fact, Presto was fairly certain of that, and the thought made him mentally deride himself yet again for not being a good enough Magician to tell what power it was.
"Or we find a Wizard," Hank conceded. "But let's stick together. No use splitting up into groups to find someone who can identify a statue, when we only have one statue to show them. Okay, everyone?"
Diana paused to make sure that the priceless statue was securely wrapped and hidden from curious eyes in the giant leaf they had picked from a plant that grew wild along the roadside. Otherwise, the rest of the group answered their leader with some variant of "Okay," or "I'm ready, let's go."
Hank stepped forward, pounding loudly on the gate to get the gatekeeper's attention.
End Chapter 1