( !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!PLEASE READ THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
....Thank-you. I found several flaws in this story and corrected them. It's depressing that they were there in the first place, but I righted them and now the world is a better place because of it. The corrected parts are as follows:
-the Ice Hounds are half kobold, half white dragon (Tymofarrar's own stock)
-Deekin remembered to take his lute and rapier with him (can't believe I forgot...)
-gnolls are now the size of two kobolds, but have the strength of four (I pointed this out earlier but didn't fix it until now)
-bats now flutter out of the crypt with Deekin (unnecessary, but makes for better reading)
Some of those are just little things I corrected because I'm paranoid. But one proves to relate to an important plotpoint later...much later. At the very end of the story, actually. Oh well.
I'd like to thank Guan, Coranth, Lissette, lost in space, Iris and Lady Kitana for reviewing last chapter, beg them for more reviews, and tell them how sorry I am that Chapter Seven took so long to write. Curse you, writer's block...
Oh, yeah. Please review. PLEEASE!
Disclaimer: Nope, still don't own Neverwinter Nights, Forbidden Realms or Dungeons and Dragons. A darn shame, too.)
Dependence I: Heartsinger
Chapter Seven
Deekin eventually fell asleep. By the time he awoke, the caravan's sections had already been reconnected into a train and the oxen were in place at the front, pulling the vehicles along in their slovenly, steady way. Deekin pressed his snout against the window, his breath forming white clouds on the chilly glass as he watched the snowy plains roll past. Unsticking his face from the window with a wide grin, he spun around to face Daschnaya, who was only half-awake and sitting at the low table, pouring herself a cup of hot tea from a black kettle.
"This be so exciting!" Deekin vociferated joyously, plopping down on his bedroll. "Deekin never be in any kind of wagon before!" The caravan hit something rough, sending them up with a jolt and causing Daschnaya to spill her tea, though Deekin failed to notice. "See?! It be so neat, and it be warm in here too!"
"Enjoy it now," Daschnaya responded, glaring at the spilt tea puddling on the tabletop, as though staring hard enough would cause the liquid to repool into her cup. "Daschnaya travels much, she does. It won't be exciting for long."
Sure enough, the days passed and the pattern soon grew monotonous. In the mornings they would awaken and snack on some dried foods--once Deekin offered to cook, but Daschnaya shook her head and replied that she hadn't consulted her cards, but she didn't think that would be a good idea--and sip water as he studied the intricate frost designs that decorated the window. The snow didn't occupy his interest for long, so Deekin often spent the day doodling on a single sheet of paper, paranoid of wasting them all, or practicing playing his lute. When Daschnaya wasn't on the other side of the beaded curtain, sometimes he would talk to her, and sometimes he would play songs for her, which she seemed to enjoy. When he wasn't doodling, playing music or talking to the old fortune-teller, Deekin would just sit by and dream of what adventures he might go on, and wonder what Umbra Lumina was doing right then.
---
"Aren't you going to do anything, Umbra?" the brown-haired dwarven woman snapped at the tall, hooded figure who seemed to be glued to window. "Ever since this trip started, all you've been doing is staring out that damned window! Do you sleep there, too?"
"Forgive this one, Dorna," Umbra said in a wispy, weary voice, "for this one wishes but a last look..." Dorna just groaned, shook her head and moved on.
---
Throughout the day, the caravan would make occasional stops to feed and water the oxen, during which some of the halflings would go from caravan to caravan, collecting and emptying chamberpots and asking if anyone needed anything very badly. Then they would be off again, leaving the travelers to resume their blase daily patterns. When night fell, the caravan would stop until the sun set. Most of the travelers would get out to stretch their limbs, breathe some fresh air and chatter amongst themselves, but Daschnaya and Deekin always stayed in--Deekin for fear of being seen by Umbra Lumina, Daschnaya because she was aging and didn't like to move more than she had to, for the sake of her creaky joints. In the morning, the caravan would be off again, and the pattern would repeat.
On one of many such days, the kobold asked Daschnaya why Drogan's students were journeying with with the caravan. Daschnaya, who had been shuffling her cards and spread them into a fan, expertly compressed the fan of cards with a switch of her thumb, bound them with a thin leather strip and turned her attention to Deekin.
"Daschnaya knows little of the situation," she confessed, "but she knows something. There is an object of power Drogan's pupils have found, though Daschnaya knows not what it is. They seek a man in the desert, who can tell them of it." Daschnaya lowered her voice secretively and added, "But Daschnaya thinks one of them already knows more of the object than that man."
"Then why is they going to sees him?" Deekin puzzled.
"Because the one who knows will not let on, that is why," she told him. "So because this man is on our way, we are transporting them across the desert."
"Okies...thanks for tellings Deekin," he said gratefully. Daschnaya nodded and went back to her cards.
The caravan went on, rolling over hill and dale, across the snowy plains. The terrain began to roughen out, until it wore into the towering peaks that composed the Nether Mountains. Deekin tensed as they entered this area--though Tymofarrar was miles away from this part--and hoped they would leave it soon. Sadly, though the sierra itself wasn't especially large, it took a long while to navigate through it because of the many mountains they had to weave around.
By and by, they finally left the mountain range. No sooner had they done so, it seemed, than the vast sands of the Anauroch opened up before them. Deekin pressed his face up against the window yet again, this time to take in the sands which glistened golden in the hot sun's dazzle, and the prickly green cacti sticking up here and there that he had hitherto only read of.
As the cramped inside of the caravan grew very muggy in the heat, Deekin wished for sweat glands and remarked, "Deekin never be too hot before...except for that one time when Deekin be in old master's cave and gets really cold, so he leans too close to the fire. Deekin is thinking aah, this fire sure be hot...too hot, too hot! Deekin be on fire, and he screams, so old master--being a white dragon--blows ice on Deekin. Fire gets put out, so that be good, Deekin thinking, but then he be so covered in ice he can't move, and he be colder than ever, so Deekin just freezes like that 'til ice melts. Deekin never gets too close to fires again." Daschnaya smiled at his reminiscence and fanned herself with her cards, while Deekin just turned back to the window and his thoughts.
A short while later, she folded her cards and mused disconsolately, "How many times we have crossed this desolate wasteland and never stopped to consider what it once was, a place great for more than its size."
"What you means?" Deekin pondered quizzically, turning to face her.
"Very simple: this desert was not always here. The fall of the Netheril Empire created it. Hostile magic, cursed blight, the destruction of their cities... it turned a verdant land into a desolation." She looked more directly at Deekin and asked him, "What do you know of the ancient Netheril Empire, and how it fell?"
"Deekin not knows that much, really," he responded. "Deekin knows there be humans, long ago, that cuts tops off Nether Mountains and makes great flying cities of Netheril out of them! Deekin lives under the Nether Mountains, once. But Deekin not knows how it falls...how?"
"Now that is the mystery, isn't it?" she sighed. "Whatever happened to the Netherese, it happened suddenly. There are many tales but no records of this calamity." She paused to close her eyes and think. "Perhaps their magic simply stopped working, perhaps they were attacked... perhaps the gods struck them down because their pride was so great." She cleared her throat and half-opened her eyes. "However it happened, one day the flying cities of the Empire crashed to the ground and their power was no more. Lost to time and legend, as they say."
"There be no traces of it?" Deekin queried.
"Traces, perhaps. Ruins, scattered artifacts, perhaps more buried beneath the sand under our feet. Little more."
"There be flying city buried under Deekin's feet?" he asked with wide eyes. Daschnaya laughed at his expression and patted him on the head, careful to avoid his four tiny horns.
"Very possibly, little one. If one of us knew the answer to that, who knows what power we might possess?"
---
After a day's travel, a city sprung out at them from the sands. The populace was known as Blacksands, and Katriana stopped the caravan here to send halflings out to look around for a guide to hire. In all its dangerous monotony, Daschnaya explained to Deekin, the Anauroch was an inhospitable place and easy to get lost in; no matter how many times they had journeyed across it, each time they needed a native to guide them.
This time, their guide was a young, dark-skinned man named Zidan, who was one of the Bedine--a people native to the Anauroch. Since Zidan traveled in another caravan--there had been room for one more, after all--and Deekin never left his, the only time he saw him was when Katriana went from caravan to caravan introducing him. At last the caravan lurched to life, Zidan as its compass, and they were off again, the city shrinking into a dot on the brilliant horizon behind them.
They traveled for many more days. The stops were more frequent now, so the oxen could be watered often enough they wouldn't dehydrate in the open sun. Katriana constantly stopped by the caravans during these halts to remind the passengers to be stingy with their water and other fluids; it would be a long, dry trip. Daschnaya missed her tea, but agreed to drink it sparingly. Deekin was unused to drinking so little, but after living with an irritable dragon for so many years, he had learned to adapt.
On the third night out from Blacksands, Deekin was getting ready to hunker down for the sleep, when he heard an odd noise that sounded like a cross between a hiss and a rattle. Daschnaya had recently predicted trouble, so Deekin was instantly wary. Crawling to the window, he chanced a peek. Katriana and several others--including Zidan, Xanos, and Dorna, though Umbra was nowhere to be seen--were gathered around the fire. Suddenly, Torias sprinted over.
"We're under attack!" he panted. "It's an ambush!" A second later, a fleet of strange creatures burst out from beneath the sands. They appeared to be giant scorpions, but with hairless, humanoid red forms sprouting torso-up where heads should be. Their swollen tails dripped deadly venom, their chiseled hands gripped heavy weaponry, and Deekin remembered reading about these dangerous monsters, who were aptly named "stingers".
No time to admire the wildlife, Deekin realized as the stingers hissed, rattled and swung their weapons and tails at the caravaners. Pulling away from the window, he found his backpack on the floor and started searching through it. His rapier was there, still in its scabbard, but he wasn't sure he knew how to use it. Thankfully, he still had his crossbow, a quiver of bolts right beside it. Slipping the quiver and pack over his shoulders, Deekin loaded the crossbow with a bolt and went ahead, then paused a moment at the door. He hadn't done very well in that battle against the gnolls, had he? He hadn't done anything, in fact. What made him think he would have any more courage fighting the stingers, who were just as hazardous as gnolls if not more so?
Umbra did. She was there, and so were the others. He wouldn't be alone in this battle. Self-assuredly, Deekin pushed the door open and went out to fight, careful not to awaken Daschnaya as he closed it.
As unbearably hot as the days were, the nights in the desert were surprisingly cold. Deekin could see his breath form in misty clouds in the chill air, just as it had in the Silver Marches, and the stars shone down as clearly as before. He spared no time for stargazing, though, and directed his attention to the battle. The stingers were easily stronger than the halflings, but the little people made up for their lacking musclepower with agility and guile, ducking under their arachnoid opponents and hewing open their undersides, then tumbling aside as the green innards gushed out. The stingers quickly caught on to the strategy, however, and after a few of their brethren had been disposed of in such a manner the stingers took to surrounding a dying fellow, so as to waylay the halfling that would crawl from beneath it.
Fortunately, not only did the other halflings catch on to this counterstrategy and use their underbelly sneak attack on the waiting stingers, but Xanos was there to smash some choice heads together. It was rather impressive, actually, until the half-orc pulled out a tiny, gleaming dagger that contrasted humorously with his large, muscular physique. The diminutive weapon did little but tarnish the red beasts' hard carapaces, so he cast an acid spell beforehand. The summoned acid sprayed out of nowhere and melted away the stingers' chitin shells, reducing the creatures to boneless pink gobs that could only flounder helplessly in the sand, their painful deaths imminent.
Stout dwarf and rogue that she was, Dorna (whose name Deekin had learned from Daschnaya) slid swiftly into the halflings' sneaking attack patterns. With the halflings to catch the stingers off guard and Xanos to take them down with his sorcery and orcblooded strength, as well as Deekin helpfully shooting bolts from the background, the caravaners were making good progress against the stingers. Sadly, the amount of the creatures seemed to be endless--for every one that was taken down, two more would pop out of the sands to take its place. The halflings were wearing out, and showing wounds for it; luckily, Deekin remembered some healing spells Tymofarrar had taught him, and set down his crossbow to heal the halflings from afar in splashes of glittering white magic.
Just as the caravaners were winning again, a new wave of stingers rose from the sands with confident war cries, their weapons held high and their tails fat with poison. Several halflings were smacked aside by this new troop and toppled with groans, narrowly avoiding the vicious stabs of the stingers' tails. Even as he rapidly healed them, Deekin felt his healing magics fading and knew that he couldn't keep this up for much longer. He remembered another spell Tymofarrar had taught him, an offensive one. He shut his eyes to concentrate, murmuring the words, circling his hands and hoping he wouldn't be caught by a stinger in this vulnerable moment, then opened his eyes and his hands at once to empower and release the arcane power...
With an egglike stench, a sulphurous cloud culminated in spiraling red banks overhead. In a startling blast, it rained dozens of blazing stars of fire down, each shot hitting a stinger. The monsters moaned as they sizzled and fell to the ground in charred, smoking black heaps, twitching occasionally until the reflexes died off with the rest of the body. Awed, befuddled gasps resonated throughout the camp at this display, Deekin's among them; he hadn't cast that spell.
The resulting smoke settled in a red veil, a dark figure approaching and stepping out of it, none other than the caster herself: Umbra, who cleared the crimson smog away as she felled the remaining stingers with deft swipes of her luminous swords. Deekin was inspired to stay where he was and watch as Umbra stood in silent, dramatic triumph; Katriana felt less inclined, stomping over to their tardy hero as the last of the red mist evaporated.
"Damn, damn, DAMN!!! Where the hell were you?!" Katriana demanded, glaring icily up at the hooded figure, who would say nothing in reply.
"You see? Xanos told you!" Xanos barked angrily, arms crossed. "She cares nothing for the lives of others! It is all about keeping up her little mystery, distant and superior, too good to associate with the rest of us--"
"Shut up!" Katriana snapped at him, then turned back to Umbra. "Answer my question!" Umbra tilted her head up, gazing over and past Katriana.
"Where is Zidan?" she queried simply. Katriana paled, eyes widening in realization as she spun around and looked. Sure enough, Zidan was nowhere to be found.
"Where IS Zidan?!" Katriana cried frantically, forgetting Umbra and racing toward the encampment. "Has anyone seen him?" A chorus of negative answers resounded. The halflings checked the caravans and brought out some healing kits, but couldn't find Zidan. Katriana chewed her lip in frustration as they searched, then called Umbra over and addressed her with a sharp tongue. Deekin didn't appreciate the halfling woman's tone with his hero, but reminded himself he needed to stay out of the great hero's sight at all times.
Dashing ahead, he yanked open a caravan door and prepared to slip in--only to discover he had the wrong caravan. He tried again, but tripped over a resting halfling, who scolded him irritably and tossed a rock at the kobold's head despite his profuse apologies. Careful to watch his step this time around, Deekin wove his way around a crowd of reposing halflings to Daschnaya's caravan. He scuttled up the short ladder to the inlaid door, set his hand on the doorknob, started to twist--
And a dark figure appeared out of thin air, shocking Deekin and causing him to tumble backward. Getting up and rubbing his head, Deekin instantly recognized Umbra looming there. The pit of his stomach was suddenly very heavy.
"Oh... heh heh. The great hero has found little Deekin out," Deekin rasped as he stared up at Umbra's ominous form, his voice low and throat dry with fear. He swallowed, forced a smile and tried, "Ummm... maybe the great hero is happy to see Deekin, yes?" He braced himself.
Umbra just stood quietly for a moment before asking, "How is it that you have escaped my notice for the entire duration of this trip?" Deekin sighed in relief.
"Deekin follows you after we last meets," he explained. "Deekin wants to see world, but... Deekin not know where to go! World is so, so big!" He extended his arms to emphasize. Umbra said nothing, so he went on, "So, umm, Deekin watches the great hero because Deekin sure you go on to more adventures. And Deekin was right!" His grin was genuine now. "When the great hero leaves on caravan, Deekin follow it. Deekin ask halfling girl to hires Deekin on as cook. Then... then Deekin maybe be adventurer, too?" His smile was still there, but pleading now.
"The life of a cook is not normally likened to that of an adventurer," Umbra stated bluntly.
"Deekin knows that!" he said desperately, then looked away shyly and rocked back and forth on his heels. "Deekin was hoping... maybe he travel as the great hero's sidekick? Deekin write the great, epic tale of the great, epic hero's adventure! Just thinks of it! Deekin's story would travel across land, and you becomes famous! What not good about that?" There was another silence...Deekin guessed Umbra wasn't much of an entertainer at parties.
"You wish to write my story, do you?" she quested at last. Deekin nodded excitedly.
"It be epic tale of... of fighting and big, nasty villains! Songs of bravery! Whispers of deeds better left unmentioned! It be really, really good! Deekin promises!" he described enthusiastically. Umbra studied him for a while.
"Alright. Come with me, then," she allowed, turning to walk away.
"YAAAYY!" Deekin cheered, bouncing joyfully and scurrying after. "You not be sorry! Deekin make best, most epic tale of the great hero ever!" He paused thoughtfully, then hurried to catch up again. "Umm, where we be going, anyways?"
"Katriana has requested I locate Zidan," Umbra replied, stride unbroken. "He was most likely taken captive by the stingers, so I am off to enter their tunnels and take whatever is left of our guide back to the caravan. Hopefully, we will not find him beyond repair--if we find him at all, that is."
"Oooh," Deekin answered, hopping over a stinger corpse, then grinned up at her. "Whatever you says! You be the boss, Boss!"
Umbra stopped momentarily, back still turned to him, and muttered questioningly, "Boss?" She shrugged it off and continued on, her faithful kobold companion close at her heels.
(Aaaaand that was Chapter Seven! I love writing this story, I love getting your reviews...thank-you all, so much. Thank-you. Now review, please. It doesn't matter which chapter you review, just so long as you review.)