Here be Dragons!
Chapter 19
Kate had Addison with her while the others hunkered down behind the railing. "What is it with locked doors in this place?" Kate didn't understand how the occupants expected to get around if all the doors were locked.
"Why do we keep searching but not looking?" Aiden whispered to his dad because he was curious.
"Time constraint. This place could have a hundred or more of these Yuan-ti. What we don't want is to announce ourselves and have every one of them descend upon us at the same time. If we can keep the numbers small, room by room, that works to our advantage. Once we're sure we can go back," Rick explained quietly.
"Addison." Kate pointed at the door and got ready after the door opened.
Addison pointed, spoke the command word, and jumped to one side of the door after it crashed open with a bang against the wall. Kate took a peek and saw a set of stairs leading up for some 60 feet. It was just as she thought about this, wasn't this going to take them to a space high above the door they entered in the first place?
Kate motioned for her husband and she started up the stairs. This area confused her. Still she went up the stairs with her staff at the ready. Then a surprise hit her. As she walked up she saw a balcony area in the room above her. The space looked large, about 80 feet deep with an unknown ceiling height. As she looked up she saw the head of a Dragon and it was Bronze in color.
Her initial thought was that he was a prisoner since Bronze was a good dragon so she kept walking. "Hi, are you trapped here?" Kate kept walking, slowly looking for who was holding him here. Except she didn't see anyone. Then the impossible happened. The Bronze Dragon inhaled and before Kate could issue a warning in blew a bolt of lighting down the staircase.
Kate saw it coming and jumped out of the way. Rick, though, took it in the chest which sent him tumbling back down the stairs, landing in front of his children with a little smoke coming from his chest.
Bronze or not that pissed her off. Her mind told her one little lighting bolt wasn't going to kill her husband. However, this idiot needed to learn the error of his ways.
Kate ran up the stairs, stabbed her staff into the floor, and effectively pole vaulted feet first straight into his nose before landing on her feet.
"DAD!" Alexis was on him in an instant. She also heard Lulu growl and blink away.
Rick looked up the stairs. He thought he saw a Dragon head but why a lightning bolt? "You three stay here and keep watch." Rick jumped up and while charging up the stairs he pulled out two magic arrows and got them ready.
The Bronze Dragon jumped for the far wall and saw her right where he though she would be. He bounced off the wall, jumped back for his balcony, and along the way he used his tail to take a swipe at Kate but missed badly.
Rick reached the top and was instantly greeted by yet another lightning bolt. However, this one didn't come from the Dragon and was a lot weaker. He looked and saw what appeared to be a human pop into existence. He raised his bow and shot both arrows even if he had intended them for the Dragon. The human fell.
Kate saw two curving staircases on one side. She raced past her husband, up the stairs, and hit this idiot Dragon in the body with her staff.
"Stop this!" Rick saw a Bronze Dragon who shouldn't be attacking them. He also saw a pair of doors on his level under the balcony.
The answer was watching it attack Kate five times. Bite, two claws, and two wings. He watched in shock as the bite from the Bronze Dragon actually hit home and he could see the pain it caused her.
"What's wrong with you? We're the good guys." Why couldn't he figure that out? Was he a complete idiot or something?
Kate meanwhile used her staff to hit him twice and struck him both times. He still looked fine to her, though. "Cut this out. We can rescue you if you let us," Kate tried even after hitting him.
Rick pulled out 2 magic arrows and hit him both times. Sadly they both watched him fall. "Shit!" Rick hated to do that. It was just he didn't know what was wrong with him.
Now Rick and Kate were up on the balcony looking over both of these two. "What was wrong with this guy?" Couldn't he tell the difference between good and evil?
"Babe." Kate had found a few things that might explain it possibly. "He's been tortured."
Rick raised an eyebrow. "Enough to make him evil, though?" Rick couldn't see it but didn't discount it.
"It looks safe," Alexis told her brother and sister and all three stepped into the space.
Alexis and Aiden took a room on this level and found maps that suggest other areas that contain Yuan-ti bases.
"My door's locked," Addison said which had them leaving the maps for now and going to her door.
"Hmm, bracers." Kate took them off the human and stored them for later. "Babe." Kate pointed out he had a snake tongue and scales behind his ears.
"Another half-breed or something. We really need to search the city. If they're careful no one would suspect them." They both heard a door crash open but none of their children yelled or anything.
"Stairs up," Kate gestured which had Rick going to look and was soon back.
"They exit out on top of the hill. Didn't see anything. Looks like we go back downstairs to the front door and go from there," Rick said.
}{ }{ = }{ = }{ }{
"Did you three find anything?" Kate queried.
"Lots of maps. Some of them suggest more Yuan-ti bases in the jungle somewhere," Alexis said.
"We found Addison a book with some spells in it," Aiden added.
"I'll study it later and see if there's anything in it," Addison stated. "Where to now?" This looked to be about it.
"Back down to the front door and go from there," Kate responded and took the lead with Alexis and Rick in the back.
}{ }{ = }{ = }{ }{
Out in the main hall the Tyrannosaurus Rex lying broken all over the floor made it look like nothing had changed. Kate headed for the door on this side with a pair of double doors in front of her.
Finally an unlocked door! She opened it. Inside she saw a race that she'd seen before. He was a Lizard Folk. Kate had been intrigued years ago when living in the city and had learned to speak their language.
"We mean no harm. What is your name?" Kate asked and walked into his broad room that was easily 60 x 40 feet with another door.
"I am Chavakuth. I am of the Dark Talon Tribe. You know my language?" Hearing a human try and speak it was unusual.
"I learned some years ago. Chefakahn taught me. He was of the Sharptooth clan. If I remember correctly you were both the enemy of the Poison Dusk clan." Kate took another step and waved Alexis back.
"The Poison Dusk clan has gained favor of the Yuan-ti. There are several of them in this Citadel to Sertrous. My God. You should leave before they find you and kill you," he warned Kate.
"The Poison Dusk clan does not frighten me, my mate, or our young ones. Show us where and we will kill them. You can then leave or stay. So long as you do not betray us we will not hurt you. give you the word of my clan." Kate stuck her tongue out at him.
Chavakuth had to think about that about that. "There are too many of them and they have strength."
"There are five of us and we are not afraid. You can aid us or stay here. Either way they die," Kate affirmed.
His hatred of the Poison Dusk was deep. "One condition, you do nothing to my God in this Citadel."
Kate needed to think. It had been a while. If she was correct he was talking about an altar to his God not his actual living God. "Deal, we will let you have whatever the Poison Dusk have so long as you do not interfere in our battle with the Yuan-ti," Kate countered.
Fighting the Yuan-ti was madness in his eyes. Still if they did manage to kill all of the Poison Dusk, did nothing to his god and ended up killed by the Yuan-ti he saw it as a gain for him. "I accept. This way." He gathered up his weapons.
He opened the door in his room into a side room with Kate and the others right behind him. This room looked like a meeting hall. There was a raised platform with steps on the far wall. It was empty and he simply walked to the far wall.
"They are here and downstairs guarding prisoners and the monster in the pit that they feed prisoners to from time to time. Four then four more. The monster eats everything," he warned them and stepped aside.
Rick readied his bow with two standard arrows and nodded for Alexis to open the door. A quick step inside and he found a torture chamber filled with all kinds of equipment. They even had someone that was struggling weakly to not be tied down. Rick picked the farthest one away and shot him. When he just fell it caught the Lizard men in there off balance as they looked at him. It gave Rick an opening to fire another two arrows at the next farthest person and watched him fall. By now they had worked out what was happening and each grabbed any weapon they could find and charged him.
Rick fired two more and saw one of them fall. Then a single arrow hit the other one. He stumbled and fell to be killed by Rick with two more arrows.
Downstairs turned out to be the prison with four guards that died easily and 34 prison cells. The monster in the pit they realized, had tremendous reach. Rick and Addison had an answer for that. One red ball from Rick's necklace and a fireball erupted in the pit followed by a lightning bolt from Addison's wand.
They found four side chambers filled with equipment. A detect magic spell from Rick revealed that none of it was magical. However, the garrison at the city might find this stuff useful so Kate opened her portable hole and the five of them emptied the rooms of anything useful.
Six suits of student leather armor, six suits of leather armor, four chain shirts and two sets of scale mail, one breastplate, four heavy shields, eight light steel shields, four wooden shields, four light wooden shields and four steel bucklers, twelve scimitars, four heavy maces, four longbows, eight short bows, twelve quivers with 20 arrows each.
}{ }{ = }{ = }{ }{
They were back at the front entrance after retrieving the maps. "Have we missed anything in any room we know anything about?" Rick questioned them all.
"Pyramid?" Kate asked but he shook his head. She tried something else. "Those doors of lightning?"
"They're teleport doors that go who knows where, is what I'm betting. We step through if we can and we could end up anywhere." Rick shook his head again. Going through those wasn't something he was interested in.
"Where did the jade go?" Alexis queried.
"Good question." Rick didn't remember them ever seeing any. "Through those teleport doors, maybe." It was his best guess.
Kate brought up a potential future problem. "If we don't shut those down, babe, they could rebuild this place after we leave."
"We're going to need a powerful magic-user to do that. Something we don't have. …Yet." He smiled at Addison who tried to hide her head. "What we do need to do is get back to the city and search it for these Yuan-ti hybrids that look amazingly close to humans," Rick insisted.
"Let's go home then. No one messes around with my city," Kate stated determinedly and led the way out of this place.
Rick let his ring heal his wounds on the way home while Kate and Aiden healed her wounds. Aiden felt like he didn't contribute anything to this trip. He just sort of followed everyone around and watched his parents do almost everything. Still the very next day he could hear his God offering him new spells to use that felt more powerful. That eased his mind a little.
Addison felt additional power and access to new spells that were more powerful. The book she gained didn't change her mind any about the spells she wanted to learn.
Alexis felt stronger and wanted her dad to teach her how to specialize in a bow. He had shown that a bow was very useful. She thought she was almost ready for an animal companion but not quite yet.
}{ }{ = }{ = }{ }{
They stopped at the mine, set up camp, and ate trail rations save for Lulu who got the very last of the fresh meat to eat. She was just a puppy, she'd been a good girl and hadn't done something that might have gotten herself killed. Rick kicked himself that he hadn't had a magic-user in Calimport apply permanent magic fang on her so that her bite was more dangerous. As soon as she was an adult dog he would give her Dog's old magic item and wrap it around her neck like a bandanna.
Rick was sitting outside the tent wondering what came next in his life, pending what they found when searching the city for Yuan-ti, when suddenly Lulu blinked into his lap. She wanted to lick him and have him play with her.
"Mom?" Alexis, Addison, and Aiden were suddenly around her. "We have maps of other possible Yuan-ti outposts that look like they might be near here. We want permission to go looking for them later after we get home."
Kate heard; her children wanted to grow up and strike out on their own. She'd done just that when she was little. However, her city was so big that she had no need to leave it to achieve the power and skills that she had.
"Just the three of you? Out of the question." Three in her mind wasn't nearly enough.
"Well, actually we were thinking of asking Oliver and Lucas if they wanted to join us," Alexis informed her.
That had Kate thinking. She was an elementary school teacher and wasn't sure just what those boys were capable of doing. She knew of them and had met them but that was about all.
"Let me talk to your father and invite these boys over so we can talk to them. I'm not saying yes and I'm not saying no…yet." Kate saw smiles on all of their faces.
Her kids were growing up and she wasn't sure just what she thought about that. Besides having it make her feel old suddenly.
}{ }{ = }{ = }{ }{
They were all home and Rick and Kate were presently sitting with their children and these Oliver and Lucas boys that Alexis had talked about.
They learned that they were both 13 years old just like Addison and Aiden. Oliver wanted to be a Ranger and follow Rick and have him teach him all Rick knew. Lucas though wanted to be something called Scouting. Oliver defended him saying there wasn't anything he couldn't track down.
That had Rick questioning him about what various animal tracks looked like and how he could tell how old they were and which direction they went.
The five of them watched as Rick and Kate walked outside onto the deck to talk.
"Have you studied these maps they want to use? If they run across another citadel like that one they're all dead." Kate didn't want to lose her children simply because she was willing to let them grow up.
"They looked like staging areas. Just a few wood buildings and storage facilities. Hopefully we can trust them to run away if it looks too big for them. They have to start somewhere since we gave them the bug to do this." Rick thought this was their fault. After all they could be jewelry designers, painters, cooks in a restaurant. But no, they wanted to follow their parents in what they did.
"Do we know what Oliver and Lucas have for equipment? We bought our children a lot because we have the gold," Kate mentioned.
"We could buy each of them something. Except doing so will take a couple of weeks if I can find a ship going the right way each direction." Rick wasn't sure that was going to work.
"We can give the boys the extra stuff we have. That silver bastard sword, the Staff of Illusion we got from that Green Dragon we still have. Plus that Wand of Summon Monster IV from there as well. There's that Stone of Alarm too." Kate couldn't remember much else. "Though that mostly only helps Addison."
"I don't remember any other weapons to give them. The kids have sleeping bags. Do we let them have the tent? They know how to use it," Kate noted.
"I don't think we have a choice about any of it. Something happens to any of them and I'll never forgive myself." Rick closed his eyes briefly and drew Kate close.
Kate sighed and nodded. If something happened to any of her children she would die. "Anything else? They have potions. Scrolls, maybe?" Not that she could think of any. Rick shook his head.
"I can give Alexis 3 of my Javelins of Lightning. They'll fit in her quiver," Rick offered.
}{ }{ = }{ = }{ }{
Rick and Kate watched the five of them leave the house screaming since they were so happy and excited. Rick and Kate still had to search the city and speak with the council about Yuan-ti possibly being in the city. After they had done that these five could go. Provided their parents approved.
"Were we ever that enthusiastic when we were that age?" Rick questioned his wife.
Kate didn't remember being that happy so she shook her head.