Monster Party Book Six: Only mortal trust or faerie dust…
Chapter Eleven: In the dark I dash.
The Teg were hunters of the Arak, beings who had devoted century upon century of their lives to that one single task. Some Arak claimed that it took their minds to funny places, making them behave more like the animals they often transformed into than proper civilized beings. What no one doubted was their skill or their loyalty to the Unsellie Court and its leader Prince Loht.
Yet even these great hunters were for the moment utterly unaware as the group passed them by.
Swirling vaguely humanoid figures who left behind neither scent trail nor footprints rocketed across the Shadow Rift. Moving faster than the swiftest horse, they soared ever onward towards the Obsidian Gate where the Crown of Arak had to be disposed of.
Only when Florence Bastien's spell began to approach the limits of its power did the half a dozen misty figures slowly descend down toward the ground. There was a soft "FWHIP" sound as the vaporous shadows began to transform back into beings of flesh and bone once more.
"You know, the fact that some people can cast magic really takes a lot of the fun out of being a vampire." Mirri huffed in irritation at the Dryad's mystical skill.
"I mean, it is not enough that you can do what I can through magic, but you can do it better also!" She added, stomping her feet in the ground.
It was all to the good that Florence had been practicing and improving her magical abilities, because sometimes Mirri needed them just as much as the others. Though she was capable of transforming herself into a cloud of mist (it was one of the most well known vampiric abilities after all) it did not grant her anything approaching the speed Florence's magical transformation did.
Looking around where they had ended up the group saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Nothing out of the ordinary for the Shadow Rift at least.
"We should probably make camp here for the night." Alexander suggested.
"Finally noticed how much of my magic I've used?" Florence suggested a touch smugly.
Indeed although the dryad was a powerful mage, just like every other spell caster she would still eventually exhaust her energy if forced to use her powers again and again and again without rest.
"Not to mention the rest of us are conventionally tired. I don't know how exactly it tires you out to fly when you don't even have a body to get tired in the first place, but it does." Cal muttered.
Devi reached into her bag of holding and began to pull out a great many rocks. She laid them out in a simple circular pattern upon the ground, creating a firebreak for the coming campfire.
Next out came some of the surplus of deadwood that she had discovered in her bag of holding after their long "unknown" journey through the land between the Core and the Shadow Rift proper. James searched his jacket for flint and steel, ready to call forth sparks once the kindling had been laid out. Mirri reached around Devi in order to get at her bag of holding herself.
From the small brown bag she was able to extract a black coffin several times its size. Glistening in golden thread upon the top of it was an inscription "Rør ikke katten uden en handske" words that never failed to bring a smile to her face.
Once she was done Cal reached into the bag in order to pull out some stale bread. Next out was a canteen, some of which he emptied onto the bread to make it a bit softer to the tooth. Then there was some salted meat to further expand the meal.
What he was proudest of however was a pair of pots. The group had first found them in Nova Vaasa, where they'd been used in order to allow a pair of housecats to survive the passage of countless years in a mystical stasis.
Said cats had been handed over to Tristen Hiregaard and now happily hunted about the grounds of Castle Faerhaaven while the pots allowed the group to have access to a stock of fresh fruits and vegetables as they traveled.
Food was passed around (Florence eating especially heartily to make up for the lack of sunlight), though James and Mirri abstained.
James had made sure to quickly consume one of his captured rats back on the Malachite Palace's roof, since Florence's spell hadn't been able to bring them along. Having lost his collection of fresh meat the werecat knew that soon enough he'd need to worry about acquiring more of it.
Soon enough, but not right now, right now he enjoyed simply basking in the warmth of the campfire with his companions.
As for Mirri, her own nourishment would be at hand (or at fang) soon enough. Yet even as the fire crackled, it did not seem as bright or as warm as it should have. In the shadows cast by the flickering flames it felt as if there surely must be someone or something watching them, though there was no sound, scent or sight of any such foe.
Alexander even went so far as to momentarily remove his eye patch and let his right eye have a good long look around, just to be sure of that fact.
Returning it to its normal resting place he decided that if they were going to have any reprieve from the creeping paranoia they'd have to fight for it.
"James, why don't you play that I love song I taught you?" Alexander suggested, feeling that a little familiar music could hardly make things worse.
James Firecat quickly produced his harmonica from a jacket pocket and pressed it to his lips. He blew into it, and as before more music than any one instrument had any right to produce came out. It even continued to come out when he withdrew his lips from it and began to sing.
"Once a fair and hansom wolflord
traveled to a magic grove..."
The song had scarcely begun and already Florence Bastien none too gently drove an elbow into Alexander's midsection as they sat side by side.
"'Fair and hansom' was he?" She scoffed.
"Barely dressed in anything at all with wild long hair, I understand some women find that sort of thing attractive." He replied stoically.
"I find it more attractive after a bath. Especially since it they tend to drive flees away..." Florence insisted.
Completely oblivious to (or at least completely ignoring) their bickering James had continued along with the song.
"Seeking out its great protector
To forge bonds with her he strove
I am a hunter splendid
From lands far away you see
But I will not return to them
lest you come along with me." James sang, before none too gently shifting his pitch up several octaves suggesting his was about recite the feminine part of a duet.
"Lord you haven't an equal
None can constrain where you roam
But for us love will not bloom
Death waits should I leave my home.
Magic binds me to this place
If I were to try and flee
Half a mile in any direction
It would be the end of me." The werecat continued and sure enough weather there was magic or simple familiarity in the music the group's felt the spirits start to rise.
"Dryad long have I sought you,
I would have you for my mate.
I will not hunt again then,
If such is to be my fate.
Each night I'll lay beside you,
Be chained and never free,
Let my teeth grow weak and dull,
It is no great loss to me." As James sung Alexander softly echoed the words in Florence's ears, leaning closer to her.
Mirri showing some pity for James' efforts at singing which for all his enthusiasm never produced very impressive results pitched in to help cover the chorus.
"Dae dae dae da da dae dae dae da da dae dae da da dae dae..." The vampire chanted rhythmically before James began the next verse.
"Lord I cannot go and wed thee
Just to watch your spirit die.
Since I will not be your shackles
I have a plan for us to try,
Let us speak with my great mother
For there is no wiser tree.
She may know some trick or treasures
That I can show my love for thee." James sang and Florence whispered back.
"So they've gone to her great mother
and she listens to their plea.
To inquire how a dryad
Could be wed to her wolfy..." The werecat continued on, while Florence tenderly cuffed Alexander for his cavalier approach to rhyming verse in the Balok language.
"For the wolflord's wide wild kingdom
Would surely rob her of her breath
To ignore that which binds her here
It would surely be her death.
Lord I might know how to aid you,
If my dryad you adore.
But from a wolf such agape
Has ne're been seen before!
There is a magic ritual
Through which you might make her free.
If you are both decided
You must break her bond with me…." James sang his voice growing (or at least trying to become) solemn and reverent.
"Dae dae dae da da dae dae da da dae dae dae da da dae dae..." Mirri chanted once again, her beautiful voice making the simple syllables seem mystical and profound.
"So they wait for the magic hour
The dryad already feels weak
As the great wolflord prepares
To grant the freedom they seek
At the rising of the full moon
Underneath that mighty oak
He starts the mystic ritual
Of which the tree itself spoke
Just before the stroke of midnight
His claws tear the ancient tree
Ripping a ring clean round its bark
She knows it'll cost her dearly
The price it must be paid now
The dryad falls to her knees.
No fear or pain my lady
You can draw your strength from me…." As James continued to sing Alexander began to run a his tongue along the length of Florence's right ear.
"Dae dae dae da da dae dae da da dae dae dae da da dae dae…." Mirri repeated the refrain before taking a moment to lean in and run her own tongue along James' throat.
To the werecat's credit, he didn't let this distraction delay him from beginning the final verse.
"Slowly she gets to her own feet
And sees her bond tree's girdle
Yet magic and life remained
Love's soil has proven fertile..." Florence smacked Alexander again for that one, harder than the last time.
It'd been a while since she'd heard the lyrics to this song and forgotten just how much effort he'd put into manipulating the language to suit his rhymes instead of the other way around.
"This strange new power takes her
She can feel its pain's first pangs
Hands and feet become mighty paws
And blunt teeth now turn to fangs
Her spine it twists and changes
But his love still plain to see.
Remade by dedication.
He has proved his loyalty.
They strike out from the forest
Running wild, finally free
Bound in only their devotion
A fair wolf bride for him she'll be." James finished.
"Dae dae dae da da dae dae da da dae dae dae da da dae dae…." Mirri repeated the refrain, though some of the "words" got rather obscured and she leaned her head underneath James' neck and began to apply love bites.
Thus followed a brief period of necking between all of the couples present.
When it finally passed Devi Skye was the first one to speak up.
"You should play the love song I taught you James." The blue haired elf insisted.
Always eager to have an audience to play (and sing) for James got down to it almost at once.
While the beat of Alexander's love song had been fast and wild, Devi's was much more slow and sedate.
"Oh, I couldn't live a single day without you,
Actually, on second thought, well, I suppose I could.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, honey, you're the greatest
Well, at any rate, I guess you're...pretty good." He sang, seemingly oblivious to the somewhat backhanded nature of the compliments he was musically delivering.
Devi Skye leaned in close to Cal Wright and began to whisper into his ear.
"I give you another four decades at best." She somehow managed to coo playfully.
"Don't say that..." Cal whispered back.
"Since when do you object to unbiased facts?" Devi teased him.
"You're not going to get to take advantage of the fact that you've got a considerably longer than lifespan than I do. Boss is going to get us both killed before then..." Cal insisted.=
"You say the most romantic things Beta." Alexander Diamondclaw whispered into Cal's other ear, having heard his words and leaned over himself.
As the song continued on its way, every member of the group began to relax and enjoyed the calm music of James' harmonica.
Most of the night passed that way, with the five requesting a few more songs before they started turning in while one pair stayed awake to keep watch for rotating shifts.
XXX XXX XXX
Eventually the "night" (if such was the right word for the period of time when there was no sun or moon) passed and the group set about making and consuming breakfast.
As they did so James (who still had no need for traditional meals) instead focused simply on playing another upbeat tune for the group. They were thus in good spirits when they set out.
The six made it less than a hundred paces before things took a turn for the unexpected.
Without any sort of warning the ground heaved to one side and dropped out from under the group. The wind was instantly muffled, and a wall of jagged stone seemed to rise up surrounding them.
In mere seconds, the adventurers found themselves standing at the center of a fifty foot circle ringed by a twenty foot high stone rampart. It was difficult not to notice the similarities between this place and a gladiatorial arena.
Almost instantly Devi's flail was untwisted from around her arm and a snarl came to her face. Phoenix slid into Cal's hands a bit more slowly as he scanned the strange 'trap' for any sort of an actual threat, with the others doing likewise.
As they began to examine the rough surface of the wall more closely they noticed that the swirls and patterns in the stone almost resembled sleeping faces. Looking closer still, it was possible to see that this was no coincidence; the wall boasted several such countenances.
Before they could make sense of this strange fact, their eyes opened, and stern, accusing gazes fixed themselves upon the group.
"Ohh this is bad." Cal muttered.
He was tempted to squeeze off a shot, but on the other hand, Phoenix while the most splendid firearm he had ever seen or heard of, was made for dealing with foes of flesh and blood. Even if he decided to load it with some of his magic bullets, he doubted they would be able to do serious damage to a foe made entirely of stone.
The next unpleasant surprise was how the surface of the wall began to ripple like water. One by one, the faces began to protrude, becoming three dimensional figures instead of mere images.
Then, one after another, more than a score of short figures actually stepped out of the wall to stand in a ring around the group. The small beings looked very much like slender almost emaciated dwarfs, except without any trace of a beard, and of course being made of rock.
Their features were strangely round and flat, their tawny skin and chestnut hair blending perfectly with their simple leather tunics and trousers. Each of these mysterious creatures held a heavy pickaxe. Though they were not yet raised to strike, there could be no doubt of how effective they would inevitably prove to be in battle.
"Oh this is worse..." The alchemist unnecessarily clarified.
Alexander stared closely at the new creatures. He had not seen their like ever before… but by the same token this suggested that they were not Arak.
For a certainty their skin completely lacked the customary paleness to be found among most of Maeve and Loht's people. He held out his hands in front of him palms up, well away from Wolf Claw.
"Can you understand me?" He called out to them in Balok.
"Well enough." One of them called back in strangely accented Darkonese.
"What are you trying to do here?" He asked, being careful to keep his tone polite and completely lacking any trace of threat or aggression.
"Trying to discover the exact same thing about you." The one who was evidently their leader answered.
The silver haired man no way of knowing for certain if these strange creatures were native to the Shadow Rift or simply visitors. The odds seemed good however that they must have been here for far longer than Alexander and his six companions.
"We were only passing through..." Alexander explained, taking a moment to twist his wrist slightly and show off Maeve's black stone ring.
It didn't quite have the desired effect.
"Where did you get that?" The leader demanded, hand twitching for his pickaxe.
"Lady Maeve, Princess of the Shee, ruler of the Seelie Court gave it to me so that I could prove to others that I was acting in her service." Alexander admitted.
Given that the situation was extremely tense but not actually violent, it struck him as one of the rare times when the complete utter and absolute truth was probably the best policy. The shaking hands went still.
"So you're enemies of Loht then?" The leader probed.
"Well, I'd be perfectly happy to go out for a picnic with him… so long as it is on a bright sunny day." Alexander insisted with a predatory grin.
"We are the erdulitle and I am Jaiya. Prince Loht drove us form our native homeland and any foe of his is a friend of ours. Likewise, only the intervention of his sister the White Lady prevented him from trying to finish the job." The erdulitle explained.
"The dastard must have forced them into such a frantic flight that they needed to leave almost all their consonants behind." Cal speculated, earning him a swift blow to the midsection from Devi.
"As much as I'd like to contemplate the possibility of dragging Loht all the way back to the surface, we sadly have even more important matters to attend to. We need to get to the Obsidian Gate as swiftly as possible." Alexander explained.
"You won't be able to do one without having at least some opportunity at the other. Prince Loht has been camped out at the Obsidian Gate for over a month now. He's also brought a huge force of saugh with him..." Jaiya warned his newest 'friend' by way of a shared adversary.
"A force of 'saugh'?" Alexander repeated the word, not having heard it before.
"Dead men, or whatever is left of them. Those death worshiping bastards love the undead, probably because they never talk back to them." The erdulitle's leader further explained.
"We're good, but not quite good enough to take on an entire army by ourselves. I don't suppose you have any ideas about how we might get around them?" The silver haired man pressed.
"I might at that… I just might." Jaiya chuckled to himself.
End Chapter.
AN: Hey folks it's time for me lay down more back story that I've only just thought of but hopefully I can slip in without making it too obvious… except for the part where I tell you I'm slipping it in.
Anyway!
In D&D Dryad's are supposed to have a particular tree that need to stay within 300 feet of or else they inevitably sicken and die, and if anything horrible happens to said they also inevitably sicken and die.
Florence doesn't follow that particular rule. Back in Book 1 it was a necessarily aberration from the rules that I'm roughly trying to have govern the universe in which these stories take place, much like Cal having had the half a dozen different breakthroughs necessary to go from rifled muskets to breech loaders.
Now however, I'm going to present you with two equally "plausible" alternatives for you folks to think about if you find interesting.
1: Whatever weirdness is going on with Alex's right eye (and said weirdness I have planned since before the first chapter of Book 1 was written, don't worry, I'm serious, this one I have set in stone and it isn't going to change, you'll get to find out eventually I promise) it generates so much excess mystical energy (which Alex can't channel in any way besides wolf related transformations) that Florence can draw from it and use it in place of connection to the tree with which she was originally bonded.
2: In Ravenloft in general, if a Dryad and a mortal fall deeply in love with another it's possible for the mortal to commit a ritual which replaces the mystical energies of the previously mentioned bond with the equally ephemeral bond of true love that exists between the two of them. That may sound a bit silly, but having said it, I feel like it's an interesting option that opens up lots of options for gothic horror.
The ritual involves "girdling" the bond tree, also known cutting a thick ring in its bark. Due to the way that trees work, this is a surefire way to kill a tree, even if the ring is only an inch or two deep, the tree will never again be able to pass water above the cut the section, and it will never recover. The tree will die right where it is root slowly, surely.
Of course the caveat here is that if the love isn't pure or one of them goes back on it later, the dryad will also inevitably die.
Said death can either be played for tragedy, or for horror, with the dryad dying but becoming a Waff/some other suitable undead menace (since a Waff would be pretty easy to get rid of since you by default already know what tree you need to destroy to defeat it come sunrise) which now only exists to try and turn the one who deceived it into so much mulch and fertilizer.
Either of the two explanations above also neatly handle the issue of why of Florence looks as "human" as Mirri does more or less, while Dryad's are normally depicted as being roughly human shaped, but more like plant creatures than green skinned space babes, because she draws mystical energy from Alex (either his eye or his love) her default shape is more human and less tree than that of most dryads.
Also those of you in back who are about to tell me that "Twuo love" managing to bridge what should be an impossible divide is completely out of tone in Ravenloft, can sit down review some of the published material. The Van Richten Arsenal Book established the "Smitten" feat, which talks about how True Fairytale Storybook Love between two mortal beings can be such a powerful force that it gives you a +1 moral boost to attacks and saving throws so long as you're near the one you love, and it'll even jumps to +2 if they're in danger. True Love exists in Ravenloft, and it has power.
Can you tell that I've been listening to "The Maiden and the Selkie" by Heather Alexander a lot recently? If you didn't, well now you do.
Alex's "Love" Song" is like most things Alex says (though not most thing he tells to the group) by no means "true" for the most conventional interpretation of the term.
The song posits a sort of fairytale storybook "love at first sight" which if you've been keeping up with the side stories should be able to guess was not really the case between Alex and Florence.
Alex had a lot of issues he needed to work out when he first met Florence (at that point he was so broken he couldn't even love himself, let alone someone else), and she wasn't exactly an "innocent" (by the Ravenloft definition of the term) even back then.
Alex was however if not in true love with Florence from day one… he might have be said to have been in "true loyalty" (more "storge" style love than "agape" and certainly not "eros" to us the Greek terms) with her less than 24 hours after their first meeting, even though they drove each other up and down several walls over their early time together.
That said, the song does capture the essential truth of how the two of them came from very different worlds and Florence needed to cross over into Alex's for them to have any chance of being together. Also the song as written technically only has three verses, but I added a fourth because I wanted to play out the magic ritual and transformation in a little more detail.
By comparison, Devi's love song is the first verse (and presumably the rest of) "Good Enough for Now" by Weird Al, in their case it serves as a soaring love song on the subject of how Devi has a lifespan roughly seven times as long as Cal's and she takes a very open an honest approach to the fact. She fully plans to outlive him and will probably fall in love/lust/affection with somebody else given enough time after his death by old age. But hey, "You're not perfect, but I love you anyhow" sums up Cal Wright pretty darn well all things considered.
I'm going to review and repost this chapter again tomorrow but want to throw this version of it up tonight because it's been delayed long enough.
Will try and have the next chapter up sometime next week, it is gonna be a real doozy, trust me!