12 Kython, Hour 5

Wakened too early by a band of gnolls. It was horrible! Nobody had any spells, and Imoen used the last two charges in her wand!

I went forward again (Imoen and I are the best at dodging, so it had to be one of us) and tried to get their attention. There were four of them, so I guess it wasn't quite as bad as the stronghold—why am I thinking these things? I'm not used to this sort of thing!

Dodging halberds is not ideal when all you have is a short sword. Imoen magicked one gnoll with her cloak, and he helped beat the other ones; I found a nice clump of trees to yell mean things at them while dodging around. Unfortunately this meant that one of Garrick's stray bolts grazed my left arm, which hurt. One of them got too close to Imoen and Edwin, and I stabbed it in the back...there was so much blood. It's so cold too. Imoen snapped her useless wand and threw it away.

We keep moving, even though it's not even dawn yet. Where is Garrick's fighter?

—

12 Kython, Hour 20

We met her. She'd strong plate armour, a giant two-handed sword, a crossbow hanging from her belt, and really scary tattoos.

"Hold, travellers! I am Shar-Teel, and I challenge your best warrior to a duel. I don't fight women, so only men should step forward." Her harsh gaze raked first Garrick, then Edwin. "Though neither of you seem much like men to me!" she taunted. "Which of you weaklings shall be your champion?"

Garrick half-raised a shaking arm. "I could maybe...write you a ballad? About all the adventures you've probably had?"

"And Edwin's a wizard, he can't possibly fight you with a sword," I said before Edwin could say something completely tactless. "We came to ask if we could hire you."

"Hire me? Let me show you the scalps of my last adventuring party. Stupid male leadership did them in." She grinned. I was rather surprised her teeth weren't filed to sharp points. "And the party before that. And the party before that."

I swallowed. "All right then! How does your dueling thing usually work?"

"Twenty gold to me if I win. In the unlikely event I am defeated by a male, my offer has been to pledge my sword to their cause. So far none have met with victory, though sometimes I've had to slay a few cheaters who failed to get the message." She gave her sword-hilt a congratulatory pat.

Good; we'd expected something like that. "Yes, we can pay you twenty gold per enemy defeated." That might've gotten us a lot of the way to Baldur's Gate. "Garrick's said there's this reward out for bandits..."

"Don't you understand, little girl?" Shar-Teel gave me the same kind of contemptuous look she'd given to Edwin and Garrick. "I don't do this for gold. I do it for the pleasure of rubbing the nose of men in their humiliating defeats. I love watching their expressions just before I get the final stroke in...sometimes they piddle themselves like animals. Men are the weaker sex."

"Yes they are!" Imoen said. She winked at me, and tried to look mysterious by swirling her cloak again. "I am Imoen the Pink, a Great and Terrible Wizardess! Please can you join this group of...powerful women?"

"Very well, children, let's leave this foul sh...respectable warrior to her business," Edwin said. "(If nothing else, we can always fling the crying thief to the wolves and flee with alacrity whilst they fight over her body.)"

"Ah, and don't mind our sidekick Edwin," the Great and Terrible Wizardess said.

"Sidekick? How dare they mock me? There is but one Great and Terrible Wizard here, and he is not a pink-obsessed apprentice!" Edwin muttered to himself. "(Or a vacant-brained bard who has failed as yet to mend my robes.)"

Shar-Teel scowled at Imoen. "Do you attempt to manipulate my mind, witch? Woman or no, I will spit you as I would a plump bird!"

"Okay, maybe we shouldn't be, uh, hasty!" I said. "I guess we'll go and...run into bandits...and probably all die horribly..." I felt like Xan.

"Yes, probably," she said. "Point any male fools you wish to the end of my blade, and consider yourselves fortunate I did not gut you here and now."

She turned away; Edwin spoke out loud. I saw a white feather in his left hand, his sling in his right. "Iacceptyourchallenge!" he said quickly; and finished casting a magic spell.

Shar-Teel had her sword ready in her hands, and started toward him; Imoen ducked, trying to pull him back.

"Edwin, yer an idiot! What're you doing?"

"(Call me a sidekick, will they? I will show them my true place! Ha, sidekick. Great and terrible wizard, indeed! We shall see who the great and terrible wizard around here is!)"

Shar-Teel advanced upon him with homicidal intentions; and...stopped.

"Discretion is the better part of valor! I must...I must..." She raised a hand to cover her face, dropping her sword. "How can this be?"

Edwin looked at her in satisfaction. "Get away from me, chit," he ordered Imoen, "and hurry and pass me those gauntlets, you prancing imbecile of a bard!"

Garrick stripped Minsc's gauntlets off without a word and handed them to him.

"Excellent, excellent. (The lackeys are learning. Yes, though slow, they have proven themselves capable of learning.)" Taking careful aim with the sling, he let loose a bullet that we heard impact on Shar-Teel's armour. His second attempt, he missed, but the third grazed her cheek; she ran in first one direction and then another, making her an easy target at close range. Imoen or I could have shot her, but of course we couldn't intervene. She reeled backward, hitting her head on a branch; and then blinked, returning to herself. Her armour was pitted in several places from Edwin's stones. As she glared at him, the rest of us prepared to flee.

And she laughed. "A clever trick, wizard. I own that I am beaten." She advanced; she caught up to him, leaned down, and grasped him by the neck of his robes. "If you ever try that again I will rip out your spine and use it for a belt."

"(So this is my reward. Ah, I expect no less than threats of physical violence from the bestial specimens I am forced to travel with.) Very well. Put me down now; please put me down now."

Shar-Teel turned her attention to the rest of us. "If I'm to lead this party I'll do a better job than any man would. Bandit-hunting, was it? We shall find and slay every male bandit in these woods!"

"And why have you taken it upon yourself to lead?" Edwin said. It was very brave of him.

"Because I don't expect to see you marching in front and risking death with every swing of your blade, wizard! Keep pace or we aband—"

Garrick paled. "There is some creature ahead of us!" He pointed somewhere behind Shar-Teel. I saw a flash of dark orange scales.

"My petsssssss...attack," a voice said near the movement. "I hope you enjoy...the artwork my prettiessss will make of you..."

"Run," Shar-Teel ordered. She screwed open the lid of a bottle she carried on her belt and downed its contents, which made her glow pink and her armour almost painful to look at. "Generous of the last adventurers I fought to leave me this! Girls, don't look at anything with scales. Find that voice and shoot it. Males, follow them. My sword will do the rest."

We obeyed her, hearing her cry 'If it bleeds, I can kill it!'. As we ducked and wove past the trees, we saw pale statues decorating the woods, figures in the exact shape of adventurers, human and halfling and elf. Moving below the raised arm of an half-orc, we stared at each other. None of us needed to say the word, basilisk.

"Has it occurred to anyone that we might follow the woman's first instructions to the letter, and simply run?" Edwin said. "(No, never mind. They are simply not intelligent, and I must bear the yoke of that burden.)"

"Do you have more spells?" I called to him. "You complained this morning you hadn't been able to memorize overnight, but you cast that horror! Can you..."

"I am not a spell-dispensing automaton, brat! I had but one spell reserved for emergency, and it has been used!"

"I'm out too," Imoen said. "So...where is he?"

"Attack, petsssss..."

"Okay, we can get up that tree!" Imoen said. The four of us scrambled up its branches for safety and camouflage. I saw a glimpse of the creatures, fighting the glowing Shar-Teel, and six gnomes. I fumbled in my pack.

'This is no time to indulge your vanity, girl—" Edwin said when he noticed what I had. "Oh, very well, carry on then."

My hand mirror; my hair was a little mussed. I quickly passed it to Imoen.

"I need it held here, in front of my face! I just want to see the gnomes..." Six identical gnomes in blue-and-brown robes. Had to be magic. He was chanting something; I drew my bow and aimed carefully for the gnome on the right. It winked out of existence when I hit it; none of the gnomes turned around. White light sucked at Shar-Teel. How many scaled creatures was she fighting? Two, three? We couldn't risk finding out. A second illusion disappeared. I heard Shar-Teel grunting loudly.

An arrow seemed to glance off the shoulder of one of the images, and fell to the ground in front of the gnome. He saw us—stuttered in his spell—and gestured. "Art in treessss...yesss, get them, my pet...You will be art forever."

I didn't have time to duck. Imoen, her own eyes closed, still held the mirror; there was light green, and a flash that made the ground rush up to hit us. Edwin was the only one who remained on the tree, clinging frantically to a higher branch; Imoen, Garrick and I fell together. Blackened, twisted fragments cascaded out of Imoen's hands. My stepmother had her maid choose it for a gift to me one Midsummer, one of the fashionable mirrors blessed by Sune's shrine for unbreakability and reflectivity, decorated with mother-of-pearl roses. Some time ago, that would have mattered to me.

"SSSSTONE?" The gnome touched his pet: an eight-legged statue. The silver mirror. "YOU HAVE TURNED MY PET TO SSSSTONE!"

Four of him came rushing toward us, wielding his wooden staff. I cringed back. "For yearsss I have sssought appreciatorssss of my art. Become Mutamin'sss bride, fair human, and thisss world ssshall be our gallery..."

"Mr psycho gnome, I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but we are not interested in your rock garden," Imoen said, disentangling herself. "Right, Skie?"

"Yes. Completely disinterested. Will you let us go now?"

"If you refussse my offer of marriage, you musssst burn!" He cast another spell, the acid arrows Eldoth explained were almost as strong as the arrows he makes for himself; I doubled over in pain. When Eldoth showed me, the green fire was pretty. It's not. "Pet? PET?"

"I love bloodshed," Shar-Teel announced, fresh from a victory over the other basilisk, and calmly cut him and his mirror images in half. I still have blood on me. She didn't even stop after that. She just bent down, searched the corpse, and drank two potions he was carrying.

"You've wasted a perfectly good wizarding robe, I hope you realize," Edwin commented from his tree. "Ahem. Would...someone perhaps like to help me down?"

This was another time we've nearly died. It's such a relief antidote potions aren't bad against acid arrows. I've asked Shar-Teel to teach me how to fight better. She'll start tomorrow morning.

We were also approached by an undead monstrosity who cried something about 'Korax'. Shar-Teel cut him down with one shot from her crossbow.