Giving my companions Nerf guns was a mistake. Playing with them was how they alleviated their boredom. We even had to institute a rule that no one could use them during meal times after the incident with the hot soup on Burin’s lap. Not that it bothered the dwarf all that much, but still, I didn’t want anyone splashing anything over my new clothing.
Speaking of which, it probably says something about either me or my companions that no one even commented on my new clothes. I was a little put out by that, to be honest. Well, at least I’m sure Greta would say something.
After a couple days of travel, we were sitting down for another meal. I didn’t eat, but it’s supposed to build camaraderie to sit down together for meals, and we certainly needed more of that. So that’s what we were doing.
All of the really dangerous weapons secure, Terry had once more been allowed his freedom. “I don’t see why I can’t have my gun back,” he was whining.
“Then perhaps the bullet damaged your eyesight,” Gregor answered. Ouch. Burn. Terry stuck out his tongue at Gregor.
You know, I’d bet psychologists back home would be fascinated by Terry’s situation. Despite being about the same age as my parents, he still had a number of the mannerisms of a teenager. Was he always like that? Or was it a function of his body? Should I be recording all of this to make some doctoral student’s day?
“At least give me one of those toy guns, then.” Gregor rolled his eyes and handed him one. “Hey, there aren’t any bullets! Give me bullets!”
Gregor pulled out his own gun and shot Terry. A dart stuck to Emily’s forehead. “There, you have one bullet now.” To my left, I heard Burin snort as he held back his laughter.
Annoyed, Terry decided to switch subjects. “So, your ‘God of Martial Arts’… he came out of nowhere. Why is that the first time he helped us? There were a number of times when we probably could have used his help, but he was nowhere to be seen.”
Gregor looked at him like he was stupid. “You assume he’s always there. Sometimes he comes to train, other times, he is elsewhere. And even if there, if he thinks we are ready, he will not help. We will not get stronger if he does it for us.”
“So we could get in over our heads on purpose and he’d help?”
“No. Stupidity on our own part would be a lesson we need to learn from. And if we die, then we weren’t worth helping anyway.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Terry said. “He’s probably already dead. No one comes out of a fight with Typhon alive, unless you run away quickly enough. And that only prolongs your suffering.”
“How can he be dead?” Gregor asked. “He is god.”
“Well…” Burin said. “He’s not actually a god. He’s a god’s herald. But he’s still probably strong enough to have held Typhon back long enough for us to flee and make it out alive.”
The others ignored him. “It’s almost too bad we didn’t die,” Terry said. “At least Emily would be free now. It’s just this body anchoring her.”
“I do not believe that is how that works,” Gregor said. “I think you’re just trying to justify ending your own pain.”
“Bah. What do you know? Besides, wouldn’t you do the same if you thought Sergei was trapped like Emily is, if you thought doing so could save him?”
“Perhaps, if there were no other way. But you didn’t try any other ways. There are two spell casters here, yet you never even asked one of them if perhaps she could be saved with magic.” Gregor had a point.
“I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk telling anyone,” Terry said softly.
“It seems to me, that if you can’t trust us, how can we trust you?” I asked.
“Huh.” I could see from his expression that I had managed to make Terry think about that one.
“Also, speaking of trust,” Burin said. “You did try to kill us both. Emphasis on ‘try’.”
Before Terry could answer, the hut shuddered slightly, indicating that we’d stopped. The door from our quarters to the greater hut, which had remained closed during our latest journey, swung open, revealing a garden of some kind on the other side.
“Back to work, it seems,” Burin said gruffly as he hopped down from the chair. “I’m gonna grab my stuff. Head out in five minutes?”
“Sounds good,” I said. “Shut the door until we’re ready.”
A few minutes later, as we prepared to head out, Gregor held out Terry’s gun. “Try not to shoot yourself this time,” he told him.
Terry began sarcastically scratching the bottom of his chin with the barrel of the gun. Burin snatched it from his hand. “Hey! That’s mine!” Terry protested.
“You can have it back if there’s danger,” Burin said, slinging the weapon over his shoulder.
We stepped through the door and found ourselves in a gazebo in the middle of a massive field. There was a field off to our left, and three forests on the other side. In front was a forest of some kind of normal, leafy trees. To the right was some kind of tropical jungle. And to the rear – after we stepped around the door – we could see a forest of pine or aspen trees.
“Shall we check the field first?” Gregor suggested. No one had any objections, so that’s the way we went. And it was mostly boring. The herbs within were used in various witchcraft rituals, but it’s not like they had any use for them.
We found several dangerous plants – relatively, they weren’t really all that dangerous to us, but you wouldn’t want to let your kids near them – in enclosures, but we were smart enough not to bother them. No sense in bothering them if they couldn’t bother us.
After that, we went to the area of the aspen trees. There was a path leading into the forest, though it was a bit ominous and foreboding. So Gregor immediately began marking our path by carving marks into trees.
A ways down the path, we realized that the path behind us had begun disappearing, as if the trees had closed in behind us. “Well, that’s not troubling at all,” I said to Nebula.
“We can just fly over it if it becomes an issue,” the cat said to me. It was true. I had learned a spell that allowed me to fly for about half a day with a single casting, so that was now a permanent thing for me. Which meant I’d just need to cast lesser flight spells on my three allies if we needed to fly out of here.
Eventually, we came to a clearing of some kind, with a massive tree in the center. “Bet you want to shoot this one, don’t you,” Gregor teased Terry. Terry gave him some side eye and said nothing.
“Is that what I think it is?” Burin asked me.
I looked again. “Assuming you think that’s a treant, then yes, I think so,” I answered.
“Thought so,” the dwarf said with nod. “Hello!” he called out cheerily.
The treant ignored us, muttering in Sylvan. “It’s obviously evil,” Terry said.
“What’s it saying?” I asked Nebula.
At the same moment, I heard Gregor say to Burin, “Let me try.” Before Nebula could answer me, Gregor called out, “Friend! We were hoping for a few moments of your time! Perhaps we can come to an agreement that would be beneficial to both of us, yes?” Only, he said it in Russian.
I had been teaching him, bit by bit. He’d gotten quite a bit better since last time he’d tried using it, when yelling at those giants back in Iobaria. I actually understood him this time.
Unfortunately, that might have been the exact wrong thing to do. “You work for her!” the treant screeched in Sylvan, which Nebula translated. “Yes! You must, you speak her tongue! So you will die for her crimes!”
As I cast a defensive spell, Terry quickly dashed over to Burin to retrieve her gun, which the dwarf relinquished reluctantly. He even made a gesture that let Terry know that the dwarf would be watching him.
All in all, the fight was pretty one-sided. We absolutely murdered the treant with fire. And once it was over, the path reappeared, almost as if the trees know knew better than to screw with us.
“I’m starting to suspect that Baba Yaga isn’t a good person,” Burin said.
I face-palmed, but said nothing.
As we approached the tropical jungle, we spotted what appeared to be the roof of some kind of building beyond the trees, so we began making our way that way. We’d gone no more than thirty feet before we were ambushed by some moonflowers.
How to describe moonflowers? Well, they’re as tall as trees, and they eat people as part of their breeding cycle. Like some kind of giant, evil flytrap. Unfortunately for them, they were not immune to fire, which we had in spades. We also had a spade, but Burin opted to use his axe, which also proved pretty effective.
Only Gregor’s attacks seemed less than perfectly effective, but where one hit wasn’t quite so useful, several in succession to a single spot did the trick.
Inside the plants’ pods, we found the gear of a couple individuals that the plants had devoured – likely as part of their genesis – which we took to feed to the box later. No sense in letting it go to waste.
We didn’t make it far past the moonflowers before Burin spotted something strange on the ground. It was some kind of liquid, in droplets that led in the direction of the building we were going to. “It almost looks like blood,” Burin said, which was true, aside from the color being wrong. He dipped a finger in one of the drops and sniffed it, then tasted it before anyone could stop him.
“What are you doing?!” I asked.
“Tastes sweet, like whispers in the back of my brain.”
“What?” Gregor asked.
“What?” Burin replied, seeming to have completely forgotten what he’d said.
“Uh, never mind,” Gregor said.
We followed the trail of what we assumed was blood to the building we had been heading towards anyway. There was a decent puddle of it at the door, as if the bleeding person had stopped to pick the lock. At least, that’s what we assumed when we found that the lock was open already.
Inside, we found a dead end hallway with a door on each side. We decided to follow the trail of blood and took the door to our left. Inside was a terribly dusty storeroom filled with old furniture and other unused objects. We also found a figure in red robes searching through the piles of junk.
“Hello!” Burin said in greeting.
The figure stood up and looked at us. “Greetings. I am…”
He didn’t get to finish, as Terry interrupted him. “Hey, you look like one of those things from that book that really messed up my head.”
“That was a gun,” Burin quipped.
“Bullet,” Gregor corrected.
Terry ignored them. “You remember the book, right Lyriana? The one we found in the ruins with the bandits back when we first started?”
Oh, right. I also remembered the dream I’d had. “Have you seen the Yellow Sign?” I asked in that strange language I’d learned from my dreams.
The figure made a sound like a gasp and immediately drew his weapon and began shrieking. “Maybe do the thing like you did to the old witch in the clocktower?” Terry suggested to Gregor.
“It’d be easier to interrogate him if he’s not dead. Or freaking out,” Burin agreed.
Gregor cracked his knuckles. “Right.” He teleported over and smacked the figure in the back of the head, knocking it out cold. It collapsed to the floor with a loud thunk. Damn, I kinda wished I’d been in the room to see him do that to that evil witch.
“What did you say to him?” Burin asked me as Terry and Gregor tied up our new prisoner.
“Just something I’d heard at a party once,” I said.
“Well, that was quite on overreaction on his – MOON BEAST!” Burin said suddenly as he charged the doorway.
I turned and looked to see the dwarf fighting a giant frog-like creature with a huge mouth and numerous tentacles where its eyes should have been. Yeah, that was a moon beast, alright. Godmother had warned me about them. They live on the dark side of a strange moon in the Dreamlands, but occasionally venture out into other realms in search of slaves or sacrifices to their dark gods. She’d told me that in time I would have nothing to fear from them, but for now, to treat them as highly dangerous should I encounter one.
Terry shot the creature in the face and Gregor flung his hat, the bladed rim cutting the beast deeply before bouncing off and returning to the fighter’s hand. It was a cool trick.
The moon beast, um, schlorped?, Burin with its mucus covered tentacles, but in the end was no real match for us, and died quickly, before the other figure had even had a chance to wake, which Gregor said would take less than a minute.
We searched the bound figure for any hints to their purpose here and found a pouch of gems. Inside one was a figure that appeared to be shouting and waving, trying to get our attention. “What’s that?” Terry asked, showing it to me.
Suddenly, the bound person awoke and began screeching and sobbing at me. I don’t know why. But it was annoying. “What the hell is your problem?” I asked, throwing back his hood. “Holy crap. You’re from Leng.” My parents had fought a group of denizens of Leng who had tried to use Karzoug to awaken a Great Old One. They were, obviously, bad news.
Annoyed by the incoherent babbling, Gregor knocked it out again.
“Okay, so let’s not get into that now,” Terry said. “Whatever that was. What’s up with this guy?” he held up the ruby.
“That’s a spell that allows one to trap a soul or an outsider in a gem. It’s similar to what I’ll have to do to decouple your soul from Emily’s body, actually, though the version I’m gonna use is a lot more temporary.”
“I don’t think I want to be stuck in a ruby.”
“It’ll be for a minute at most,” I said. “Don’t be a baby.”
“Should we get him out of the gem?” Burin asked.
I looked closer. “If he’s what I think he is, then yeah, it’s probably safe. What do you think?”
“Yeah, looks like a mercane,” the dwarf agreed. “We should let him out.”
“How?” Terry asked.
“Smash the gem,” Burin told him.
Terry tossed the gem into the air, arcing it over Gregor, then shot it. The ruby shattered and the mercane slammed to the ground with a thud, nearly landing on Gregor, who just barely managed to dodge out of the way. I think Terry did that on purpose, to be honest.
“Hello, my good friends!” the mercane said with a boisterous laugh as he stood. He towered over even me. In fact, he was probably about as big as an ogre, though the blue skin, strange number of eyes and reduced number of fingers easily differentiated the two species.
“Friends? We don’t know you. We barely met you,” Terry said.
“Yes, well, while you might not consider me a friend, which is something I hope to change in time, you freed me from the gem. So you are all friends to me.” Well, it made sense. I could certainly understand the logic.
“My name is Burin,” our dwarf companion offered. “What should we call you?”
“Oh, I am forgetting my manners,” the mercane said. “I am known as Zilvazaraat. I am a trader, dealing in all sorts of magical goods. While I don’t have much of my stock with me, I can get just about anything you need, should you have the coin.” He reached into the folds of his robes and produced a small raven statue. “Take this. You can use it to send me a message. Anything you need, you just simply tell me. If I do not have it, I can find one who does, though it may take a few days.”
“I’m not sure we need that, since we have a magic box that can craft just about anything we need if we feed it resources,” Burin said.
“Oh-ho!” the mercane laughed. “Well, then for things I have trouble finding from my other sources, maybe I trade with you, yes?”
“There is one thing the box can’t do,” Terry said. “Can you get scrolls?”
“Scrolls? Yes, I know a great place that carries many scrolls. What spell are you looking for?”
“Lyriana,” Terry said. “What spell do you need to bring back Emily?”
“My father calls it ‘Resurrection’,” I said. “It’s a spell capable of raising someone from the dead decades after they’ve died, but requires the body be present.”
“Oh-ho! I know that spell! Yes, I believe I can get such a scroll, but due to the cost, I will need the money up front. The fiends who captured me took most of the money on me.”
“How much?” Terry asked.
The mercane flicked his wrist and an abacus appeared in his hand. “I believe I can get it for about twelve thousand, two hundred and seventy five gold pieces.”
“Damn,” Terry said. “I’m about a thousand short.” Then I saw on his face the formation of a thought. “Hey, this guy tied up over here was one of your captors. How much will you give us for him?”
“NO SLAVES,” Burin said emphatically.
“I wasn’t thinking a slave,” Terry said, obviously lying. “But there has to be a bounty or reward for turning him over to justice. So he’d be a prisoner, right?”
“Oh-ho!” Zilvazaraat said, obviously catching Terry’s meaning. “Yes, I believe there would be a bounty for his return to the authorities.”
“Oh, that’s different then,” Burin said. “As long as he gets reformed and set free.”
“Of course, friend. He will work off his debt to society, then be set on a path of his own choosing.”
I suspected it probably wasn’t true, but in the end, it seemed likely that we would need to kill the Denizen rather than risk him running around. Better the chance that he’d face justice rather than act as executioners, I guess. I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t think of a better alternative at the moment. And I didn’t have any money to offer to help Terry revive Emily at the moment anyway, thanks to Godmother. So I said nothing.
“Will you be able to deliver the scroll to me?” Terry asked. “We’re probably going to be away from this place for a few days.”
“If you are going to be moving around, you will be hard to find. So I will come here. If you are not here, where might I leave it for you?”
“There is a gazebo in the center of the field with a door inside. Just take it there,” Terry said. “Watch out for the duck lady, she’s mean.”
“I shall take that into consideration. I shall be off immediately, if no one else has further requests?”
The others shook their heads. “I’m all tapped out,” I said. “My godmother stole all of my money and spent it to buy me new clothes.”
“I would very much like to meet your godmother,” Zilvazaraat said. “If those are the clothes she bought, I could make a fortune selling their like through the planes.”
“I’ll let her know,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll be able to find you if she needs to. No matter where you go, you have to dream sometime.” It was both a friendly gesture and a veiled threat that if he screwed Terry out of his money, there might be consequences.
Gregor, who had looked distracted during the entire conversation, spoke up, “We should continue. There is much of this hut to search if we are to find more information about the witch’s location.”
We left the storage shed – after being sure there was nothing worth taking – and headed to the last little forest. Within, it wasn’t too long before we came to a clearing where a cat sat on a stump. It greeted us sleepily. “Have you seen my mistress? I think she’s dead, but something is keeping her tied to this place.”
A witch’s familiar, most likely. “Who is your mistress, strange cat?” Gregor asked. “Do you know what happened to her?”
The cat flicked her ears at him. “I am Syvet. My mistress was called Yelizaveta, and she was Baba Yaga’s daughter.” Wait, wasn’t she the last ruler of Irrisen? How long had the cat been here?! “I snuck away to look for a fat mouse or some chirping bird. Then, suddenly, I felt my connection to her torn. Which means she’s dead. But I don’t know how or why. I do think Baba Yaga did it.”
I looked at Burin, “Don’t say it,” I whispered. The dwarf gave me a wink.
“And you think her soul is trapped here?” Terry asked, trapped souls being an interest of Terry’s after all.
“I suspect it. I don’t know for sure, but I have a strong feeling.”
“Wait, if your mistress was Yelizaveta, then doesn’t that mean she died of old age?” Burin asked.
“No, it was more violent than that.”
Suddenly, Terry shot at the cat, which immediately responded by trying to hex Terry. Burin reacted by trying to take the gun away from him. But I had a feeling that Terry had spotted something I’d missed, maybe that all of us had missed. I quickly scanned the area and realized that the cat wasn’t what it appeared to be.
Rather than waste time calling it out, I launched an immediate fireball at the terrible plant possessing the cat’s corpse. Gregor charged in immediately. Burin, realizing that something had to be amiss, stopped trying to take the gun from Terry and followed the fighter.
As the cat died, its voice spoke one last time. “Thank you,” it whispered, its soul now free to pass on.
There wasn’t much more in the little forest, so we continued looking around the massive demiplane that comprised this iteration of the hut. Eventually, we found a small hut with a cauldron. No sooner had we entered than three shadowy ravens appeared.
“Baba Yaga has gone on, off to see her only son. But a trail she left behind, if the breadcrumbs you can find!” they cawed in unison, as they threw objects from the shelves at us. Then they disappeared.
The first tossed a stuffed two headed eagle as well as an iron spur and a drinking horn. The second dropped a bearskin rug and placed a small hand mirror and elephant tusk on it. The third didn’t throw anything, but was the loudest in its shouts.
“What do these mean?” Gregor asked.
“Heck if I know,” Terry answered.
“They’re probably clues to the next set of keys,” Burin said.
“I’m sure they’ll make sense once we do a little reconnaissance,” I agreed. “Let’s just make a note of them. But for now, let’s check out that door over there.”
“Wait, there’s some kind of loot over here,” Terry said. He was holding up a set of clothing. “I’m not sure, but I think it might be magical.”
“Let me see,” I said. I checked the clothes out with magic, and sure enough it was magical. “It seems to protect against cold, even more than my magic boots, but it also seems to have another effect. I think it’ll protect your eyes from the glare of light reflecting off of the snow, and should even allow you to see through fog and blizzards.”
“Oh, I’m wearing this,” Terry said. “But I think I’m gonna dye it first, since it looks a little shabby. The box can do that, right?”
“Yes.”
“Now let us check out the door,” Gregor said, obviously ready to get moving.
The only other door from the hut opened, leading us outside. It was cold, though I was still pretty comfortable thanks to my magic boots. But the first thing I noticed was the sky. “Something… the stars aren’t right,” I said, the first to break the silence.
“Look at that!” Terry said, pointing to a bright light in the heavens. That couldn’t be… no it had to be. That was the sun. Only, it was much smaller than it should have been.
“Guys, I don’t think we’re on Golarion anymore,” Burin said.
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