Arcanum - Of Steamwork and Magic Ch. 19

January 1^st, 1886

The crackling fire that sat in the center of our camp was the center of more merriment than was likely warranted on that rainy, overcast January evening. But while the new years day celebrations were likely filling the streets of Tarant, Caladon and every other major city in Arcanum with revelers and party-goers, we were stuck in the vast wilderness that stretched between the Hadrian river and the Stonewall mountains, beneath the bows of evergreens and bare-branched deciduous trees. And despite being hundreds of miles from anywhere of note, we still managed to contrive quite the celebration. Sally had brought out her best vodka and shared it liberally, while Virginia -- who had had at least two entire mason jars of the hard hitting stuff -- told the story of how we had met, though I was finding her tale somewhat hard to believe, as it involved her mounting me on the wreckage of the Zephyr. A remarkable feat in the telling, even if the telling included more than a few hiccups, coughs, burps, and stumbling 'uh, no, wait, lemmi go back a bit.'

The rest of us were in our cups as well, even the more taciturn Gillian, and I had just gotten to my feet to go and piss when Virginia thrust her finger at me.

"Living One! Living One!" she said, wobbling as a single raindrop slipped past the shelter we had taken to sizzle alarmingly in the fire-pit. "Speech! Speech!"

Before I knew it, the entire rest of the party was chanting along, slapping their knees and clapping their hands. "Speech speech! Speech speech!"

I held up my hands. "Very well!" I said, my voice as serious as I could make it considering my currently inebriated state. I had to repeat myself three times before Sally stopped her chanting -- and even the third time wasn't the trick. It literally took Virginia elbowing the muscular ogre woman to get her to really and truly quiet up.

I coughed. "Very well," I said, again, before reaching up to stroke my mustaches down flat. "It's been one hell of a year, my gentlewomens." I coughed. "We've been up and down this bloody continent and we still haven't found those bloody dwarves. But we've given villainy what for, spat in the eye of a pirate or two, and run bloody fast away from an army of wererats. Oh, and something such about returning a dwarven king, tracking down some dark elves and all that." I paused, feeling a hiccup trying to crawl up my throat. "Anyway, I think I need more sausages."

I grabbed up the two pronged fork we had used to turn the sausages and speared the last two slightly overdone chunks of meat.

"Booo!" Gillian called out. "Down with the Living One!"

"Hear hear!" Virginia called out. "Did you know that he...buggered me."

I put my hand over my face. "Oh not this again," I mumbled.

Maggie poked Virginia. "Youuu told us this story-" She yelped as Sally clapped her hand over the dwarven lass' mouth.

"Tell us -hic- Virginia. Tell us about the bugger...buggering...buggery!" She nodded, slightly.

Virginia put her finger to her nose. "Now, you's all got to remember to never ever tell anyone..." She said, wobbling slightly. "Is a crime and all. But anyway, this beast..." She pointed at me. "Was pounding away at my unmentionables. And that beast..." She pointed to my left. "Started sliding into my bum!" Her accent had been slipping from her somewhat middle class diction to something more akin to a dockside Tarantian slum. I shook my head slowly. Her finger wobbled, pointing at the phantom double that she was clearly seeing through her alcoholic haze.

"Fine!" I said. "I'll give you a sausage!"

"Oh!" Virginia flopped forward. Her cheek mashed against the joining of my pants and she rubbed against my groin through the clothes. "Goodie."

"I have had too much to drink," Gillian announced.

"You know what that -hic- means?" Sally asked, leaning in close, whispering loudly enough in Gillian's ear for all of us to hear.

"No, I mean..." Gillian set her mason jar of vodka down, rubbing at her nose. "It's...because...I am seeing things." She looked out beyond the campfire, at the thick curtain of the rain that filled the gathering dusk of the forest.

"More drinks!" Sally boomed.

Virginia was attempting to get my belt off with her teeth, mumbling under her breath about sausages when I looked to see what it was that Gillian thought she had seen. A pair of glowing red eyes, peering from the darkness, caused my heart to spike into my throat. I grabbed at Virginia's head. "Heal! Heal! Heal!" I said, quickly. Virginia's brow furrowed and she mumbled against my thigh as more red eyes flared to life -- nearly a dozen in total. They slouched from the darkness to stand about the campfire. Each pair belonged to a different hideous ghoul of some kind or another. Several were the classic zombie -- green skinned and rotting with their open wounds clear and visible on their bodies. Others were skeletons, their bones shining in the continual downpour that sleeted over them. Others were draped in mummy wraps, containing their desiccated flesh, even if the rain soaked that cloth to the rotting bone.

Virginia saw the horde, finally, and squalled. She put her hands to her head, blue magick crackling around her fingers.

"Oh, I believe it is a touch late for that," a smooth voice spoke from the darkness. Stepping past two of the mummified bodies was a man in leather armor, his pale skin glistening with moisture. He was covered in winding tattoos, and his head had been shaved utterly bald. A Molochean Hand amulet hung from around his neck and a gleaming dagger was being passed from palm to palm. Other robed figures were stepping out -- putting the count at a dozen of the undead and four of the Molochean assassins. The robed fellows cast their robes aside, revealing they were armed with swords and leather armor as well.

Dogmeat, who had been sleeping happily near the fire, woke up and growled loudly.

"We have been waiting for quite some time to strike, Living One," the black clad, bald headed assassin said, grinning. "Thank you so very much for-"

"Tha' one," Virginia said, her voice still muzzy with drink. She pointed her finger directly at one of the nondescript Molocheans, a man holding a gleaming blade in two hands and glaring at us as if we owed him a great deal of money. I jerked my pistol out, dropped it, and stumbled as I tried to reach for it. Before I could grip the pistol in my hand, though, Dogmeat bound to his feet and sprinted directly for the blighter that Virginia had pointed out. The assassin lifted his hand, glowing red energy flaring around his palms, but before the magick could begin to coalesce, Dogmeat's paws had struck his chest and our lovable mongrel had fastened his jaws around the magick user's throat. A spray of arterial blood spurted into the air as the assassin died and Dogmeat turned to face the skeletons surrounding him with a growl -- but before he had even completed his turn, the skeletons, mummies and zombies fell literally to pieces before my eyes.

"Good boy!" I said, laughing.

The black clad assassin charged. "Die, fool!"

I stumbled back and away, seeking to put some distance between myself and the knife. This did work out fairly well from the perspective of the knife and my tender flesh. It worked less well when it came to actually getting my hand back on my pistol. Then the man was upon me, his hand on my shoulder, his knife plunging towards my throat. I gripped his wrist, forcing his knife away from me, snarling as I tried to get my foot up against his belly. His eyes widened, suddenly, as I saw an immense green-gray hand claps around the back of his neck, as if he were a naughty school child. This expression of shock was the last that I saw of him before Sally turned and heaved him into a tree with a sickening speed. The red spray that came as a branch pushed itself through his cheek and jaw flecked along my body and I threw up my hand to protect my eyes from the arterial gushing. Sally, meanwhile, growled as one of the other assassins thrust his sword into her back and side, the blade piercing as deep as its edge could bite into her hide.

A wave of purple force struck the hilt of the sword, wrenching it from the assassin's grip. He leaped backwards, evading the crushing blow that Sally would have delivered to his jaw by the width of a hair, and not an inch more. The assassin, though, proved to have more than one weapon. He drew a pair of knives, gripping them by their straight edges, and tossed them with quick flicks. Sally lifted her arm to protect her face and throat. One blade skittered off her knuckles, but another pierced through her hand, bursting from her palm.

Sally bellowed, but before she could charge, the assassin had drawn two more knives -- these longer and sharp on both ends. He dove forward as she thundered towards him -- and his knife flashed out, cutting deep into one of Sally's ankles. The assassin sprang to his feet at the end of his roll, while Virginia scrambled for her sword. Past the melee, I could see that Maggie had the Harrower -- the magickal ax gifted to her by King Longhaire. Blade met blade as she hacked wildly at the last of the assassins. As I watched, Harrower sliced entirely through the longsword that the assassin held, leaving him open for a backswing that crushed into his belly. The assassin bent forward, vomiting onto the ground.

The assassin with two knives had locked them together to parry and catch Virginia's blade. She snarled and leaped backwards, then lifted her palm to blast at him with her telekentic cantrip. However, the assassin had seen this trick once and was more than ready for it. He dove left, then kicked off a tree, landing on his feet with the nimble grace of a gymnast. He drew a leg back to ready himself for a charge when Dogmeat lunged from the underbrush and clamped his teeth down on his knee. The man cried out -- and the top of his head vanished with the sharp roar of my accelerator pistol.

"I found it!" I shouted, stumbling to my feet, my accelerator pistol smoking in the evening twilight.

Maggie stepped back and away from her opponent, looking faintly green at the way Harrower had cut him from the top of the skull down to his ribcage. She shook her head, then looked out at the rest of us.

"Ow," Sally grumbled.

"You all right, Sally?" I asked.

Virginia, panting, sheathed her sword and placed her palms to her temples. The adrenaline of the fight had clearly been enough to drive some of the drink from her body, allowing her to focus the amount required for the spell she wished to cast. Just as she could purge toxins and poisons caused by traps and giant spiders from our bodies, so too could Virginia purge the inebriated state of alcohol -- which did make me wonder as to the relationship between poison and Arcanum's favorite drug. But with her own body cleared of the intoxicant, Virginia was able to clear the rest of our minds and set to mending Sally, who seemed chipper about the whole affair.

As Virginia worked, I looked down at the corpses of the four men who had attacked us -- after dragging them together. Each had the Molochean Hand amulet on their throats. I frowned.

"How do you think they found us?" Maggie asked, her voice grim.

"Oh, finding us is hardly the issue," I said. "They've jumped us before -- outside of Shrouded Hills, on the way to the Black Mountain Mines..." I shook my head. "Hells, if it hadn't been for the wererats, they'd have attacked us in the mines." I pursed my lips. "I'm thinking, though, who might have hired them to attack me in the first place?" I looked at Maggie. "If I don't miss my guess, it would be the Dark Elves. Assassinations, knives in the dark, suddenly lethal accidents, those do seem their modus operandi, no?"

Maggie nodded. "That does seem likely, sir."

"Take the amulets, then," I said, quietly.

"Sir?" Maggie frowned.

"You don't mean to try and bluff our way into T'sen Ang?" Virginia asked, walking over towards us.

"Why not?" I asked. "It's a better plan than murdering every Dark Elf there."

"Is -hic- not!" Sally called from where she lay, supine despite her healed wounds.

In the end, we buried the four assassins -- while their professions might not have been honorable and their ends had been our own deaths, it felt improper to simply leave them out for the wolves to gnaw at. Subdued, we set out on the 2^nd of January, aware, more than ever, that the next year looked ready to be very much like the last. We traveled for nearly two weeks more -- striding through the forests of the wilderness, ever watchful for another ambush -- before at last arriving at the vast Stonewall mountains. This far north of Shrouded Hills, the mists and fogs of the southern range were absent, leaving us a clear and unobstructed view of their majesty as we hiked through the foothills.

Along the way, I begun to notice something. While Virginia and I remained cordial and close during the days and evenings, especially when she in the mood to try the more extreme sexual proclivities we had both been exposed to during our travels, Virginia slept poorly, despite my best efforts. I would hold her, but she would struggle against my grip, tossing and turning, and mumbling under her breath. Sometimes, her nightmares would be intense enough to shock her awake -- and every time, she demurred as to the explination. I wished to press her...but my words stuck in my throat. We were so happy while awake. Prying into her darkness felt...

It felt like drawing her nightmares into our gentle happiness during the day. And she clearly didn't wish to do so either. And, fortunately, the nightmares did seem to subside the further and further we got from the ambush.

At last, on the gray and overcast afternoon of January 11^th, we came to the Caves of Fire. The cave itself was not a remarkable looking place -- merely a natural looking cave that sunk into the sweeping mountains about us. What was remarkable was that we were not the first party of adventurers to arrive there. We spied their camp from a distance and after surveying them with a telescope to ensure that they were not yet more Molocheans, we all approached. I waved to them as I walked forward, calling out a hearty: "Greetings!"

The camp was quite a diverse one. I spied, immediately, a half-elf in a form fitting leather outfit, a staff set across her knees. She was a brunette and looked at us with a serious, studious half-glare, as if she expected the lot of us to immediately begin to bother her. There was a burly looking human in full plate mail, a magickal blade on one hip, a revolver on the other. Sitting by the fire, happily cooking a set of sausages, was by far the most comely and elfin looking halfling I had ever seen. If he had been full sized, I would have pegged him for a half-elf, not for one of the plump and rotund halflings that normally frequented the world. A gold ring in a chain necklace hung from his neck, glinting in the firelight and the morning sunlight. Across from him was a tall, severe full elf in pure blue robes, holding a book on his knees.

The man in plate laughed. "Greetings yourself!" he boomed. "State your name and your intentions, greenskin!" He thrust his finger at me. Then he spied Virginia. "Oh!" He laughed. "And what a comely lass..."

"Oh gods," the half-elf girl grumbled.

The man in plate took hold of his helmet, then tugged it off. A cascade of brilliant blond hair spilled from beneath and he tossed it with a cheeky smile, beaming at Virginia. "I was not aware that such a beauty traveled these lands," he said.

Virginia was looking like she was picking between several choice words when the halfling laughed. "Do at least introduce yourself, Art."

"Of course!" 'Art' said, then rapped his gauntleted knuckles against his chest, making a sound not unlike a ringing gong. "I am R'yn Diak, Knight of Catan!" He gestured to the halfling. "This is Frondo-" His hand gestured to the half-elf. "Jyherad of the Flame Keep." His hand stopped, pointing at the blue clad elf. "And, finally, Morrawynd."

Morrawynd turned his hooded face to us and I was rather taken aback. I had never seen a more greedy, grasping, ugly looking elf in my life. His blond hair had been tied into two ugly dreadlocks to either side of his nearly triangular face, and his eyes were narrowed in a suspicious squint. "Are you lot following us?" he asked, scowling.

"No!" Virginia said, scowling. "We've come for the Blade of Xerxes! To stop a vicious demon."

"Humph!" Morrawynd said, looking either unconvinced or simply unconcerned.

"Well," R'yn said, tucking his helmet against his hip. "That's a touch awkward. We were hired by the Baron Vladimir Sug to recover the knife. It'll fetch ten thousand gold solaris on Catan, you know. Quite a blade. Very...sharp and such."

"You have no idea what it does, do you?" Virginia asked.

"Not as such, no!" R'yn laughed. "But where my lord points, adventure surely follows!"

"Well, good sir!" I said, laughing. "Let us not overlook the truth of this matter. Your baron needs this weapon to sell it. We need it to stop the Whytechurch Murderer. You've been reading the papers, right? He's been in all of them."

The four adventures gasped. R'yn shook his head, setting his blond hair to rippling. "Ye-gads!" he said. "We must do whatever we can to stop such a foul beast. Striking innocent maidens -- pure and clean virgins?" He shuddered slightly.

"Uh, R'yn," Morrawynd said, his voice nasely and pinched. "The Whytechurch Murderer targets prostitutes."

"What the bloody hell is that supposed to signify!?" Virginia exploded at him, clenching her fists taut. R'yn held up his hand.

"Well, now, good madame," he said. "That does change the ciphering somewhat."

"How!?" Virginia shouted.

"I fear I must side with the human," Jyherad said, her voice a low growl.

"I don't wish these women any ill will," R'yn said. "But they were aware of the profession they chose, were they n-" His voice was cut off with the sharp report of knuckles meeting nose. The crunch of bone and gristle filled the air and he looked at Virginia, his eyes wide and bulging, turning his formerly handsome features into that of a total buffoon. He gaped as blood sheeted down his lips, dripped off his chin and began to stain his shiny armor.

"Good gods!" He exclaimed.

"You did deserve that..." Jyherad muttered, while Frondo laughed uproariously.

Virginia, meanwhile, had already begun to stalk towards the cave entrance, her sword drawn. If this had been a periodical cartoon, I was sure she'd have had smoke coming out of her ears to boot. I drew my accelerator pistol, chuckled and smiled at the four other adventurers. "How about this," I said, while the rest of my party hurried to follow Virginia. "Once you are ready, head for Caladon. The knife will be in the keeping of Cheif Inspector Henderson. I'll tell him to give it to you. We won't need it by then."

"Capital!" Frondo said, while R'yn clutched at his nose.

"My nose has been broken!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, he'll be whining about this all week," Morrawynd grumbled.

***

The interior of the Caves of Fire were well named. The walls were black, volcanic stone that looked like they had been worn smooth by the passage of time and the roaring power of flames. The air smelled hot and thick with the scent of sulfur and smoke. The light cantrip that Virginia thrust into the air cast its illumination down the corridor, showing that there were more than a few black charred bones on the floor -- we were far from the first adventurers to come to this cave. I wished, only, that we had had more time to research exactly what was contained within. Though, if I didn't miss my guess, it would be some kind of fire creature.