Mountains of Madness, Part 2

[Graybeard]

"You have failed us, Brother Ohmad," the hierus said, his voice bleak as death -- appropriately enough.

Ohmad knew fear as he hadn't known it since the Eisenfaust kidnappers had held a knife to his six-year-old throat. "I -- the demons -- Your Eminence -- I can explain --" A certain effluvium spread in his pants, just as it had twenty-five years earlier. And why not? The situation was at least as frightening. He was backed up to the white slab blocking the door to the forbidden passageway that demons had entered, and there was nowhere to go. Now the priest was advancing on him, step by measured step, and he had his knife drawn -- the special knife used in the Offerings.

"The price of a life must always be a life," the hierus intoned, placing his hand on the wall for balance as he approached; the footing was slick beneath him because of the burned hemp and pillaged vegetables. "Little Nera's life has been forfeit to the demons. Now your own life must be forfeit to Our Lord Luminosita. We --"

Before the man could finish the sentence, there was a muffled BOOOMMM as Jamie's grenade detonated. Of course, it was too far away to do any damage in the garden room directly, even if the slab had been open, which it wasn't. However, it had an unexpected indirect effect. The wall by the slab instantly grew dull red as it was heated by lava on the move. The hierus screamed and pulled his hand away.

Unfortunately, Ohmad was surrounded by incandescent rock now on five sides ... and that was four too many. The sickening-sweet smell of charred flesh filled the air as the other Malletarians turned and fled.

----------

"Well, that's good," Grope told the oldest of the troll children, a girl whose name he hadn't caught. The column of ash still stood in the sky above the hidden volcano, but at least there was no longer a glow at its bottom; some change in the underground plumbing had relieved the pressure in the magma column ... for the time being. "Your oldest-uncle-on-the-maternal-side --" (the troll language, with its subtleties of family and clan relationships, collapsed this whole concept into a single word) "-- should return with your mother and father any minute now. I think there will be time to get everyone out. Let us pray to the Five Great Mothers that there will." Of course, lacking a Matriarch, the prayers wouldn't have quite the same effect, but they couldn't hurt. In any case, things looked a great deal better now than they had for the last half hour or so ...

... Except for Ohmad, of course.

[AdamZero]

An explosion from somewhere not near but not far drew my attention as Aiyee led us up an incline on the opposite side of the stacked city. "Jamie, please be alive..." I sighed. "Or just dead enough for me not to have to put you out of misery..." Boris grimaced at me as he helped me up the incline, my focus mostly on the fireball.

"That's a rather grim thing to say boss."

"We're in a volcano, an active volcano, an ERUPTING volcano, and Jamie's in a Dwarven weapons room...."

"Oh yeah.... well.... Le'ts go faster, eh?"

"Yeah, really."

We reached the top of the incline and I suddenly felt a flicker of slow agonizing death, not from anyone I knew, but wait... oh it was that guy..... shame.

[Graybeard]

With roast rabbit on the table (had Faye somehow managed to get the meat from one of those strange "lepivores"? This seemed like an awful lot of meat from one rabbit...) and Zachary napping peacefully in his crib, Layla got straight to the point.

"Mom, this 'Soc' says that to do anything beyond the bare basics of learning magic, I'm going to have to move to somewhere where it is actually taught. I'm not comfortable with that. He won't tell me where this place is, but none of the ones I can imagine make me happy at all. So what's going on here?"

Faye shifted uneasily in her chair. Layla was generally privy to nearly all of the high-level planning that the Gewehr brain trust did, but there were a few things she didn't have the need to know about, at least not yet. The Gewehr's incipient "field office," if one might call it that, in Rinkaiel was one of those things. Could she break secrecy and fill her daughter in at this stage? She thought about it, decided that she could not.

"Honey, I understand," she said. "We'll find a way to make it work. In fact, we can probably find a way to make it work that includes Ace; you'll have to get to where you're going, after all." And the doubtful, but still spontaneous, smiles that Layla and Ace exchanged at this statement told her everything she needed to know about what was really bothering her daughter.

[Sareth]

Nera had finally settled back down after my little discovery about things going "boom." Mother had finally stopped bitching at me for waking the kid up. And I had returned to figuring out how any of these things worked.

*CLATTER*

"Well, that's interesting." I looked at mother.

Mother was looking back, her expression slightly annoyed about the noise. "And just what was that?"

"I don't know. I pushed this knub, and that dropped out." I demonstrated on what was clearly a pistol. Single shot, I was guessing, as there was no cylinder. The knub, behind the trigger, had apparently dropped the whatever on the ground. I bent down to pick it up as mother stepped over, still gently rocking the sleeping Nera.

"Your obsession with these things is really quite abnormal, Jamie. When I was your age, I was interested in boys, not guns. I was trying to make a life for myself with a family."

"Mother..." I was trying to figure out this jackpot, not deal with my mother's desires. "This is hardly the time..."

"It is, Jamie. First chance you get, you're going to take off again. I have to say this now." Mother sighed. "All I've ever wanted is for you to be happy."

"By being some guy's trophy wife?"

"Your father was the best thing that ever happened to me."

"And you found him on your own, right? Rather than having him thrown at you?"

"I just want you to be happy."

"I am, mom."

Mother looked quite unsatisfied with that. She gave me a look that, frankly, made me want to squirm and I'm not even sure what I did. "Jamie... That little girl... just where did she come from?"

"Gee, mom, I would have thought you of all people would be familiar with the reproductive process." I snarked. "Hey, does that look like the shape of a bullet to you?" I asked, pointing at the top of the box thing that had fallen out of the gun.

"You killed her parents, didn't you?"

"I bet this takes the bullets somehow," I said.

"Oh, my precious little girl..."

"Mom..." I didn't want to talk about it. Fortunately,just then, we were interupted.

Damn there were a lot of them.

[Graybeard]

[OOC: Buying a little time here to resolve an ... issue ...]

"Have you children been eating well?" Grope asked, passing time while the balloon returned with its next load. There, he could see it coming into view over the distant ridge line. Asking about food was one thing guaranteed to engage young trolls without risk, as long as they appeared healthy, as these young ones did.

"Yes, Uncle Grop(click)ior," the oldest girl said. (Actually, "uncle" didn't quite do it justice, the troll language being what it was.) "The Matriarch has made giant rabbits for us to eat. They live in the caves under the Dwarven Forge. Sometimes we catch them ourselves. We have been eating well."

The Matriarch made the giant rabbits? Grope thought. That seemed beyond the spell-casting capabilities of even the most powerful Matriarchs, and besides, Chippy had told him that the crazy Small One who created the amusement park had been the one responsible for the "lepivores." The child was probably giving his sister credit for all the good things in her life, which, he had to admit, was typical of the way children viewed a Matriarch. Well, the main thing was that they were there, and that the tribe was taking advantage of them. "That's good," he told his niece as he watched the balloon approach.

---------

Beneath the volcano, with the horde of giant flesh-eating rabbits now maddened by the eruption and bearing down on them, Jamie, Jasmine, Marcus and Lucas probably would not have agreed with Grope's reassuring assessment.

[Sareth]

"Uh oh," mother said, staring at the ginormous rabbits flowing into the room.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Mom?"

"Yes, Jamie?"

"Grab Nera and run."

Mother was way ahead of me. She was already scooting away with the sleeping bundle of poop making joy before I had finished the word 'run.' The lepovores were quite aware of the motion, and began immediately heading for us, clacking their teeth. That was all the encouragement I needed. I grabbed my pack with one hand, one of the round asplody things with the other, turned, and ran.

Rabbits are supposed to be pretty quiet creatures. They shouldn't be something you can hear when they move around. But when they way a couple hundred pounds... I could definitely hear the fact they were gaining on me. Fast.

The moment I made it out of the room and into one of the coridors heading away, I pulled the ring thingy on the 'splody thingy and, spinning as I went, chucked it back into the room. I didn't wait to see the results.

I don't know what the boomball landed against, but whatever it was, it must have been explosive. Because when that thing blew, well... The last thing I remember of that little crisis is a sensation like a giant foot had just kicked me in my back. I flew forward towards mother, and then things went black.

****

Far above, in the view of the troll villagers, the mountain gave a peculiar belch, and then the low rumble that had been an overtone to everything began to grow...

[Graybeard]

"It'll take one more trip, maybe two," Scrobian said as he dropped off three more passengers. "Your sis-- the Matriarch insists on being the last to leave, of course, and her mate insists on staying with her."

"Yes, that's the way it should be," Grope affirmed. "Has Koba'ayan's Robe been secured?"

The younger troll winced. "Ouch. I should have thought of that. If he and Bri'igeah do not make it out, the Robe will need to be preserved. I'll get it on the next trip."

"That would be best." The purely clinical discussion of the possible demise of the leaders of the tribe might have seemed callous to a human, but trolls weren't Small Ones. "I'll entertain the children with great lies of my time in Kiyoka while you get the rest of the tribe. But hurry." The column of ash above the volcano had reddened again, and there was a low rumble, as of a muffled explosion, as the balloon once again became airborne.

----------

Layla heard the explosion too, just barely above the threshold of perception. She and Ace were walking in Faye's well-tended garden, now alive with spring flowers -- the vegetables would be coming up any day now. "Look at that," Ace said, pointing to the column of smoke rising above the distant mountains. "Looks like one of the volcanoes in the Mountains of Madness is erupting. I hope that elf that we dropped off up there is okay."

"Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass whether he's okay or not," Layla sniffed. "I don't like being talked down to. Elves are awfully good at that."

"Agreed, but whatever errand he's been sent to do, we don't want to have to go do it for him if he gets wiped out in a natural disaster, do we?"

"Point," Layla chuckled humorlessly. "Let's get back to the future -- my future. Our future." They walked and talked, the intensifying volcanic eruption forgotten for the time being.

[AdamZero]

"I.
HATE.
WABBITS!!!!"

I roared this statement once again as my hand drew a skull out of the foul miscreations. Lucas was holding his own, while Aiyee was working on another floating light panel... Boris... well... he was tearing rabbits like nobodies' business.

He might be enjoying it too much.

[Graybeard]

The balloon was out of sight behind the foreground ridge, and Grope continued to watch anxiously for its return. Meanwhile, the volcano was clearly up to something, although he couldn't see it to be sure what. The tall column of smoke was, for lack of a better word, collapsing. Rather than ascending into the sky, it was now dropping toward the ground, soon passing out of sight behind the foreground. Moments later, however, a new cloud began to develop, not where the peak itself was, but a distance to the east. It rose a short distance above the foreground and seemed to be traveling rapidly away from the summit.

Not sure whether that's good or bad, but I think it's bad, Grope thought. Come on, Scrobian, get back here with the rest of the tribe!

----------

Wilbur Hamael had no doubt in his mind whether the collapsing cloud was good or bad: the answer was "about as bad as it can be." And it was coming almost straight at him.

He'd been running as hard as he could down the mountain ridge, heading as directly away from the eruption as he could manage. A combination of natural fitness and the hard work in the mine -- not to mention certain, other things -- had given him the stamina of a distance runner. However, everyone had limits. He figured he was more than five miles from the peak, but he would simply have to stop for a while and regain his breath.

As he watched, the eruption column fell to fill the valley below him, a fierce gray cloud boiling up into the sky above it. If that thing reaches the top of the ridge, I'm dead, he thought, accurately. Winded or not, he took off running again, literally for his life -- or worse.

[Graybeard]

[OOC: Where did everyone go? A little by-play to avoid complete stagnation; sorry it's a bit long:]

Ace had to go back to the airship, and Faye was exercising the divine right of grandmothers to pamper grandchildren (didn't they miss her at the front company? apparently not), so Layla decided to go back over to Plato's lab and see what Soc had in mind for her next. If this is what I'm supposed to be doing from now on, might as well get on with it.

"Lesson number two," the odd man said without any preambles. "Do you recognize this?" He indicated a very small, nondescript handgun on the table in front of the box where Layla had done her unexpected spellcasting earlier.

"Mannensterber .22," Layla said, her weapons expert's eye placing the gun immediately. "Useful for close-in work and last-ditch defense, but that's about all. It doesn't have the range for much else, and rather low on stopping power. I've used one before." Killed somebody with it, in fact, but let's try to forget about that.

"Good. Fire it." He indicated a target at the far end of the room, pinned to what looked like a bale of hay.

Puzzled, Layla checked out the situation, decided to make a statement. With one fluid motion, she swept the weapon off the table, un-safetied it, pointed and fired. A high-pitched BANG echoed in the room -- no heavy artillery, this -- and a hole appeared in the target about an inch below the center. The whole thing had taken less than two seconds. "Ecchhh -- not good," Layla scolded herself, not altogether sincerely. "I need to get in some more time on the range."

"Don't worry about it, that was fine," Soc said; in fact, hitting anything at all with this piece of junk was impressive, and he was pretty sure that Layla knew it. "Now put it in that box."

Layla raised the box's lid, noticing a single bullet inside. That would be all the load the weapon could handle, being a single-shot. "What is this thing?" she asked.

"Sort of a beginning magical lab," Soc answered. "I'll get technical with it later. For now, just close it up, then put your hands back through like you did before." Growing more intrigued by the minute, Layla complied.

"Okay, now comes the hard part. Can you find that bullet?"

"Please don't tell me you just want me to load that gun," Layla scoffed. "I could do that blindfolded in my sleep."

"Of course you can," Soc said soothingly; Layla wasn't someone he wanted to anger. "This is to do something different. Now imagine, in your mind's eye, what it would be like if that gun fired without making any noise. What if it was silenced? Magically silenced?"

Layla scowled. "Come on. There's not room on that little thing to put a silencer on it. The silencer would be bigger than the gun."

"Ah, now comes the magical part. Imagine the silencing. Then gather the energy from within the box and focus it on that bullet. Tell the bullet in your mind, 'you won't make any noise.' Will it to be so."

Now how can I do that? Layla thought. But she decided to try. And in fact, she could feel something in the air inside the box that she couldn't exactly recognize. Exerting herself -- who would have thought that minds required muscles to work? -- she compressed the mysterious "something" into the bullet, willing the round to be silent as it operated. It took a minute or two, and she was surprisingly tired again when she finished. "Okay," she finally puffed.

Soc beamed. "Great. Now open the box, load the gun, fire it again." Layla took her time about it this time, but some seconds later a soft, almost inaudible pffft echoed in the room -- and a hole appeared in the bullseye.

"Starting to get the idea, are we?" Soc beamed again, as Layla began to get a sense of what lay before her.