Waldhaxen Channel

[Graybeard]

"No matter," Grope said. "They are not of our kind. They are not of yours. We mean them no harm. They can have their water and their wealth on the far side, if they have any. We wish only to find our own people. For that, we must repair our balloon. Can you help?"

Now why were they all looking at him like that? He didn't have time to pursue the question, because another BOOOMM echoed from the bottom of the chasm, and a projectile roared overhead, to explode in a shower of shrapnel. Fortunately, the gunners' aim was off, and the tiny bits of death dispersed before reaching the group on the ground ... but it was clear that there was a joint enemy down there to be dealt with, before anyone would be helping anyone else with anything.

----------

Layla snored, Soc was amused to note.

Moments after her apology, she'd fallen asleep right where she was sitting. That was good; she'd obviously drained her personal energy to dangerously low levels by doing whatever she did to the floozy. A nap was just what the doctor, or the lifemage, ordered for situations like this. He'd give her an hour to recharge her batteries and then get on the move.

But to where, and to do what? The encounter in the park hadn't gone anything like what he'd expected. Most beginning mages had to be led to the mana concentration and painstakingly shown how to use it. Layla had gone right straight for the gadget concealed in the bird bath, and intuitively -- if recklessly -- used it to do something to the woman. That wasn't the way these things usually went, not at all. Might Layla already have had some experience with magic that nobody, including herself, had recognized? It seemed possible. Soc was aware that some of the Gewehr's brain trust had speculated that top-level Wraith reflexes had an unknown magical component. This might be something to investigate. First, though...

Layla was waking up, a sheepish look on her face. "I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have lost control like that. It's just that that damned bitch -- she --" The anger was rising again in her, but this time she clamped a Wraith's emotional control down on it. "Soc, I think I'd better end this lesson for now. My son is waiting for me, and I don't want to impose on my mother to take care of him any more than I have to." Without waiting for a response, she stood up and started walking shakily back home, leaving Soc to wonder what to do next.

[Viking-Sensei]

Lucas heard the shot ring out and reached up to feel his left ear, which had a trickle of blood running down it and was now missing the outer top edge. That was too close. "Look, I didn't come to fight! Why are you shooting at us?"

Another shot rang out, this time whizzing off of the rock he was hiding behind, putting a significant dig into it in the process.

Lucas looked down at his hand. "Right, Lucas, just because *you're* not here to fight... well, maybe it's time to kill two birds with one stone. I just hope at least something on that boat is magical." He slid the small silver ring off... the ring imediately started glowing blue, pulsating rythmically, growing faster with each beat. With his best throw, he tossed the ring in the direction of the boat.

The was explosion, in every aspect except for the fact that there wasn't. The area, covering the river through the woods almost all the way back up to the campsite, was filled slowly by an expanding blue wave of energy, just like a blast wave, only this energy only existed on a magical level. Magically enhanced creatures (descendants of familiars of old, most likely) fell over, stunned, suddenly having temporarily lost the magical component of their being. Several of Lucas' enchanted items upon his person, like the glamour smokes, misfired, puffing out their magic harmlessly. And on board the boat... well, hopefully something bad happened.

Lucas felt his body slowly start... re-energizing... "that's right... no ring means I can do magic again... well, as much as I can do magic, that is. Lemme see what I can do against some bullets... Oh, I know. I cast featherfall." Shimmering light swarmed around Lucas for a moment, then he stepped out from behind the rock. Another bullet zinged towards him but, as it hit the field, suddenly slowed to a crawl, like it was moving through heavy syrup, then plinked as it fell to the ground on the back side.

(OOC - if you don't remember where the Ring came from, Lucas used it to bind his "chaos" powers before he went into the park back in the MoM theme park so he didn't cause the rides to break down. He also mentioned, at the time, that taking the ring off would most likely cause an explosion, due to the fact that it absorbs all his natural magical energies, keeping him from being able to perform magic.)

[Graybeard]

"What in Growf's Name is going on out there?" Grope asked his nephew, in a tone that the humans (most of whom didn't speak the troll language) thought sounded half like a thunderstorm, half like a cat fight conducted by cave lions. (In fact, it was just the way trolls spoke to each other. A conversation about the weather and their children would have had the same sound to it.)

"I don't know," the younger troll rumbled/snarled/mused. as the sound from the first shot aimed at Lucas echoed in the gorge. "Probably whoever, or whatever, is on that boat thought we were there to spy on them. I don't know why they'd think that, or why it would turn into a pre-emptive attack. Couldn't they just fire a warning shot to discourage us? Now we're going to have to kill them, just as a matter of honor -- aren't we?"

"Good question," Grope agreed. "Let me translate that for the Small Ones and see what they think. They have an honor-stake in this too." He spoke to the humans, trying to couch some troll concepts in a human language in which they didn't fit very well, particularly since his command of the human tongues wasn't fluent. But he had to do something, he realized, as another shot rang out from Lucas' general direction -- and as his Blood-Binding scar started to tingle.

[Sareth]

The translation of that... whatever it was they used as a language... into something a little more pleasant got me to thinking. As the troll finished... Grope, call him Grope... I nodded. "Well, I don't know about honor. I just know that getting shot at and not shooting back sucks."

I reached over to pick up the rifle, then slid down onto my belly, creeping over to the edge of the cliff, trying to find a sheltered spot I could shoot from and not be seen.

This was going to be the longest shot of my life.

[Graybeard]

The two trolls crept to the edge of the abyss, keeping under cover as much as they could; Small Ones' firearms generally weren't much of a threat to them, but the considerably larger-caliber projectiles that were mixed into what the boat below had fired looked to be capable of killing even a troll. Another small-caliber round whistled upward toward where Lucas was concealed. "I'll give Lucas credit for this much: the man has guts," Grope told his nephew, not that that was any surprise following the episode with the Errant, the battle with the pirates, and all. "Who's 'Lucas'?" the younger troll asked, and then got the picture as Grope pointed to his Blood-Binding scar.

Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be much that the trolls could do from up here. The odd boat was too far away for an arrow shot, and there was no way down to the water that they could see. The girl Jamie was trying to get into position for a shot with her long Thundering Metal Thing; that was good. Grope thought momentarily of asking whether there was another gun that he could use himself, then thought better of it. His few experiences with Thundering Metal Things had been ... unsatisfactory. Better to leave those gadgets to the Small Ones. He shook his massive head. "I don't think --"

And then a blue wave of energy -- magical energy -- passed harmlessly over the trolls, as Lucas' ring did whatever it did.

"What the Drosg was that?" both trolls cursed simultaneously, invoking the name of a rarely-mentioned demon of the troll mythos. Whatever it was, it spread over the cliff and down toward the water. The -- thing -- that had been lining up the next shot with the large-bore weapon saw it too, and with amazingly quick reflexes, piled back into the boat's "cabin." Grope could see the hull clearly start to sink under water, apparently under control, even before the magical wave reached it. By the time the slow-moving wave arrived, the boat was nowhere to be seen, although the ripples of its passage remained.

"Submersible," Grope breathed. "I've never seen the like." He looked over to where Jamie was still lining up a rifle shot, nodded approvingly; the girl had spunk. And she also apparently had the same idea that he'd had: the strange under-sea-boat might come back up as soon as the magical disruption passed. "Let's keep an eye on this," he told Scrobian.

Thus distracted, neither Grope, his nephew, nor the humans in the party noticed a form scuttling down the ridge toward the balloon. Wilbur Hamael had felt the magical disruption too, after all...

[Sareth]

My language was not pretty, ladylike, or safe for children. Not at all.

I'd learned it from my mother, after all.

The sudden disappearance of the boat had been surprising, to say the least. The way that one figure had scuttled into it, rather than way from it, just before it went under meant that it was deliberate, though. And if it went under deliberately, that meant that whatever was crewing it believed there was a way to come back up.

I'd never heard of the like before, but it just seemed to make sense.

"Jamie!"

I heard mother's voice from the slope.

"Yeah, mom? If it's about changing a diaper, this is not the time!"

"Jamie Porter, shut up and listen to your mother for once!" Mom sounded exasperated. "Using these field glasses I can see a dark form moving under the water. It's slow, very slow. But the shadow is about the size of that boat. It's going West!"

I shifted my gaze, scanning...

"I'm not sure... I may have it? Keep spotting for me!"

"Yes dear."

[Viking-Sensei]

Lucas surveyed the ground where the boat had landed, trying to get any clue as to who - or what - had been landed here before retreating. He'd never gotten a good look at the shooter, so nationality - hell, species, at this point - was still an entire mystery. In the soft mud of the bank, however, someone had disembarked. Lucas sensed (ok, smelled, but smell's a sense, right?) that Grope was nearby and he called out to him.

"Grope, you're a much better tracker than I am. Have you ever seen a footprint like this before?"

The print in the mud was large, like a man's foot, but spread out across three heavy weight lines. Lucas had seen similar prints when tracking in the snow, where someone had used an improvised tree branch to distribute their weight to keep them from sinking into the snow, but this did not appear to be a mechanism so much as it was organic. Like... a giant bird.

As Grope appproached to survey, Lucas silently mouthed the word 'pinguimho' again, almost unconsciously doing so this time. What was it about this name - this word - that was so familiar to him?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"You only told me we were taking out an air balloon." the disgruntled rifleman said, leaning back against the wooden bench as the craft continued down the channel. "If I'd know they might be using magic against us, I'd have brought some different rounds. That Mesuinu woman was selling magical-piercing bullets... each one comes with a tiny dispell spell... guaranteed to strike a magically shielded object 75% more often than regular bullets. I really want to field-test those."

"The success of Project Revenant is entirely dependent on our maintaining a low profile and continuing to maintain plausible denyability. If the majority of the populace of the world knew what we were doing - if the elves ever found out - there would be no turning back." The captain of the vessel said, looking stoic. "Isn't that right, my pet?" He reached down and scruffed the head of a young and mostly undressed troll girl-woman (equivilent to teenage years for a human) who was on the ground on all fours next to him.

She growled, then looked up at him with obvious hostile intent, but before she could act upon those urges the collar around her neck began to glow slightly, and her fierce vibrant eyes dulled and became unfocused. "Yes... master." She managed to force the words out, then found herself uncontrollably nuzzling his leg.

A blue humanoid golem (masculine model) turned in it's swivel chair and faced the captain. "Sir, query: if we continue at this rate of speed, the pinguimho thralls will not be able to catch back up and reboard before we reach oceanic waters. Shall we slow down and wait for them?"

The captain sneered. "They're expendible. Besides, that group above ground is going to want answers as to who or what was shooting at them, thanks to our sloppy marksman here, and our flippered friends should fill that role nicely. Too bad they won't survive to give them any valuable information..."

[AdamZero]

I really hate Lucas sometimes.


"SPPPPRAAAAGHUUUUFFFFFULLLLSSSAA" I retasted stew and stomach bile as the wave hit me, thankfully I was able to wretch over the side of a large rock, nothing behind it. I shuddered re-focused and glared at Lucas.

"Warn someone before you start exploding your damn crazy ass mojo all over the place! You JERK!" I roared at him. I started walking toward the edge, Jasmine and Jamie were trying to snipe the boat from above water... that wouldn't work... gears clicked and I started running. I dash past Lucas, flipping him off; I bolted past the trolls, nodding respectfully, and skidded to a stop just past Jamie and Jasmine..., and promptly tripped and fell flat on my face.

"GOD DAMN FUMBLE ROLLS!" I screamed into the ground, among other colorful word I'd heard while clearly ghosts out of a brothel.

[Graybeard]

"Grope, you're a much better tracker than I am. Have you ever seen a footprint like this before?"

Grope hesitated, startled. How had the man done that? The footprint on the bank had to be at least five hundred feet below the group at the top of the cliff, yet Lucas was talking about it as though they were standing on the shore looking at it. A strange magical enhancement? Maybe. In any event, he answered, "I do not know, friend Lucas. It is too far away for me to see well. My eyes are no better than yours." And I can't have them magically augmented, but I'm not going to rub that in.

Scrobian appeared at his side as they peered over the edge, a puzzled look on his face. Of course; he couldn't understand what Lucas had been asking, not that it would have been any more comprehensible if he had. Grope translated the odd conversation, adding an editorial comment that the Small One's vision must have been amplified somehow. His nephew's eyes widened, but he didn't say anything; the ways of the Small Ones were strange indeed, and he certainly didn't want to fool around with anything magical.

"I still feel a need to kill those who tried to kill us," he said off-handedly to Lucas. (No point in translating for Scrobian; a troll would just know that.) "I desire their Wisdom. But it will be hard now that the under-sea-boat is turning to go back west. What do you suggest we do?" He resumed watching the shadowy underwater shape far below as he waited for the Small One's answer.

---------

That's a good little troll, Wilbur Hamael thought as he quietly sewed up the rip in the balloon's fabric. It looked like the heavy projectile that the boat had pierced it with had simply gone straight through, and even better, the balloon had come equipped with its very own patch kit. Most remarkable of all, the rip almost seemed to be healing itself. How had the dwarves arranged that? He didn't know, but he didn't care.

Now just keep your human friends diverted for about thirty seconds more, and I'll have this thing on the way to Veracia ... and if someone has to die so that I can do it, that can be arranged, he thought as he put the patch kit back in the twisted basket and prepared to inflate the envelope.

[Sareth]

"Jamie!"

"Yes mother?" I sounded slightly exasperated. That damn whatever it was clearly could move around under the water, as it looked to be moving faster than the current. But it wasn't coming back up. How could I get a shot if...

"About 100 yards back from the shadow. There's a head."

I adjusted sights. "Got it."

"What do you think?"

A head shot at this range? Downward angle, almost 500 yards? Luminosita couldn't make that shot.

"Spot me."

"When you're ready."

I took a deep breath, released it, took another, let out enough to get comfortable. I closed an eye, sighted with the other, closed it a second, then opened it to find my natural aim was true. My finger gently began to squeeze...

*BOOM!*

"Three feet left, two feet up!"

The head disappeared, but now I had a good estimate of what the range was doing... I could wait. I would wait.