Volkanenborg

[Graybeard]

"Don't panic, Jamie," the large man said. "You're still under our protection. Elke needs to talk to you. Might as well head back to town; nobody is getting up to the mountain this way for a while."

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A low rumble from somewhere below interrupted Chippy's report to Grope. "That does not feel natural to me," Grope said, with the odd facial expression that passes for a troll's frown. "To the east, the mountains tremble and groan. Sometimes they even spit fire and smoke. My people call it the Voice of Growf. But that was no sound of a god, or of a mountain. Come. I am reluctant to leave this fine campsite, but it is time for us to move."

However, he didn't get very far into his packing before the rumbling resolved into an amplified Small Ones voice. Only one phrase was intelligible over the rustling of the trees: "it was Neverinal himself."

"Wait," Grope said, his eyes narrowing. "I know that name..."

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"Another job?" Layla groaned.

"Just relax," Faye said. "We're just backup on this one. Peter says there's a, quote-unquote, 'situation' that may require some intervention, but it's not mainly our problem. We'll only get involved if things go to hell, he says. He's closed-mouthed about what that means, but for now we just need to be on standby. So is Ace," she concluded unnecessarily, trying to gauge her daughter's reaction.

She had one; exasperation didn't come naturally to Layla, but there was a time for everything. "Mom, I want to remind you that I've been a widow for less than a week now. Now Arty and I always knew that something like this might happen, and we both agreed that we'd move on as quickly as we could if it did. But it's been less than a week. I'm quite fond of Ace, but are you really trying to play matchmaker already?"

Hardly seems necessary, does it? Faye thought, but she only said, "I neither confirm nor deny. Now pack up some firepower in case it's needed, and turn in with Zachary. If we're needed at all, it'll be early, and we'll want to be rested." She yawned and headed for her own bedroom without waiting for a reply.

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The other kidnappers were barely ambulatory and still in a severe mental haze, but Hymie didn't need their brains in working order, just their muscles. "Move out! Get that bitch to the cave! I'll join you as soon as I can." The five men didn't have to be told twice; they loaded up their burden (fortunately, the woman in the coffin was still out cold) and got moving.

Well, that's an improvement, Hymie thought to himself. Now how do I get away from this maniac under my boot without killing him? I don't know why, but I don't think Neverinal would like that.

[Sareth]

"Say what?" I spluttered at the apparition that had just crawled out of the dark to diesturb my repose. "Back to town? I just blew that berg. Borg. Bergborg... whatever. And now you want me to go back just to chat with Elke? What sort of..." I halted and thought a moment. "This is a side effect of that happy juice Elke stuffed in my veins, isn't it? You can frickin track me in the middle of nowhere? So, if I ignore you, tell you to blow, you people can keep tracking me and harrassing me until I do agree, eh? It's tempting to make a run for the bridge and put you to the test. That'd show you how easy it is to push Jamie Porter around, Mr... Uh..." I suddenly felt my cheeks flush, and found myself hoping that the dark would keep it from being visible. "What's your name?"

[Viking-Sensei]

Neverinal watched the skeleton continue to struggle, a sneer slowly spreading across his thin lips. In his lifetime's worth of experience, which was now up into the realms well past "considerable", he'd not had as much fun as this... well, maybe back in the Errant Wars, but that was a different sort of game then.

Then his attention turned to Marcus... he sensed something in him that was oddly familiar... the way that he manipulated life and death forces equally, for instance, reminded Neverinal of an old acquaintance of his from back in 'the day'. "He practices some of the forbiddem magic... I want to interrogate him, but not here... let's take him back to the lair."

[Graybeard]

"Just call me Buzz," the large man smiled at Jamie. "And with the message delivered, I'll be buzzing off. Up to you how you deal with it, but Elke is someone worth paying attention to." He faded back into the trees, and remarkably quickly for such a big man, was lost from sight.

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"What's a Neverinal?" Chippy asked, puzzled.

"I'm not sure," Grope answered. "Maybe a legend of the tribe; maybe something else. Let me consult the Many Fathers."

He slitted his eyes (but did not close them; even a troll in a trance must see enemies approaching) and started to finger the Robe. As he sought the memories of his ancestors and his tribe, Grope became aware of something interesting: he'd never had such clear access to them before, particularly the female ones. Of course, there were still limits, but the difference in clarity was unmistakable. Was this because of the way he'd added Zhbrigeeul's Wisdom to the Robe, and for that matter, to himself? He thought so ... and then, from a corner of his mind (and the Robe), there was confirmation. He could detect Zhbrigeeul's presence, and she was smiling ...

That's up to three times, Grope thought to himself as his eyes filled with tears. But not for long; a moment later he found the tribal memory he was looking for. "The Red One..."

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Mexacalan standoff, Hymie thought. If I stay like this, I can kill this guy in an instant if he tries something. But I take my foot off him, I'm toast. How do I get out of this?

"I'll take over here," a female voice said from somewhere in the forest. "Beat feet, Hymie." A mumbled spell, and a green glow encased the re-awakening Marcus, clashing with the red of Neverinal's clothing and the spell with which he'd immobilized Boris. Hymie didn't take the time to complain about esthetics; he just took off after the coffin and the pallbearers.

[AdamZero]

It had been a long time since Boris died. A long time since I used his soul to become my first, an only, human familiar. It was a rush job. He had a lot on his soul, and working the debt off with me was a better gig than whatever the afterlife held. I'd made the body he had out of marble, I think I'd mentioned that before, and while it looked human enough, it wasn't. I'd only just managed to draw Boris's soul back into well... let's just say there's things inside me that shouldn't be there that let spirits hitchhike when the need arises.

Then the binding hit.

"Well balls." I swore, fully awake now. "and here I thought... wait...." I looked at the Red figure. "Nevernial.... Hey you owe by boss fifty gold!... course that was a thousand or so years ago, with varient interest.... well I'd settle it before you get axed old man... bad luck to face Charon with a debt on your head."

Part of Necromancy was theatrics, when you were on the winning side. On the losing side, it was satire, blunt jabs, and as many low blows as you can dish out to ruin the gloom of your opponent.

[Graybeard]

[OOC: Adam, I'm having a hard time figuring out when Marcus is doing the talking and when Boris is. Would you mind clarifying? I assume that the previous contribution was from Marcus and have edited the following to fit, after originally thinking it was Boris. How about sticking with first-person for Marcus and third-person for Boris, would that work? /OOC...]

"I wouldn't go trash-talking Neverinal if I were you," the female voice said from the trees. "The Mana Barrier that I put on you will wear off after a while and you'll be as good as new, as long as you don't do something stupid and blow yourself up first. Some of the things Neverinal can do to you, on the other hand, will never wear off. But your call."

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The Red One.

The trolls' tribal memory, as preserved in the Robe, got fainter, and less precise, the farther back in time it went. One of Grope's great-grandfathers, dead in an intertribal war before Grope himself was born, had encountered The Red One somewhere, and was speaking through the Robe of a vague sense of discomfort -- and a stronger sense that The Red One was a powerful mage, but of course, that was obvious by now. Grope couldn't pin the memory down as regards location, but it must have been somewhere closer to the troll homelands. There was another, much more distant memory, from a time before the trolls could record the passage of time, and that one was of sheer, unmitigated terror, but Grope couldn't get anything more out of it.

One thing was clear: this Neverinal was not someone a modern troll wanted to fool around with. Grope emerged from his trance to see Chippy staring at him. "I have changed my mind," he told the chipmunk. "It is best if we camp here and stay out of sight. Let the Small Ones fight their own battles."

"I was hoping you'd say that," Chippy said; then he curled up and was asleep within seconds.

[Sareth]

I sat for a while in thought. "Buzz" and his little message were ill timed and unfortunate, and I was very tempted to ignore both. For one, returning to Volkanenborg had all kinds of unfortunate downsides now that mom knew I was in the area. For another, I didn't like being ordered around. For a third, I'd told the others I'd meet them at the...

Wait... Did he say something about no one making it to the mountain this way? Whatever did he mean by that?

Curious, I took advantage of the moonlight and began heading up the path.

****

Two hours of walking later and I had come to two conclusions.

The first was that walking for a couple hours at night was not my cup of tea. I was feeling the fatigue of too little sleep, even though it was only just past midnight.

The second is that someone had a fetish for explosives.

Well, at least I understood what Buzz had meant now. At least, I assumed he was referring to the fact that the bridge was everywhere BUT where it was supposed to be. It was over here... over there... down there...

Grumbling, I turned around and began walking back the way I came. Looked like I was heading back to Volkanenborg after all.

I swear... was being a killer for pay THAT bad a karma hit? What would happen next? Trolls?

[Viking-Sensei]

Neverinal the Dread. The Red One. Neverinal of the Fallen. The Crimson-Stained Hand. It didn't matter to him... it was all good press.

If this world had Drow... the dark elves of classic myth and tale, the antagonist opposite the fanciful elven maidens in their towers of glass and crystal, then Neverinal would have been one of them. He was tall and rail-like, with waxen and pale skin that looked like it had not seen bright sun in hundreds of years and long dark hair that seemed to absorb light. Under his read cloak, as he moved, you could see brownish armor... leather armor, made not from the skin of cows but from... well... use your imagination.

"And how is dear old Charon, my boy? I thought I smelled his stink upon you. Still stealing the life from sleeping babes and livestock to keep himself in one piece, I presume? That's the problem with deathcrafts... unless you don't owe the reaper anything, the only thing they do is hasten the inevitable. Once you start making bargains... once you start using pieces of your life... that's a hole that no deed will ever be able to completely fill."

Neverinal struck his hand through the mana field... at least sort of. The gray of his hand, moving seperate from his arm, reached through the field and grabbed at Marcus, pulling his essence halfway to it's ghostly feet and watching it struggle outside of his body for a moment before releasing it.

"For you, that was an incredible and hopefully painful act to achieve... for me, on the other hand, doing something such as that was merely a teaspoon of lifeforce out of the endless oceans of my life. So... do I have to display my prowess anymore, or can I trust that you'll behave? Now on your feet... we've got a lot of walking to do, thanks to the fact that some damn fool decided to blow up the bridge."



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Lucas' attempts to convince Annika that she should remain behind in the guise of Saiko had failed, and so after making some quick arrangements to have 'Saiko' go visit her daughter in Kiyoka, she had insisted on going with him.

"Well... hell." Lucas said, staring into the valley that used to be spanned by a bridge. "Where'd the bridge go? Is this another one of Saiko's bizarre ideas?"

Annika cautiously looked over the edge, and down. "Nooooooo. This is something else. This is 'someone blew up the bridge'. But who in their right mind would do that? There's nothing on the other side except the lost Veracian mines..."

"You mean the one the kidnappers are probably holding Saiko at?" Lucas said innocently. She looked at him, stunned. "Well, it's not like they're going to keep her in town with her happy fun time patrols wandering all over the place, are they? And almost any point in the woods could be covered by the Chip-Net... the mines and the series of assosciated caves are the best hiding place anywhere."

Suddenly, Lucas' pocket started beeping. He opened it. "Wow... what's one... no, two... of my party members doing out here, at this time of night? I've got a faint signal down in the valley, and another coming up the ridge... any second now..."

[AdamZero]

(ooc: I'd meant Charon the guy who ferries people across the river styx but, meh. And yeah, I switched back to Marcus)

Boris's limp body was being submerged rather quickly now, and I frowned as my body and spirit were accosted by the old... thingie. At his question I grumbled and nodded, feeling the aura ebb a bit I stood up, slowly, and used my staff to get up to my feet. I felt Boris complain somewhere around my navel, and I moved foreward slightly, up the path, and towards Boris. With a smack of my staff I knocked his head off, without stepping into the foul spell's range and slowly moved to collect the skull.

"No objections? It's a pain carving this stuff, and I'd like to keep at least part of it for later." I looked at my captor's, the pair only seemed to silence the night further. The Red One, was a problem I felt I could deal with, by running away, fast. But the other one, I looked at her with all my observational skill, hoping that I might be able to use her a a meat shield for that escape from the Red One.

[Graybeard]

"It's after midnight, boss," one of the pallbearers said to Hymie as they set down the coffin for a minute. "We gonna off her now? At least cut off a finger?"

"Shaddup, lemme think... No, we're not going to kill her," Hymie said, still puffing slightly from running to catch up with the coffin. "At least not till the Big Boss says to. She's worth more alive than dead."

"You sure we can't kill her?" another man said, sounding disappointed.

"YES, you idiot," Hymie snarled. "No killing without the OK from the Big Boss. In fact I'm thinking we probably shouldn't even send a toe or a finger yet with the message. Let me try something else." He pulled out a knife, opened a flap on the underside of the coffin, and reached inside, ignoring the screamed imprecations coming from within. His hand emerged holding a clump of hair.

And what hair! They'd bagged Saiko on the way to one of her trademark parties, and she'd done up her black hair in style getting ready for it -- taking the word "style" loosely. Hymie was holding about a dozen braids (or dreadlocks or whatever), each dyed in its own fluorescent and distasteful color and tipped with an inch or so of gold leaf. It hurt his eyes to look at it. "Hah. She'll miss this as much as a toe, and anybody that sees it is gonna know for sure that we've got the bitch; nobody else around here has such cruddy taste." He handed the hair and a note to one of the men, said, "Now run this back down to where Neverinal is having his fun, and give it to Sherry to get back to town. She'll know what to do with it. The rest of us, let's get moving."

The man with the message started running back west, as the five on the coffin, now including Hymie, continued east. A few minutes later, an owl, or a large bat, or at least some kind of flying creature, emerged the woods back toward Neverinal and Marcus, heading for Volkanenborg.