Dream

by RW Krpoun

  “What have you got against bravos making good?”

  “If the Field is exploited too quickly it will destabilize the entire region. A flood of gold, weapons, and artifacts will bring an equal flood of problems. You will cease selling your powder and devices at once.”

  “Look, you brought us here against our will to do a job, you refused to give us any support, and now you are restricting our ability to function?” Shad threw up his hands. “Make up your mind.”

  “The Council is placing the Great Field under a ban,” Yorrian snapped. “Several of our members are en route there to enforce it, while others will locate and purchase the items you sold to the bravos. Much is going undone because of your childish pranks.”

  Shad held up his left forearm. “Pranks that dropped two of your intruders.”

  “We want the intruders gone because they disturb the natural order of our world. You are rapidly entering into that category yourselves.”

  “All right,” Derek held up his hand, palm outwards, in a gesture of peace. “We’ll cease and desist.”

  “Good.” Yorrian visibly calmed herself. “Why are you staying in the City-State? There are still three more intruders.”

  “We needed to rest-we had been on some pretty rough operations. And we’re just level six, we needed to get a better picture of the remaining intruders,” Shad explained. “Plus it is very hot-we hoped to sit out the heat of summer.”

  “You hoped your powder would send you home without lifting a finger,” Yorrian sneered. “It won’t work. The survivors amongst the intruders have worked out that the powder will not affect them if a native is within the area of effect. Your days of hiding are over-get to work.”

  “Any chance we could make a run at the Great Field on the way?” Derek asked. “We could use a boost in equipment and money. Naturally we would keep it secret.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “She was thoroughly pissed,” Derek concluded. The Talons were sitting on the riverbank fishing as the sun was setting. Jeff had located a guard captain who would let them in a sally gate after dark for a few shillings, and it was pleasantly cool along the river once the sun had set. “Not a put-on or a front.”

  “The economic and political disruption she’s worried about if the Field gets mined isn’t the real issue, it’s the damage to the status quo,” Jeff said thoughtfully. “The Council really doesn’t want the political and social ship rocked.”

  “Well, betting on the rebels was a long shot anyway,” Fred sighed. “We had a good rest, and the charm inventory is in good shape. I guess its off to Mount Doom.”

  “You know, we’ve met her three times,” Shad said slowly. “Our initial briefing, then on day eighteen she showed up to warn us about the Wraiths and probably to get a good look at how we were doing. Then today.”

  “Well, her link to us died while we were at the Fist,” Derek pointed out.

  “Yeah, but we’re not that hard to find-we’ve been in the same place for weeks. Two intruders dropped because of our efforts and nary a word, comment, or inspection. Then we start helping bravos hit the Great Field and she appears, pissed off and wanting us out of the City-State.”

  “You have a point?” Fred asked.

  “Yeah. Maybe. I’m wondering if the Council really cares all that much about the intruders.”

  “What? That’s why they brought us here,” Sam threw up his hands.

  “No, that’s why they said they brought us here.”

  “Never trust the game master,” Derek snapped his fingers. “You’re always telling us that planning on an assumption leads to failure.”

  “So the Council for all intents and purposes are the GM,” Jeff mused, laying back into the grass. “So we never assume that the campaign hook is really the campaign hook. OK, so are the intruders real?”

  “Yes,” Derek nodded. “The dossier on the Ultimate Master was confirmed by me and Sam. Likewise at least two other intruders checked out, and there’s nothing to indicate any of the others are fakes.”

  “So what is the deal, then?” Fred asked.

  “The deal is that the Council is smarter than we are, and like the GM they know far more about the setting than we do,” Derek said grimly. “We’re worse than pawns on the board, guys: I think we’re the GM’s NPCs. And we’re not sticking to the script.”

  “So the intruders are the player characters?” Sam looked alarmed.

  “Yeah, I think they might be,” the Shadowmancer said unhappily.

  “That bodes ill,” Fred sighed. “But it fits.”

  “If the intruders are the PCs, that means there is a relationship between the Council and the intruders,” Derek said.

  “Look, the GM-player thing is more a metaphor than an actual concept, but I think it points us in the right direction,” Shad said.

  “It could be there’s another faction in the game that has the PC role,” Fred suggested.

  “There could be. In any case we need to leave the City-State before the Council decides that it is time to ice us. Moreover, she let slip that there are Council members heading to the Great Field and others to buy off the bravos to whom we sold the bang sticks. That means at least close to half the Council is busy, and they expect us to leave town,” Shad ticked off points on his fingers. “This could be the best time for us to pull the Mount Doom job and get home.”

  “Yeah,” I think you’re right,” Jeff nodded. “Derek, where is this place?”

  “About a hundred miles south-southeast of the Great Field. Instead of turning west off the South Way we keep going sixty miles more and then turn west. The tomb is in caverns underneath a mountain, in a pretty sizeable complex of warrens. The group that left before us used enchantment and sweat to open a long-closed way into the complex, and then concealed it. We can expect Goblins and cave spiders.”

  “Those are the big bastards like we killed out past Wrym, right?” Fred sighed.

  “Yeah.”

  “Great.”

  “How long will we spend underground?” Shad asked.

  “A day, maybe two if things have changed a lot-the previous group did not do anything except secure us a way in; the map we have from that point is real old. The good news is that due south a lot further is the hold of another intruder, so heading south will excite no interest amongst the Council.”

  “OK, Shad sighed. “Well, Derek worked out the equipment list a while back, so tomorrow you guys buy what we need and close out our business interests; I’ll go back to charms full-time. The day after that we say our goodbyes, dump all but say five Marks into Margit’s account with the bankers and the morning of the third day we roll south.”

  “The good news is that in a couple of weeks we could be home,” Jeff pointed out.

  “Yeah. Quick recap: last level-up I stayed in class, took Underground Orientation and Goblin Fighting.”

  “I stayed in class, took Underground Orientation, another point in Creature Lore, and another point in Cartography,” Derek advised.

  “I went with sword-master and put both points in Gem Settings because I don’t want any mistakes when I set the stones into our bracers. I’ve already purchased the tools,” Jeff said quietly.

  “Stuck with class, already had Goblin Fighting, so I took a point in Underground Combat and used the other to give my Rage a boost.”

  “Still pure Bard, I took Underground Conditions and Advanced Fencing,” Sam said sadly. “I had hoped to boost my knowledge of certain aspects of local history, but that’s how it goes. I did pick up two points in my studies during this down time, but that didn’t take me where I wanted to go.”

  “Planning on winning a trivia contest before we leave?” Jeff grinned.

  “No, I wanted to see what I could learn about Fu Hao’s time here, and about who entombed her, but you have to hit level four in that particular branch of history skill, and I’m standing at level two.”

  “Too bad-that was a good idea,” Shad conceded. “But needs must wh
en the devil drives-we go as we are. Let’s get back inside and get some Zs. There’s a hard run ahead of us.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Its amazing how fast walking everywhere gets old,” Derek announced as he dumped his pack. “I wish we had dreamt our way into Fallout.”

  “You walk everywhere in Fallout,” Jeff looked up from digging the evening’s fire pit.

  “Not in Fallout 2; there you got vehicles, even a tank.”

  “One word for you, Derek: deathclaws.”

  “Two right back at you: Fat Man launcher.”

  “That’s three,” Fred pointed out.

  “Whatever.”

  “Besides, deathclaws move too fast to use a Fat Man,” Shad objected. “The only way I dropped a deathclaw was to snipe ‘em at a distance with an anti-material rifle. Anyway, this dump could be worse: we could be dodging dragons in Skyrim.”

  “There was never an ugly girl in Skyrim,” Jeff said wistfully. “Nor one that was less than a C cup.”

  “Far Cry 4,” Fred mused. “That one had everything from mini-copters to boats.”

  “Yeah, but the NPC body armor was insane,” Derek objected.

  “Hey, an enemy who uses red and maroon uniforms and armor is fine by me,” Shad countered. “Give me evil and stupid any day.”

  “The whiny peasants got old very fast,” Jeff shook his head. “You stop in your base camp to swap out weapons and grab some Zs and there’s some serf wailing in the corner of your quarters. Helluva way to run an operation.”

  “Do you guys ever stop arguing? If you’re not bickering about something you’re accusing each other of being gay or harassing Derek,” Sam threw his arms up in disgust. “Six days of walking and the only time you assholes shut up is when you make me sing the Firefly songs.”

  “Do all Japanese whine as much as you do?” Shad asked.

  “Look, dude, being Japanese means I piss liquid awesome.”

  “Nippon, the land of ten thousand kinks,” Jeff observed.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know, tentacle porn, yadda yadda yadda. You guys were in a real war, and you still play combat video games.”

  “That’s because combat video games and war have zip in common,” Shad explained. “Its like the difference between comic books and great literature.”

  “Hey, some comic series are pretty good,” Fred objected.

  “Zap! Pow! Ker-biff!”

  “There are some pretty well-developed plots and superior artwork.”

  “Mostly of DD bust lines in spandex.”

  “Nothing wrong with DD busts in spandex.”

  “True, but just call it porn and get over it.”

  “It never stops,” Sam whispered to himself, shaking his head.

  “We’re here,” Fred gasped, dumping his pack.

  Derek simply collapsed onto his face.

  “That was an entirely new flavor of suck,” Shad sat heavily on a handy rock and dropped his pack. “This must be what it is like in Afghanistan.”

  Derek rolled onto his side and squirmed out of his pack. “I think the rod in my back bent about two miles ago.”

  “March or die,” Jeff mumbled as he lowered his pack to the ground and laid down next to it. “I miss Ula.”

  “She would have helped,” Shad agreed. “Where’s Sam?”

  The Night-grifter pointed wordlessly to where the Bard had dropped about twenty yards further down the slope.

  “Is he dead?”

  “I don’t really care either way.”

  “Are you sure we’re here?” he asked Fred, waving a hand to take in the terrain.

  For the last day and a half the Black Talons had been following an animal trail that looked no different than any other animal trail as it ascended the ever-steepening side of a tall snow-capped mountain in a shallow curve that appeared to have been chosen solely to maximize the amount of slope traversed. Some people might have recognized the peace and beauty of the trim pines growing on the slate and gravel-littered slope, but none were amongst the five bravos, who cursed the mountain as a whole and the individual rocks with a deep and personal loathing. The climb’s saving graces were a steady reduction in temperature and the ready presence of snow-fed streams, but these were not graces the Talons felt much appreciation for, a feeling they expressed with great regularity.

  “Yeah,” the barbarian gestured towards a pile of scree that looked like any one of fifty or more that the Talons had cursed as they had struggled upwards.

  “Seriously? Why that one? No, I’ll take your word for it,” Shad waved away the papers Fred offered. “Let’s find a place to camp, and we’ll think about it tomorrow.”

  “It’s only early afternoon,” the barbarian pointed out.

  “Thanks, I thought it was midnight. You can go in and do the deed if you want, but I’m going to soak my feet and not walk for a while.”

  “We may have to bury Sam, too,” Jeff observed from where he lay.

  “Screw that. Birds gotta eat, too.”

  The Bard managed to lift one trembling hand and extend a single digit.

  The notes from the outlanders included the location of a good campsite and without much trouble but with a great deal of vulgar language the Talons moved the hundred yards and settled in.

  “No junk food, lots of walking, I mean miles and miles of walking…I thought I was in better shape,” Jeff mumbled around a piece of jerky he was tiredly chewing.

  “We have been walking on pretty flat ground,” Fred observed. “You guys might not have noticed, but the last three days were all on a gentle incline, which got pretty pronounced the last two days. The air is getting thin.”

  “I thought she was under a mountain,” Shad said from where he lay on his bedroll.

  “A loose term.” The barbarian shrugged.

  “I hate this place.”

  Sam staggered into the camp, dragging his pack by one strap. “I hate all of you.”

  “Ok, everyone takes a full canteen, one day’s rations, your own escape harness, and all combat gear. Derek, you take the pay-off box and the tomb lock polishing gear; I have the first aid kit, and Sam carries the Chest. What else?”

  “Everyone gets ten torches and a dozen candles,” Derek gestured to the stacked items. “Make sure your tinder boxes are up to speed. Everyone takes a coil of rope; I have the enchanted rope, too. Fred has a mallet and twenty big iron spikes we can use as pitons, just in case. Shad, you get the two caltrop bags, I have the scrolls, and Fred has the maps and notes. I think that’s it.”

  “OK, the group before us created a cache point where we will leave everything else.”

  “Why are we carrying all this gear? Why not just put them in the Chest?” Sam asked as he tied his torches together.

  “Because the Chest is full of food and essential gear, and because if we had everything in it and something happened to the Chest we would be completely screwed,” Jeff explained.

  The scree pile looked solid, but using a short shovel they had brought for the purpose Fred quickly exposed a crate lid covering yard-wide shaft going in at a slight angle, rusting iron spikes pounded in at intervals to serve as rungs and handholds.

  “Use the enchanted rope, or tie off a regular rope and leave it here?” Derek asked. “According to the notes its forty feet down.”

  “Enchanted rope; last one in pulls the lid back over the hole.” Shad thumped his hands together to settle his fingerless gloves. “How long do your scroll lights last?”

  “Four hours each.”

  “Fire one up; no point in saving them at this point.”

  “I’ll take point,” Jeff offered.

  “OK. Derek, you go last.”

  The Shadowmancer produced a small roll of vellum, which he unsealed. Reading a dozen words in a language that sounded Arabic, he gestured and the page crumbled to dust as a ball of light rose from the ground near his feet. “There we go.”

  The shaft opened into a natural chamber barely seven feet high and further acros
s than Derek’s light could reach.

  “Subtle entry point,” Jeff muttered to the others, shaking his head. “Derek’s ball isn’t going to cut it-I’m going to light a torch.”

  “The goats tell a different story about Derek’s balls,” Fred snickered. The Shadowmancer flipped him off by way of reply.

  “Which direction?” Shad asked the Shadowmancer.

  “We go east.”

  “East it is. Jeff, you have point.” The Jinxman passed out an armor charm to each Talon. “No point in runes until something is in the offing.”

  It took some time to find the exit from the chamber, which turned out to be a relatively smooth tube that meandered through the rock in an easterly fashion. After his first torch burned out Jeff switched to a candle as the Talons crawled deeper into the mountain. Their route wasn’t hard to follow as there was a groove burned into the side of the tube that kept them from accidently straying into the passages formed by cracks and crevices intersecting with the tube.

  “What made this?” Fred whispered to Derek as the Talons took a break.

  “Earth-moving magic.”

  “This is solid rock.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “It doesn’t look old.”

  “So?”

  “So the notes say the last group just opened an old back way into the complex.”

  “I think they burned the hole into the chamber, put the spikes in, and then started the magic that created the tube and burned the groove into its wall. That would have been pretty time-consuming, and involve the risk of someone coming upon them.”

  “Still seems easier than our gig.”

  “Let me be the first to tell you: life ain’t fair.”

  “Let’s get moving. Derek, make sure you’re ready to map if we ever get out of this stone hamster run,” Shad whispered.