Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
From: hutch@hutch (Stephen Hutchison)
Subject: [DQ] 'Raelf, Alita:  Nocturne and Preludes
Message-ID: <1992Sep15.020347.12488@intelhf.hf.intel.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 92 02:03:47 GMT

The night air was cold and slightly damp with the sea fog.
Somehow, after all the battles, and after the tumult of the last week,
there was nobody on the streets.  In a city the size of Generica, it
would not be surprising, even at this late hour, for there to be sailors
and rivermen heading to work, for the early-early street vendors to be
moving to the Town Square to collect produce at the best prices, and
for the Guards to be patrolling.

The stony corpses of the gargoyles were gone - in the dim light of the
fading old moon, the steel of the Plaza glittered.

Alita nuzzled flirtatiously into 'Raelf's arm as they walked.  He
retaliated with an attempt to tickle her, which she avoided.

"Where do you want me to deliver you, m'lady?" he asked, after he
caught up with her a block past the first of the Unforgotten Heroes
(nobody knew who this statue had been, nowadays.)

"I've got rooms a few blocks south of Merchant's Hill, just this
side of Low Town.  Say, why DID you guys take it so badly when I
first came in?  I was just trying to have a little fun with you."

"I'm afraid it was just bad timing, 'Lita.  Like you said.  Our
friend, SunStorm, caught like that, it just took us badly."

"Well, I'm sorry, I guess, but don't expect me to be sympathetic."

"Why not?"

"Because I'd really love to be able to remember everything about
my life, good or bad.  I have so many different things in my head
I can't tell all the time which is me, which is stories, which is
just an act."  She shifted her light cloak around her shoulders and
let her face fall into the shadows, gauging his reaction.

"You know, I can't imagine that.  I've got a clear reminiscence of
my own life, going back to when I was just a chip off my Daddy's
block.  Not to mention several other lives."

"Yeah, that's weird.  Do you do the hollow voice on purpose or
is it an accident?"

"That's the voice of the guy who sent the probe.  It sounds funny
because the memory was taken off a ... his dead body.  The first
time the probe misfired it caught him in its effect."

They continued in silence for a block.  (In the darkness, one of
the denizens of the night spied out.  Two young loverboids wit'out
no bodyguard, how sweet.  He moved to catch a better view. Ohshit.
That's Alita - moved in las' week, took out two of th' bes' muggers
in th' block.  Leave be.)  They turned at the corner.

"This is it." She stopped before a brownstone building with gates
and wrought-iron fences.  "Thanks for bringing me home.  Be a love,
dear, and let me come on your little quest.  I promise I'll be able
to help."

"Not my quest.  I'll ask the others, Lancos and ShockWave, they're
the ones running things.  I'm just hired muscle."

She giggled and ran a finger over his arm.  "Right.  G'night, I'll
come by tomorrow and talk to them.  Put in a good word?"

"I'll try.  Sleep well."  He watched, as she went in the door.

He returned to the street, and headed further south.  He was spotted,
and rejected as a mark, a half-dozen times as he followed the path
past the statues of the city's saviours.

As he approached the south gate, he caught a familiar aroma of utter
decay and stenchful experimentation.  Alchemy!  He headed for the
source.  Past the relatively pleasant knackers shop and the almost
floral-in-comparison tannery.  The lab doors were open, a small
balding man in a fez and stained robes standing outside, directing
a load of dung being shovelled into a huge cauldron.

:Honorable Felchek,: 'Raelf shouted from a safe distance.  The man
signalled a guard, who trained a bow on the stranger.

:What may I do for you, esteemed stranger: he asked, from a safe
distance.  He was wary for reason - he regularly had gems and
precious metals in his labs which were still safe to steal, and
completed materials which had been stabilized but not yet sold.

:Your worthy wife tells me that I may place requests with you for
alchemic materials.  I will need a half-pound of Essence of Myrrh
and a dram of Spirits of Lead.  My preparations start in a month,
can you have the materials ready by then?"

:Most assuredly.  You will of course deal with my dearest wife in
order to arrange the fees and payments before I start.:

:Of course.  It is my pleasure.  May the stars shine fortune on your
path, honored seeker after truth.:

'Raelf returned to the South Gate, and went down a dark alley - first
ensuring that it was an empty dark alley.  A few moments later, a bat
flew up out of the alley, and headed towards the graveyard south of
town.  A mausoleum dominated part of the cemetary, showing the marks
of damaged stonework where the Gargoyle clan had removed the original
decorations, in order to set up their sleeping roosts.  In the center
of this mausoleum, in a place that Krastin (the Dark-Armored Menace)
had not been shown, the Gargoyles kept their treasures.

Not unexpectedly, it was in an empty crypt in the mausoleum.  There
were traps, but AngryPaw the Gargoyle had known them, and 'Raelf had
the fading shreds of its memories, and he bypassed the traps with ease.

Inside the crypt, under a capstone, the small iron chest that the
Gargoyle Mother had hidden her gleanings in.  Treasures taken from
the travellers they'd waylaid, from the corpses they'd robbed in
the occasional unsealed grave or tomb.

The chest held silver coins, taken from the eyes of the dead in the
big cavern-crypt. Close to 2000 of them.  About 350 gold pieces, some
clipped, some cut with other metals - rameshander gold, the gargoyles
had called it jeeringly.  The gems and jewels, in a cloth bag.
A turqoise cloak pin, a cup carved from lapiz lazuli, a quartz chess
piece, five coral beads unstrung from a long-lost necklace.  A six
strand necklace of small, irregular pearls.  An obsidian brooch with
a carved portrait of a face.  A ring of citrine, worn for luck and
to ward away evil, in life.  A garnet necklace, a single strand of
tiny gems like pomegranite seeds, catching internal fire as 'Raelf
touched them.  Then a plain black wrought-iron ring, practically
shouting magic - a few moments examination prove it to have the
rune of Cloaking From Sight.  The box lay on top of a short sword.

'Raelf removed the sword from its sheath.  A well constructed blade
with the first level of BladeSharp and Seeking.  Not an unusual or
spectacular sword.  Still, magical enough to bite a Gargoyle, which
must be why they'd hidden it here.

He put the iron box, and its contents, along with the sword, into
his bandolier.  Five pockets, all full now.  He made his way back
to the surface, and caught the whiff of sea air from the ocean.
Some primeval urge hit him - he'd been away from the water, fighting
or doing tournaments or coming to this god-infested place, it had
been at least three months.  The tide was moving in.

The small board, and his wetsuit, were collapsed in pocket two.
He changed, quickly, and stowed his clothes in the bandolier pocket,
then snapped the board to full size and hopped on.  A shortcut through
Water would be good.  There was a stream nearby ... he kicked off
against the envelope of elemental energy, snapping off the top into
the flow and vanishing with a liquid motion from the material world.

The world, viewed from Water, was a web of light flowing towards the
bright chasm of the ocean.  He caught the flow, slipping with a speed
far greater than any he could attain on land, and arced out the mouth
of the stream where it fed, by a waterfall, into the sea.  The deeps
were intriguing, but 'Raelf decided to keep them for later; he sped
off to the north, searching for a beach he had spotted on his flight
over town a few days ago.  The bay was deep, and guarded by a jetty,
and the Wyeriun's magic had physical manifestations here so close
to his tower.  Four menacing, walled structures with elementals as
guardians, around a central device completely protected by a shell
of impenetrable blackness.  The harbor, and the sea lanes, guarded
by this incredible edifice.  He skirted at a safe distance.

There, north a ways - the narrow, turbulent area that meant a reef
and breakers.  He phased back to the "real" world - the breakers were
beginning to peak.  He'd missed some of the early surf, that would have
shown him how the currents would behave, but that wasn't as big a deal
after having seen the lay from Water.  He slid to shore, and removed
his boots and the boogie board, returning them to their niche in the
bandolier.  He ran out into the surf, then dove, swimming to the point
where the breakers started, and began body surfing in the growing light
of dawn, enjoying how the phosporescence of the waves gave way to the
sharp black-and-white of early morning, then later, how the morning
sun tinted the water the color of old bottle glass.

After a while he noticed that the sun was well above the horizon, and
that he was using a lot of energy keeping his body warm.  He returned
to shore, and dried off.  It was mid-morning already - he was expected
back at the Inn by now.  He pulled out the boots and boogie board and
kicked up into the air, catching a breeze into Air and zipping past
a startled djinn.  He dodged around the silver lining of a cloud,
narrowly avoided an invisible servant, and slid down the sound of a
bell towards the place where Air intersected with *whoosh* the Plaza
of Glittering Steel.  A leftwards bank brought him into phase with
the common reality just by the door.  K-CHAK* - the boots unlocked,
and he hopped off the board, letting it float up into his right hand.

He stepped inside.  Lancos and Valgar were seated at their usual table,
discussing something.  Kadrys was nowhere to be seen, and Alita had not
shown yet.  The foreshortened form of SunStorm was coming down the stairs,
with an expression resembling that of a man discovering his first hangover.

"Hey hi, dudes.  How's it doin?  Where's Kadrys?"