Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: [DQ] Week 11: Old Friends Message-ID: From: hutch@ibeam.intel.com (Steve Hutchison) Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1992 20:38:27 GMT [Posted for Andrea Evans] At the end of his timeless descent from the Heights, Kadrys awakens. He blinks in curiosity. He is in... Generica? But a Generica grievously altered from when he saw it last. He looks up. The sky is heavily overcast, but still it is day. No matter how heavy the cloud, his skin should still feel afire. Why does he feel nothing? Has his physical self been changed by his recent experiences? That hope is dashed as he sees a bat flutter down in front of him. With a puff of flame and smoke as showy as any apprentice alchemist's efforts, the bat transforms into a fellow with the same formal dress and self-impressed manner of a personal manservant. The servant swirls his cloak dramatically around himself and gives an elaborate bow of greeting. Kadrys just stands, watching the other's display indifferently. His expressionlessness might hint at patience, or boredom. "Welcome to Ack-I-Renege, brother! The Dark Master bids you go safely in his city, and enjoy your stay as his guest. You need only show this emblem, to purchase blood or other pleasures. When you have grown tired of your sport in this town, or should you find yourself endangered, simply speak the words on the back of the badge, and his servants will come to you." The servant grabs the edges of his cloak and throws his arms out to full stretch, theatrically forming a winglike silhouette against the sky. The next moment, after another stagey burst of flame, a bat flaps away. Kadrys watches the bat disappear in the distance. At last, his lips quirk in a sour grin. 'Kids...' he thinks. 'Always the same, whatever their species. Always crying "Daddy, look at ME! Look at what _I_ can do!"' He looks down, frowning at the badge on his shirt, pinned directly over his heart. Made of ivory stained black, it had etched into its surface a line drawing of the charm object he remembered seeing back in the other Generica. In its centre was a number: 7. He unpinned the badge, and read on its back: Greetings, number 7. To summon assistance, say "Dark Master Aid Me", To summon a pyracubic diamond for Transportation or defense from crowds, say "Dark Master Take Me". You may not lose nor deface this card. Kadrys grins sharply at the last sentence, noticing how the badge was sticking to his fingers. 'May I not?' he thinks. Without warning or transition of any kind, faster than any eye could follow, his human form flickers, vanishing for the briefest instant and being replaced momentarily by a wisp of mist before reappearing. He frowns with annoyance when he realises that the badge reformed itself when he did. With the same blinding speed, he switches forms, from human to bat to wolf and back to human again. As he transforms, the badge keeps pace, becoming a legband and a collar respectively. His frown deepens from annoyance to real concern. He contemplates sticking the damned thing under his heel. While he likes the symbolism of that, he decides against it. The smooth ivory might be treacherous footing in a critical moment. In the end he sticks it to the inside of the upper surface of his boot. He looks around. He is standing in this ... this Ack-I-Renege's version of the Plaza. Here, the great steel plates flooring the square have long since collapsed into rust, leaving only a frail webwork of twisted girders over a gaping pit. He picks his way carefully over the few jagged strands of metal remaining, his footing indeed made treacherous, both by rust and by slime. As he wonders what has left the slime, the end of a massive tentacle raises itself from the depths below, its multi-mouthed tip groping towards him with the eerie mindless delicacy of a snail. He evades it by leaping the remaining distance toward the cobbles fringing the square. Something in the depths burbles in insane disappointment. Kadrys puts more distance between himself and the Plaza of Rusting Steel, turning towards the beams of chilly light that pour from a huge expanse of glass windows. The sign over the door proclaims this to be the Black Dragon Inn. In finer print over the door, Kadrys reads: Bob Muchfoul, Proprietor. The quality of the light inside the Inn makes Kadrys' skin crawl. In its pervasive shadowlessness it seems a loathsome parody of the cool radiance he has all too recently known. To his sight, it is flickering annoyingly, almost too fast to be seen, like a guttering candle, but with a monotonous rapid regularity that irritates his eyes. But inside he catches a glimpse of SunStorm's head towering over the tables. He steels himself, and walks inside. Close to the door is a table at which half a dozen vampires sit, grinning with open displays of fangs as they talk. Kadrys thinks ironically that here, for once in his unlife, he need take no special measures at all to blend into the crowd. As he opens the door, the hostess hurries toward him with a clatter of stiletto heels. "Hi, I'm Strungout. Can I getcha something hot, handsome? A pint of virgin maybe?" she asks him breathlessly, gesturing with a trayful of gorestained mugs she had been collecting from the vampires' table. "Uhh, no thanks..." he mutters absently. He tears his eyes from the contents of her tray, and looks down into an expanse of brazenly displayed cleavage. Hurriedly his eyes track lower, coming to rest on the bulge of her pregnancy, taut against her cheap satin dress. As he looks, the mound of flesh stirs. Obscene shapes writhe briefly beneath her skin. Clearly, the spawn she is carrying is nothing remotely human. She titters at the direction of his gaze. "Heh, that Shub-Niggurath. Watta god _he_ was!" she says, leering at the memory. "Anyway, what can I do ya for? If y'got a sweet tooth, we just got a diabetic into our cellars the other day..." "No thank you..." he says, trying to get past her and find his friends. She darts sideways and stands right before him, grabbing him by the arm. He notices that her eyes have the frantic, pleading glitter of the addict. "Well if I can't interest ya in a glass, perhaps I can tempt ya to sample some ... on tap?" She tilts up her chin, exposing a throat which is covered by a lacework of white scars, old and new, the marks of many cruelly- ripping fangs. Now he knows what she is addicted to: the pleasure of the vampire's kiss. The number and size of the wounds tell him that, were it not that the thing she carries needs to keep her alive until it is born, she would long ago have died of blood loss. The pitiable sight of her wrings his heart. He takes her hand off his arm. She grins widely and tries to offer her wrist to his mouth, but his strength is greater than her desperation. He pats her hand and steps aside. "It is ... kind of you, my lady, but I cannot accept your generosity." She snatches her hand away, snapping angrily at him "Well ya don't have to go all _polite_ on me! You... gentleman!!" She flounces away, banging the tray of mugs on the bar and muttering crossly at Muchfoul. The proprietor nods over to Screamer the bard. Something needs to be done about this gratuitous display of courtesy in his Inn. Screamer plays his instrument, which is shaped vaguely like a lute, but which makes the most earsplittingly loud wails. To Kadrys' ears, well used to the intricacies of bats' speech, the shrieks are exquisitely designed to irritate the hearers, setting their nerves on edge and inciting them to the anger and violence that are obviously favoured behaviours in this place. He closes his ears to the din and wends his way through the tables, homing in on the table where SunStorm sits, looming head and shoulders above the crowd. As he draws closer, the rest of the party sitting at the table is revealed: the younger 'Raelf, Lancos, Valgar... He is surprised to recognise Alita and William the sculptor from the Inn, the one who tried unsuccessfully to dispel the charm. The last person is a redhaired elf in grey whom Kadrys has never seen before. He crosses the last distance separating him from their table. *** The questers are growing more and more edgy and irritable. Locked into this ghastly parody of their favourite Inn, their task seems insurmountable. Clearly they cannot count on the element of surprise, since the Dark Master knew about them from the moment of their arrival. Now, with each of them carrying his personal sigil, they must face up to the fact that he is certainly tracking them. And now they have heard that the Inn is surrounded by packs of starved Carrion Crawlers, so that escape from their current location would be difficult to say the least. Not that they have any idea where they should go from here. 'Raelf seems to be actually enjoying the music, unconsciously nodding to the relentless beat and smiling appreciatively at the more painful distorted shrieks coming from the alleged musician's twisted lute. But at the end of the set, he sighs and leans further over the scratched Formica tabletop. Under the cover of his hunched shoulders, he draws out the amber crystalline amulet from inside his poncho. Holding it concealed, he whispers in 'kani, and furtively points it out the window at a passing Carrion Crawler. "I've started a tracer routine, trying to home in on the force that's guiding the crawler's movements," he explains, "Maybe it'll give us some idea where the Big Bogosity is hanging." After a few moments, a palm-sized sphere of illusion similar to the MageFam's projected display appears, begins to flash. 'Raelf frowns, perplexed. "More mail? Don't tell me the Major Meanie's sending me a nice personal letter by way of reply to that tracer..." He whispers to the crystal amulet, and an intricately detailed (still tiny) image of a postbox on a country lane expands to full size. The postbox opens, and a scroll inside unfolds until it fills the view. The austere, controlled, understated style of the handwriting, however, does not match well with what the questers know of the personality of their foe. The language conveys nothing to any of the watchers, but 'Raelf translates it without difficulty. The Prophecy. When hope has died of age, and even fear grown weak, And empty sterile habit only left, An oracle reveals my future acts to me: Overwhelmed at last by the curse I'd fought so hard and long, Betrayer and murderer, my evil fate would lead to my final death. Words as bitter to my heart as any splintered stake And as fatal. Why live, when horrors lie ahead? But the oracle breaks silence one more time. "You must trust me to do the right thing." I feel a fist of power enclose my body tight. And, for the first time, I surrender myself. Caring naught for her intentions, Willing to welcome even death at the last, I embrace an oblivion more merciful than my foretold future. 'Raelf sighs. This answers a lot of questions that have been troubling him since that night (was it really just yesterday? Time is stretched thin in this place) when he was ordered away from the Inn by his elder self. 'An oracle...' He feels sure he knows who Kadrys is speaking of. He draws breath to explain the source and meaning of the message to the other questers, but in that moment another voice speaks... The Fulfilment. I awaken. Although I thought I'd sleep forevermore. Light. All around me. Clear and pale and shadowless. I steel myself for the familiar wash of pain Which does not come. Light, pure and true, but its touch a cool caress: I raise my face to the heavens, and my eyes do not burn. What is this place? What am I? Am I still... Myself. The fangs still lie behind my lips. Still my old self. But somehow I feel new. And then I hear your voice. Tears rise to my eyes, that ages' sorrows left as dry as dust. No grief could ever move my heart as much as that simple sound. So bright. You shine like the sun, my love. My soul opens itself to embrace the sight of you Although my eyes, my arms must turn away. And then I see you as you were in life. The gentle girl I've clung to in my mind: A love that time has made a distant legend oft repeated, A fragile flame cherished in desperation, A single spark to warm my soul amid its endless night. Now, beyond all hope, the living reality Supplants the memory. The same sweet smile I knew, serene enough to face the darkest fate (And dark in truth must I appear to you, shining one) Yet even that is no longer cause for sorrow. To be with you is to be healed of all my grief and pain. Again we are together, my love, Imariye'! Long after hope was lost, you have returned to smile on me! I rise renewed, I live, I love once more in your sweet care... And now I know there is no end to Life's vast mystery, When sorrows deep as mine can yet be healed in joy, While there can be such glory in the world... (Now I can dream of wonders in my life.) The last, whispered line of the poem fades into silence. 'Raelf whirls in his seat, joining the rest of the party as they stare at a figure standing behind his chair. "...Hello..." Kadrys murmurs at last. Words are so inadequate.