Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn From: dementia@cheshire.oxy.edu (Daniel Steven Reinker) Subject: [blade] interlude: Meshtak awakes! Message-ID: <1993Jan9.011818.17680@cheshire.oxy.edu> Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 01:18:18 GMT (Recap: (It's been a long time, folks!) Meshtak was just setting out to stop Hendrix's planned assassination of Melwis the wise when he and the rest of the blade group were surrounded by guards. Meshtak, spooked at being thought of as an assassin, bolted, and took an arrow in his back while escaping. He collapsed and was taken in by Liera, a young widow, who put Meshtak in a bed and tended his wounds.) Meshtak awoke from his long slumber. His head was feeling a lot clearer, and his first thought was that it was dark. "Night time" he thought to himself. His second thought was to be pleased at his recovery. "Feel a lot better..." he thought to himself. "Wonder how long I've been sleepin'?" His eyes were quickly getting used to the dark - Meshtak didn't have infravision, but his cat heritage gave him excellent night vision. The house was quiet, so he assumed Liera and probably her dog too were both asleep. Good thing for the dog... Meshtak didn't like it, and it clearly didn't like Meshtak. The only noise in the house was a steady drip - drip. "Musta rained..." Meshtak thought to himself, the only explanation he could come up with for the steady dripping. -plip- -plip- "Hmm...kinda weird though...if it rained, I'd think EVERYTHING would be dripping..." -plip- -plip- "but I only hear those drops." -plip- -plip- "Grot, that's annoying...wonder what Liera has set up to make that dripping? Wet laundry? How the denk can she sleep with that noise?" -plip- -plip- -plip- -plip- -plip- "Grot!" Meshtak finally muttered. It was obvious he wouldn't be able to do anything until that dripping was stopped. Hoisting himself out of bed, he felt his sore and atrophied muscles complaining. Still, it felt good to stretch his legs...it was a good kind of pain. -plip- -plip- For some reason, Meshtak was feeling uneasy. Maybe it was the dark house, maybe that continued dripping...all Meshtak knew was that he really wished he had his shift-sword with him. "It's nuthin...just nerves." Meshtak told himself. He gathered his will, and went through the door. The dripping echoed through the room, and at first, Meshtak had a hard time deciding the direction it came from. Finally, he decided it was to the left. He went through the main hallway, and entered what appeared to be the kitchen. A large window let in the moonlight, and silhouetted against the window was some object hanging from the ceiling, dripping onto the floor. "What the grot IS that?" Meshtak muttered, coming forward to take a look at the odd-shaped object. He reached out to touch it, and felt fur. It was the dog. Or rather, the dog's head, suspended over a puddle of blood. Meshtak went numb. "Oh, grot..." he started to say, and then something burst out at him, something with long claws and powerful horse legs, something that screamed at him "You'll pay, Meshtak! You'll pay!" And Meshtak knew he was in very, very, very deep grot. Meshtak the Draga -- "You can't help that. We're all mad here."-The cheshire cat, Alice in WL "A mass hysteria/a megalomania/reveal Dementia/reveal"-Metallica