Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
From: dementia@cheshire.oxy.edu (Daniel Steven Reinker)
Subject: [blade] Shadow-walking
Message-ID: <1993Feb16.084849.7207@cheshire.oxy.edu>
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1993 08:48:49 GMT

     Meshtak felt his feet splooch into whatever mud-like substance
was at the bottom of the tunnel, and blinked in the darkness of
whereever they were. Blade stood off to the side, looking down each
tunnel, trying to decide which way to go. It was dark; some light
came through from the hole above, but not much.
     Fortunately, Meshtak was prepared for this. He pulled a cylinder
from his pouch and flicked the switch on its side. A strange unearthly
light spilled from the tip of the cylinder. Another thing he had
acquired during his time in Nooyork. He flicked it around and wasn't
very satisfied at how much light it provided; even worse was the slime
and grunge that the little bit of light revealed. "What a disgusting
place." Meshtak muttered.
     Meshtak could hear shouting and activity above, and knew they
didn't have any time to waste. Besides, Blade had apparently decided
on a path and was striding down the tunnel purposefully. Meshtak ran
up to walk beside him.
     "Blade!" he asked. "Do you know which way to go? 'Cause I got no
idea." Blade only muttered something unintelligible and walked on.
Meshtak shrugged. Well, any direction was as good as another. He
settled into a pace beside Blade.

     In the darkness ahead, a being materialized. "Aghad!" he swore.
"Gods danged DARK in here..." Shifter looked up and down the tunnel,
and then remembered to use his infra-vision. "Look for heat." he reminded
himself, and was astonished at the detail he could make out. "Hmm." he
muttered. "Pech eyes good for something after all."
     Shifter hadn't always been a pech; in fact, he had only been one
for about a week. At one time he had been a wizard, powerful and getting
more powerful. He had come to Generica long before, from a smaller town
to the east, in order to make a name for himself and maybe get a position
on the council of the Mage's guild. Unfortunately, Shifter had been
an experimenter, and one day he had made the mistake of trying out a 
new version of the polymorph self spell. It had backfired, and now he
found himself polymorphing regularly, from one random form to another.
Magic was lost to him; sometimes he found himself with no hands to make
the casting motions, and sometimes no mouth to speak the spell. And
sometimes both. He had huddled in his house for awhile, trying to deal
with the curse that had befallen him, stricken with the knowledge that
without his magic, he had no way to turn himself back.
    Before long, however, he started to realize something: his human
body had been pretty poorly constructed. As he shifted from form to
form, he realized that each form he obtained gave him powers far
greater, usually, than a humans. He also began to realize his money
was running out. At the time he made this realization, he had been a
quickling, and he had found no trouble going out and liberating gold
with his incredible speed.
    Thus the Shifter was born. Known primarily as a mercenary and
when necessary a thief, he took advantage of his forms to make money,
and used the money to get by during the occasional times he found
himself in an unusually useless or inconvenient form.
    Shifter was now a pech, and under the hire of the small creature
calling himself Hendrix. Hendrix was trying to make himself a
criminal empire in low town, and was hiring a lot of the local
talent to aid in his efforts. Shifter was one of the first to join
on, as Hendrix had offered to pay him a set salary, no matter what
form Shifter was in. No way he would pass up a deal like that.
    Now Hendrix had sent him on a mission. Take care of Blade and
the draga, he had said. Fortunately, Shifted had been in just the
form.
    The rocks talked. Shifter was having trouble getting used to
this particular part of being a pech. They were always muttering to
him, in their particular rock language, talking about rock things.
    "Do you see them?" he muttered.
    The walls replied, whispering "yes-yes. soft-walker sharp-walker
touch near, below-air."
    "Easy money." nodded Shifter. No matter what form he was in, he
was always the same. Foremost a mercenary, and a lover of easy money.
    Shifter touched the wall, and felt a bond with the rocks. It was
a simple matter to feel where Meshtak and Blade walked, and to
drop the floor out from under them. Shifter heard a shout in the
distance, and then two thumps.
    "Where are they now?" he asked the walls.
    "With rough-slime-slider-walkers. They dance." it replied.
    Shifter smiled, and touched the jewel around his neck that
would take him back to Hendrix.

    Meshtak had been surprised when the floor had dribbled away beneath
them, but had still managed to land on his feet in the watery mud of
the tunnel beneath them. Blade had fallen like a rock and smashed a
nice sized crater in the floor; however, he appeared to be just fine,
and was already standing.
    "Where are we?" asked Meshtak. "What just happened?" Meshtak was
starting to feel somewhat claustrophobic, a result of growing up
on the plains. He recovered his flashlight, which had fortunately
survived, and flickered it around.
    "Oh, grot." he said, as his flashlight flickered on the scaled
hides of a room of hungry T-crocs. BIG hungry t-crocs.
    Meshtak clutched his shiftsword and prepared for a fight.

Meshtak the Draga
pretty much lost to him 
     


-- 
"You can't help that. We're all mad here."-The cheshire cat, Alice in WL
I speak for no one but myself.
"A mass hysteria/a megalomania/reveal Dementia/reveal"-Metallica