Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn From: hutch@ibeam.intel.com (Steve Hutchison) Subject: [MG] Waste of Time Message-ID: Date: Tue, 18 May 1993 07:38:38 GMT Rook snarled and jackrabbit-punched. The troll gasped and let go of her shoulder while it grabbed at its wounded pride. "Keep your felchin' hands to yourself, gutterscut." She snatched the long thin dagger from her bootsheath, and wove a pattern in the air with the gleaming tip. A human who had been recipient of such a blow would still be writhing on the floor. The troll, recovering from the crippling blow with the astounding speed of its unnatural race, still didn't enjoy the sensation. It blinked, wet-eyed, and focussed on the weaving tip of the dagger. Its large hairy nostrils flared, the stink of trollbane anointing the dagger was unpleasant in the extreme. "Skrud sorry. Skrud leave now." The troll backed away, tripping slightly over the bodies of her erstwhile companions. It jumped up and fled down the hall. There was a crunching sound, the pit trap she had discovered and led her party around, and then there was a scream as the troll fell further into it, then the grating of stone sliding on stone as the trap reset itself. "Damn. All dead." She carefully searched each of the four bodies for signs of life, then for the pittance they were carrying. They all had the same agreement, and she knew they would have done the same for her. Three gold apiece, a couple magic keys, a compass arrow, and the last two healing potions. Five days down here, in the catacombs under the city of Argentwood, and all they'd found of the supposed lost treasure of Kings was the emptied chests and looted tombs that the thrice-damned trolls had moved into. She spat, then went to search the bodies of the dead trolls and their slave warriors. The dim light of the lichens on the tunnel walls was too faint to obscure the fading heat-signatures of the corpses, at least, for someone with her half-elven eyes. She searched efficiently, but the trolls were poorer than the gutter-dwarves back home in Generica. She sighed, flipped a coin, and went off in the direction she'd chosen as "heads". "Hello, lovely lady." She whirled. The shadows were thick here, but she had years of experience at seeing things that lurked therein, and besides that, her dark-sight should have shown him lurking there, but the bright slit of sunlight had spoiled it. She took an on-guard stance. Whoever this was, he was speaking an old dialect of Elvish, with a lilt that reminded her unpleasantly of some time spent in the Islands. "Oh, no, Rook, you don't need to be afraid of me. We're old friends." "Who the hell are you, and why can't I see you?" "You don't remember me? I'm hurt." He stepped into the light, fading into view: a middling-tall elf with golden skin and coppery hair, a blue stone bound onto his brow, twin swords at his sides. She had no recollection of ever seeing him before. "Who are you?" "I'm the one who saved your sorry ass from dissolving into a pretty pink cloud of bad karma, Rook my darling." He smiled, a predatory sort of a smile that made her nervous in the pit of her stomach. "'Raelf? Don't make me laugh, unseelie boy." She smiled, that had scored, from the scowl on his face. "Now is that any way to talk? You know how us wizards are, you can't ever tell from one minute to the next just who we'll be, now can you?" "Prove it." "Ah. Ask Scorpion about why his tattoo doesn't fade now." "Shit. You're real." "Of course I'm real. Now, how about we get out of this stinking sewer, my clothes are going to be ruined by the damp." "I'm headed for the rendezvous point - Blink will be waiting for me there." "Ah yes, your old cuddle-crib boy who never knows where he really is." "That's really rude, 'Raelf." "Oh, you can call me Orim for now. I don't want anyone making the wrong kind of connections yet." "Orim. If you say so." He took her hand, and made some sort of a gesture, and a hole opened in the air before them. He pulled her through, and on the other side were the rooms that she and Blink were sharing. Blink was lying on the bed asleep with a faint smile on his lips. He didn't wake up when she touched him. "What did you do to him?" "Oh, nothing at all really. He's having a happy little dream, you know, like when he was on the 'stix back in Generica." "You gave him that shit? You son of a b..." She drew her smallest most potent poison dart from a secret pocket in her boot cuff, concealing the motion behind her pack as she bent to put it on the floor. She snapped the dart at him with a snarl. the dart shattered against his skin. He smiled again, and wiped the venom off with a silken kerchief. "Don't do that again, darling. I'd have to kill you, and there wouldn't be even the slightest chance that you could get away, Mother-spawned luck or not." He gave a sort of shrug, and the kerchief vanished in a small gout of flame. "Self-righteous bastard. You know that stuff will kill him." "Not a bastard, Rook my pet. Besides, your dear boy hasn't taken any real drug, I'm not a fool enough to waste his lovely talents that way. He only took an illusion of the drug. But you can feel happy, he's dreaming of you. Why did you turn him away from your bed?" "I didn't. He caught me with Nolrimm." "Oh, you had to try out the improved Hell's Angel? Was his extra endowment all that enticing? Or did you want someone who could tell you what to do? Must be very depressing for you, being with a man who can't tell you he loves you. Or has he worked out a signal for that?" "You are vile today. I don't know what I ever saw to respect in you." She sat on the bed next to Blink and began stroking his face, letting her hair swing forward to hide her face. "Oh come now, you're hardly one to talk. A power like yours and all you can think of to do with it is to gamble and to steal from people who can ill afford your attentions. 'Wasters' indeed." She looked around for something else to talk about. This was too much like what she'd been thinking herself lately. "Where's Scorpion and Nolrimm? They were supposed to be here." "Oh, I imagine they'll show up in a few minutes. But I had to talk with you first. I want to make an offer to your little crew, and whatever it is that Scorpion thinks, you're still the one who has the final say on anything you people do." "What makes you think I'd want to do anything with you?" "Why, money, of course. But consider what I said before, about your group wasting your powers on foolish things. I have a goal that would make you not just rich, but give you security, control, land, title, whatever you want. All you have to do is help." He smiled insincerely. "You want to go conquering," she accused. "In a manner of speaking. Raoh the Conqueror was just killed, but his realm still exists, and the beaurocracy he built over twenty years is in place. It's a ripe little plum for the right people to pick." He reached out and plucked imaginary fruit from out of the air, and handed it to Rook. "I'll have to think about it." She looked at the thing he'd handed her. It was a deep purple gemstone and it vanished with a *pop*. "Don't take too long. Scorpion and Nolrimm are on the stairs." "All right. I'll help you." "Good."