From: kjc@aramis.rutgers.edu (Kelly J. Cooper) Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: [Witts] Part IV of IV Keywords: feedback appreciated Message-ID: Date: 22 Dec 93 17:57:42 GMT [Well, this is the last part of what's been written so far. More will be posted after the holidays... Happy Solstice, all!] "Come Doused in mud Soaked in bleach As I want you to be As a trend As a friend As an old memory" -Nirvana, "Come As You Are" ** --- <<<< ---- >>>> --- ** 'Godsndevils, how do I get _into_ these things?' Siaran asked himself. He was currently levitating over a particularly wide and slimy expanse of softrock, and he had no idea how long the pixie's, er, dust would hold out. Siaran was finding it harder and harder to think happy thoughts. Especially with Danu vanished. Breakfast. It was breakfast that got him into this. Breakfast and his big mouth... He had collected a trayful of the usual horsefeed and milk, and a big cup of char to wash it down, wondering for the hundredth time why they never served anything edible before nightfall. He pulled out a chair absently, scowling into the dishes and wishing vainly for some of his favorite kari, with the lemongrass and _almost_ enough of the tiny green chilis. He was just about to sit down when a strong masculine voice jabbed at him. "WATCH where you're sitting, you clumsy goat!" Siaran startled violently, almost dropping the tray, before spinning round, redfaced, to confront a pixie as he shimmered into visibility, rocking back and forth on the chair and laughing. "Hah, sorry, Searin', but you should see yourself!" "Yair thanks, Wings, scare a guy outta his skin, whydontcha?" Siaran grinned. His voice had an odd drawl to it, a laconic twang that marked him as an out-of-towner. The pixie returned the grin, shrugging with muscled shoulders and butterfly wings. "Well at least I woke you up, didn't I? Got you out of communing with your muesli." "Ahh, I shoulda sat on ya, that'd wipe the smile off y'r face." "Thanks, but you're not my type, I'd rather have Yvonne from Arts class sit on my face," came the riposte. When their chuckling subsided, Wings added, "Besides, I'm already doing something interesting tonight. Danu here'll be with me..." He said, nodding to the woman who was sitting on his other side. Level brown eyes met Siaran's hazel ones, and Danu gave him a quiet, contained smile. Siaran did a wide-eyed doubletake from Danu to Wings, and smiled slowly. Wings snorted. "You, boy, have got a mind like a country cartway." Siaran grinned and finished the saying, "Yair, I know, one-track 'n' filthy. ...So what _are_ y'doing then?" Wings flicked into the air and landed on the table closer to Siaran, who bent his head closer instinctively. "After Metaphysics lab we're goin' out on a VAD. Y'know, Vanish Any Direction?" He waited for Siaran's impatient nod and picked up a chunk of strawberry off the apprentices' cereal, being careful not to drip it on himself. "Danu-doll overheard Cat and the Witt'zEnders talkin' about a new section just opened up off the old Research basement, goes off into some tunnels. Besides, it's gotta be better than re-re-reading those damned mathemagical tables again. I'm gonna get soft from all this sitting." He turned an appraising blue gaze on Siaran. "You know what I mean, you hotshot. Y'in?" Siaran looked from Wings to Danu, bridling. "Didja need to ask? _Course_ I'm in! Whaddya want me to bring? ...Besides a light, that is..." He grinned, as his hair flickered for the briefest moment with flame. He added quickly, defensively, "Yehyeh, I know, showy, but that way I don't hafta concentrate on it." And then they had settled down to discuss the serious preparations... ...And now he'd wound up here. Siaran wrinkled his nose in distaste as he pushed off the slippery rock wall, propelling himself forward after Wings' rapidly retreating blue glimmer. Siaran did his best to stop himself from brooding, especially about Wings and his dust: the thoughts were taking far too much off his height for comfort. He looked down. 'Urrgh, that stuff looks disgusting, brown sticky muck. Even worse than the stables back home.' His revulsion knocked a crucial few extra feet off his elevation, and at that moment, an arm thrust up without warning through the squelching mass. It clamped itself on his ankle and hauled him down, down, into the depths. He screamed as the glutinous mud closed over his head. Only darkness and the fading echoes of his cry remained to mark his passing. Darkness. Choking. Falling, dragged aside, rising dizzily. Moving with insane speed. Frozen into total stillness. All of these at once. None of them at all. Gravity going mad. His sense of balance howling, in a rising crescendo with his terror. His mind, plunging into panic. His body, sweating flame. Then, he felt blessed solidity beneath him, heard a muffled sound of pain, swiftly contained. It took his clouding mind a moment to work out that the sound was not his. Crackling, stiffening softrock tightened its grip all around him. He clawed frantically at his head, scraped drying stony lumps off his face, blindly turned eyes flecked with fading gold toward the source of the other cry. A woman. A stranger, Danu beyond her. The woman was holding her hand as if it was hurt. Who _was_ she? Danu, moving toward her. "Cat, you all right?" "Just scorched... Surprised me before I got my wards up..." came the terse reply. '...Cat. The journeyman. The head Wit of all the Witz'Enders. Ohshit.' The gold died, became simple specks of light brown in wide, contrite eyes. He stared at the lithe, black-clad woman whose hand was being tended by Danu. "I... uh, 'm'sorry..." Siaran muttered, scraping more of the clammy muck off and staggering hastily to his feet. Cat stared at him with hard, unfriendly green eyes, but after a long, cold moment the edge faded somewhat from her gaze. "That's all right. You weren't to know it was me," she muttered, clearly abiding a little grudgingly by her instinctive sense of fairness. Siaran nodded, vastly relieved, then suddenly looked behind him, to the wall of softrock, gouged by his recent arrival. "Fargin'ell! Wings! He's still back there!" Cat grinned a little sharply. "Then _you'd_ better go back after him. He's your partner, not mine." Siaran eyed the slimy expanse, about as enthusiastically as a high priest of Issek contemplating the nastiest of the Low City cuddlecribs. Then he glanced back at Cat's expression, and then at Danu, and found that his mind was already made up... With a *squelch* a man's head, haloed with flame where hair should have been, popped into view in the middle of the softrock. Like a blue comet, Wings streaked over toward him. "Searin'! What happened? What in hell d'you think you're doing? Going swimming? Here, lemme get ya out of that crap..." The pixie flared his wings wide and started to shimmer in mid-air. Siaran took a deep, aggrieved breath. "NO more dust! Look, I don't wanna get outta this. N'fact, you hafta come down with me. Danu's on the other side of this muck." He held out a hand covered with sticky brown slime, grinning a little evilly at Wings' dubious expression. "Hey, if I c'n put up with your powdered gym shorts, the least you could do is go f'r a quick mudbath. C'mon," He said, reaching a little farther. Wings' thick black brows lowered ominously over his blue eyes. "If this is a practical joke, I'll skewer you..." he muttered, as he plonked himself down to sit on Siaran's grimy palm, allowed him to close his fingers over his lap. Siaran grinned. "To quote _some_body; Thanks, but you're not my type!" They drew a deep breath, then vanished below the surface. The softrock closed behind them with a sullen *glurp*, and the whims of chance decided to solidify the entire expanse into truerock less than three minutes later. ** --- <<<< ---- >>>> --- ** "Well this is a motley crew," muttered Cat. "All we'd need to make it perfect is Tahd," added Siaran. "Who?" Wings made a face and answered, "His geeky roommate." "You don't mean that guy with the big ears who doesn't bathe, do you?" "That's the one..." Cat turned to Siaran, "You have my sincere condolences." The group was sitting around on the stone floor, some cleaning softrock goo off themselves, others trying to to get to know each other. They'd become a group, at least for this adventure. It didn't seem to matter that three of them were not part of the Witt's Enders. Nothing like digging in softrock to gel a team. ** --- <<<< ---- >>>> --- ** The Witts' End Gang is: Archibald "Archi" Halidon (Carl Fogelin, fogelinc@pt.cyanamid.com) Carroll Jarvek (Colin Roald, colin@callisto.pas.rochester.edu) Chrainein "Raine" Hydor (Liralen Li, li@inigo.data-io.com) Danu (Kelly J. Cooper, kjc@cs.rutgers.edu) Kyle "Wings" Dorshan (Steve Hutchison, hutch@hutch.intel.com) Siaran (Andrea Evans, Andrea.Evans@orb.nashua.nh.us) Tahd Musgrave (Penny Hutchison, penny@agora.rain.com) Theodora "Cat" Rediche (Carl Fogelin, fogelinc@pt.cyanamid.com) Tuek Esmar (Alfvaen, aaron@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca) The characters above are copyright 1993 by their authors. Permission to archive this story is granted for non-commercial purposes. All other rights are reserved.