From alt.pub.dragons-inn Wed Sep 14 08:47:27 1994 Xref: netcom.com alt.pub.dragons-inn:7680 Path: netcom.com!netcomsv!decwrl!src.dec.com!crl.dec.com!jac.zko.dec.com!leggy.zk3.dec.com!orb!not-for-mail From: spider@Orb.Nashua.NH.US (Spider Boardman) Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: [HouseStorming] Queen of Hearts Date: 13 Sep 1994 19:42:09 -0400 Organization: Duchy of Wabesylvan Obspauk Lines: 274 Message-ID: <355dch$cr7@orb.nashua.nh.us> References: <33bin6$305e@lamar.ColoState.EDU> <33e43o$hau@orb.nashua.nh.us> <1994Apr6.064811.73767@yuma> <33dr1b$os4@orb.nashua.nh.us> <33llua$34mc@lamar.ColoState.EDU> NNTP-Posting-Host: orb.nashua.nh.us ADMIN: The cast, characters, and techie crew of the [HouseStorming] Thread: Alan Smith ..........Palandun Lintesul Spider Boardman .........Selna Chris Meadows ..............Andrea, Sheryl and Jay. Andrea Evans ......Kadrys Penny Hutchison ............Leah and Errol Stephen Hutchison ......Miro Alfvaen ..............Eowyn/Teonyl Wolvie ..............Lance and Blaze Invaluable help: Colin Sebastian Roald Heather Loresch Kelly J. Cooper Liralen Li All characters are property of their respective authors, and this story is a group effort, copyright 1994 by Spider Boardman, Stephen Hutchison, Penny Hutchison, Andrea Evans, and Aaron V. (Alfvaen) Humphrey. Permission is granted for the distribution of this story on the usual alt-net channels and for archival but all other rights, including repost, are reserved to the authors. Background: Just after the storm Andrea and Sheryl bought a house which proved to be loaded with traps. So they gathered together the rest of the team to help them discover the secret to their new home. They split up into two teams after leaving the ballroom. While the upstairs team was dealing with the master bedroom, the group's mapper (Palandun Lintesul) was kidnapped by Raykor. This picks up after the just after the traps have been deactivated at the end of "Learning Xperience". === === === === As the team turned to their accompanying dragonet, ready to tell Palandun that the traps were now off, they were suddenly flooded with images of moving statues, a mad scramble for maps, a smoke screen, and being waved off by the mapper. As one, they started running for the ballroom. No one bothered to use the ladder, but instead chose various methods of jumping or dropping over the railing. When they approached the ballroom they saw (and smelled) the dissipating remains of smoke. Making a dash through the now much diminished smokescreen they encountered the remains of a small battle. The gear that the team had left behind was strewn about the room, along with the maps, the furniture, and several medium-sized blocks of stone, most often making statuary hands or feet. Across what was the top of the table lay a deeply scored block of granite which arched and flexed at times. There were several granite limbs, each trying to make its own way to the large block. "Still alive after being cut up like that?" Errol noted. "How ... curious." Kadrys shot him a sideways glance and smiled whitely. "No blood has been spilled in here," he noted, after a quick visual inspection of the room, "so Palandun may still be alive, somewhere." "There's probably some kind of amulet or runes on the statue," Selna said, shoving a crawling half-of-a-hand back into the corner with the end of her staff. "Look for anything strange. We'll need to know how to take them out of commission. I'll be trying to search out where Palandun's been taken." The others nodded, and spread out through the room. Teonyl jumped almost straight up as a statue-arm wriggled suddenly from under the table, flopping towards the body. She saw the thing roll itself back against the quartered torso, severed stump matching severed arm. A flash of green light left a strangely patterned after-image on her eyes, and the arm was re-attached as if it had never been cut off. "I saw some kind of runes, just then," Teonyl said, blinking to clear her eyes. "I don't know what kind." Kadrys, meanwhile, had found the head. It rolled blank eyes at him and gnashed its teeth. "What's this?" he said, gleefully. "Errol, could you come here?" Errol had climbed up on top of the hip-abdomen section of the statue. As he looked up to answer, the sculpture twitched and then tried to roll out from under him. He balanced easily against the sudden motion, and blinked in surprise. "Hold still, you nasty excuse for a caryatid," he sneered and stomped, hard and quickly, on the statue's groin. A fracture developed and grew under the small man's foot, and the stone torso twitched and subsided. "Oh, that's interesting," Kadrys said. "When you hurt it, the face reacted." Errol smiled nastily in reply. "What was it you wanted me to look at, my dear?" Kadrys twined his fingers around the carved stone hair and lifted the massive head as if it weighed no more than a small dog. "Look here at the mouth. I think there's something under the tongue." Errol lightly hopped down and peered into the carving. "I can't see anything. Eowyn," he ordered, "Hurt it for me, if you would be so kind." Teonyl nodded and looked around. There was a stone finger crawling towards the hand. She picked up one of the larger chunks of rock and brought it down sharply on the finger, frowning in distaste as the rock tried to wriggle out of her grasp. Errol, meantime, stared intently at the face. It screamed soundlessly, and with a lightning motion, he struck with a long thin dagger that he pulled out of nowhere. There was a flash of green light, and the moving stones stopped. "Ahh," he breathed, "we found it." On the end of his dagger, a glass and wire beetle was impaled, wriggling its legs impotently. Teonyl moved over to where they were standing. "Both kinds, then, runes _and_ amulet." "Hmm." Selna's voice came from the doorway. Her eyes were closed. "He managed to cut apart one statue, but ... ooh!" she winced, "... two distracted him; the third got him from behind. There was a mage already in the house -- I can `see' his magic triggering the statues. "Once they had him, they activated a teleportation spell, that leads -- mmph, how to get past his scry-proofing... Hey!" she yelped, suddenly. Her eyes flew open. "That was personal!" "Selna!" Errol exclaimed, as she started to reach behind her. "What?" She finished the motion, and a greatsword appeared in her left hand. She drew it from its scabbard. Kadrys winced and backed away from her. "What do you make of this beetle?" Errol held the impaled bug out towards her, dagger-point first. As he did so, he moved and stepped between Kadrys and the greatsword. "Disgusting," she said. "There's a human ghost trapped in there." She touched the bug with the sword and it stopped moving, a faint and irrational feeling of liberation washing through the room. "I located the place where Palandun was taken. The mage who has been hiding here is trying to find out more about me than I want him to know, and I'm having to concentrate to keep his probe from telling him anything." She looked at Kadrys and Errol, and frowned. "There is a power in this sword that I can use to free the ghosts from the statues. It normally only works on contact, but I can make it extend to arm's reach. If any of you has died and been brought back, though, it might be bad for you to be in range. Kadrys? Errol?" Both nodded wordlessly. Kadrys gave a close-lipped, mirthless grin, which Errol echoed. "Eowyn?" Teonyl was taken aback. What kind of people _are_ these? she asked herself, not for the first time. "I've--uh--never been actually killed," she said. "Good," Selna said. "I'll need you to be bait, if you please." "Wonderful," Teonyl muttered under her breath. At that, Errol looked up at Kadrys and murmured, "_Not_ a member of the club, my pet." There was a swirling plummet into cold, numbing blackness with faint, whirling stars, as the four of them disappeared from the ballroom. ==== ==== ==== ==== They appeared twenty feet from one end of the room which now held the statues. Selna ran towards one end, where a statue was poised. Kadrys and Errol made for the other. Teonyl looked around, and saw that there were two statues flanking a door in the far end of the room. Which were moving, towards the two intruders. Behind her, Teonyl heard a sort of "snksnk" noise and a CRASH! rollroll. She glanced back. Selna was standing in a swordsman's stance, on the far side of the statue, and on the ground was the statue's head, with a surprised expression on the face. The neck stump and the head were both burning with a faint blue-white fire matching the flickering blaze that ran up Selna's greatsword. A hissing, mocking laughter came from the far end of the room -- Teonyl saw that Kadrys had joined in a kind of martial dance with the statue, dodging aside as it lunged for him. She was surprised to see the black-clad man grip the statue's outstretched arm and blur into a spin, which sent the statue sprawling into the centre of the room. Meanwhile Errol was blowing a wreath of that foul stinking cigarette smoke that he favoured into the face of the other statue. It ignored him and he looked momentarily nonplussed. The statue on the floor began to rise, and Teonyl ran forward, slashing at it with her sword. It swiped at her feet, and with surprising speed got up off the floor and lunged at her. She back-pedalled fast, whirling and running past Selna, who was waiting in a half-crouch at the end of the room. SnkSnk WHUMP crashrollroll. Two down. Again at the neck. Teonyl marvelled at the precision of the cut even as she half-ran up the wall to turn around. The third statue had smashed a granite fist into Errol, but all that was there was his trench coat. He stood, unfazed, in the far corner, with a nasty looking bright-black dagger drawn and ready. Meanwhile Kadrys was continuing his 'catch-me' game with the statue, playing it like a matador plays the bull. As it looked away, Errol dashed out from the corner, and stuck the dagger in its back. It whirled, and Teonyl saw that there were three daggers already in place, rock crumbling around them. "Over here, stupid," she shouted. The statue looked up and something ugly seemed to glare out of its eyes. She made a truly insulting gesture with her left hand, and it snarled without sound and rushed her. She dodged back at full speed, came up hard against the wall, and SnkSNK WHAM thud. The last head was off the last statue. "That was sword practice for now," Selna observed, and Teonyl slid down the wall, gasping for breath. She was getting out of shape; after she got out of this she'd have to see about getting more regular workouts. Selna sheathed her sword. Errol was casually shrugging himself back into his trench coat, and Kadrys was examining the daggers he had stuck in the back of the statues. She recognised the door from her earlier 'trace' -- Palandun was on the other side. She sent a tentative probe questing past the wards on the door. Something strange was happening there. She smiled and helped Teonyl to her feet, checking her for injuries. A moment later the door opened and Miro looked out. "What kept you?" Selna asked brightly, as she finished getting her hair back in place. Then, seeing that the bemused Bismanian was free again, she bent her will to following the traces of the spell that was still trying to lock onto her. She smiled tightly -- she had found the new location of the kidnapping mage. She wasted a moment trying to point him out to Miro before realising that he was trying to point out the villain's location to her. "Flank maneuver?" she said. Miro nodded, grabbed Palandun's hand, on one side, his sword on the other, and yanked the Bismanian Sideways from where they were, through a hole in the Air. "Show-off," someone muttered, and Selna collected the group together. "Be ready for anything," she said, and again they vanished.