Post by Dead Greyhawk on Aug 13, 2008 21:03:44 GMT -5
The Javan River runs slowly past as the Company decides what to do. Their boat missing and their enemies raft destroyed, long hours of labor lie before them in constructing a new raft or boat. While Dell is an able carpenter, it is Winthrop who was apprenticed as a sailor and has the best mind for the building of rafts and boats.
Antonus turns on Al, the destroyer of the orcs' raft, and begins to berate him about his destructive tendencies. The first fraying of nerves leads to much grumbling and recriminating. "Perhaps we should head down the Javan to Castle Crag," suggests Perrin, shouting over the fractious Company. "We can get reinforcements there. Perhaps Otto is back and can track our enemies for us."
"We are not leaving my precious books in the hands of some unknown swamp thing!" squawks Antonus. Much to his surprise, Raven agrees with him.
"No one steals from the Company and lives," thunders Raven, as Dell squirms in the background. "Dell will make Pfiffwin fade from sight, and we will send him down the river towards Castle Crag for reinforcements. The rest of us will follow the now cold trail into the swamp."
"Cold trail?" asks Dell. "It's a stream heading up into the Rushmoors. How hard is that to track?" With a few gestures and mutters, Dell causes Pfiffwin to disappear. The squelching of small feet in the mud fades as Pfiffwin begins his long hike south towards Castle Crag.
While Dell and Raven glare at each other, Adrienne again calls on her goddess, Lydia, to make the water seem like solid sand. The Company finds themselves, at least those who cannot fly, lifted slightly out of the mud and onto the top of the Javan River. A short jog brings them across the Javan and down towards where their boat was driven ashore.
After several minutes of searching, Antonus finds the stream where he saw the disturbance in the mud. "See!" says Dell. "No need for a tracker." Dell looks around, a look of false puzzlement on his face. "I wonder which way to go," he says, mockingly. "Maybe...away from the river? Guess even I can track them!" Raven turns several shades of purple trying to master his tongue, and, in the end, he waves his arm, beckoning the others on, and hikes into the swamp.
The side of the stream provides an easy marker to follow until, as streams are wont to do, it splits and splits again. The Company pushes on, following the deepest of the streams at all choices, and they get deeper into the Rushmoors. Here, deep in the swamp, things buzz, whir, and croak. Swarms of insects bedevil the Company. Even Raven, who remembers the retreat through the Hool Marshes, is shocked by the size and vehemence of the bugs.
As the Company stumbles onward into the swamp, what appeared to have been a copse of flattened trees resolves itself into a group of giant lizards. They bellow their hunger at the Company and begin to slide forward towards them. Jasper roars back at them, trying to convince the giant lizards that attacking the Company is a bad idea. "Not food. Sharp pointy death!" bellows Jasper, emphasizing how bad an idea it is to try to eat the Company.
The giant lizards aren't convinced and begin to clamber across the mire towards the Company. "Enough noise," says Raven, drawing his bow and aiming at the largest two lizards. With careful fire, he drives arrows into the eyes and heads of the two largest lizards, turning them into leathery pincushions. The rest of the giant lizards suddenly pause in their approach.
"Not food!" roars Jasper. This time, the lizards are convinced, and they scuttle back off into the swamp, avoiding the Company.
The Rushmoor is difficult to hike through, and the waning sun drives the Company on to find a suitable campsite. A hillock rising up out of the swamp, still damp but not muddy, is the best that can be found. The Company sets up camp there for the night.
The night passes miserably, filled with hordes of many types of biting insects, both flying and crawling. On the last watch, Raven and Adrienne hear the sound of creatures stirring for the morning light. Great croaking frogs and strange reptilian roars begin to echo through the dimness. A faint light glows brighter. "That's not right," says Adrienne, getting Raven's attention. "The sunrise should be over there, not where the light is, and the croaking is getting louder."
Raven hurriedly rouses the rest of the Company as gigantic frogs begin hopping into the campsite, leaping and landing on the Company. Hovering above the battle, growing brighter during the conflict, are three glowing orbs of white light. As each of the giant frogs fall to the Company's attacks, the orbs grow brighter and brighter. "Will-o-wisps!" shouts Antonus.
"Wills-o-wisps!" retorts Dell. "Haven't I taught you anything?" A shaft sent by Raven at the glowing orbs does it no harm but provokes a painful bolt of lightning in response. The ease with which the glowing orbs electrify the Company, and the difficulty even Raven, their doughtiest warrior, has in hitting the glowing orb, sends shivers through the Company. Antonus, hoping to mislead the strange swamp creatures, summons lights that dance and appear to fade off into the distance, as if one of the glowing orbs' brethren had come and fled. None of the glowing orbs, flee and, if possible, the bolts of lightning they send strike harder and faster, as if Antonus's efforts to mislead them have irritated them instead.
"Protective circles," cries Dell. "They are otherplanar and will be repulsed." Antonus, having learned something from Dell's teaching, is already so protected, and Dell and Perrin both summon their own protective circles. Adrienne, her piousness sufficient to protect those near her, summons an even greater circle by calling on her goddess. "Everyone else get near Adrienne," points out Dell, as the wills-o-wisp immediately lose interest in the protected members of the Company. Those unable to summon a protective circle quickly run over to the seeress to hide under the shield of her goddess. The Company eyes the approaching sunrise and hopes that their circles of protection will last until the dawn. The wills-o-wisp, unable to approach their prey, eventually lose interest and float away.
After such an experience, no one wants to go back to sleep, and the Company fretfully waits for the sun to rise. In the pre-dawn light, Jasper talks with a night heron skulking through the rushes. The bird, large enough to hold a thought in its head, speaks expansively about the abundant fishing in the Rushmoors and the vast swarms of frogs that are easy snacks. After some prodding, the night heron tells Jasper about place in the Rushmoors where the birds aren't safe. The water tastes like dirt and steel, and birds that linger in the area disappear. This sounds to Jasper like a nasty place, but Raven alights on it as a reasonable goal. The Company heads that way.
The slog through the swamp is more difficult than it was the day before. The ground is more treacherous, and slime-filled mud and muck grab at the Company every step. Wavering into sight against the reed-filled horizon is a hut, a hut on stilts. "Is that what we're looking for?" asks a mud-spattered Dell. Dell looks at Raven, and Raven looks at Jasper. Jasper looks around for something with which to talk. The frogs, bountiful in the area, croak about the comfortable breeding pools, but the red-winged blackbirds, nervous and flighty, say that the hut is filled with death. When Jasper relays this to the others, the decision is clearly made.
The Company heads for the hut.
The hut itself sits over the middle of a wide pond. A small landbridge juts out to the hut, but the hut sits over the pond proper, not the bridge. The hut is small and mean, barely enough space for a single room inside, but a thin trickle of smoke rises up from the middle of the hut's roof. Cobbled together from random pieces of wood, branches, and bone, the hut looks almost unworldly. A ramshackle ladder, held together by gut and rope, leads up from the landbridge to an opening in the side of the hut, an opening covered by a blanket or cloth.
The ladder is too clear an invitation to ignore, and the Company warily approaches the hut. The sound of movement inside the hut echoes outside. With Raven covering the entrance, Jasper begins to climb the ladder. It rattles and clatters against the side of the hut. Before Jasper reaches the entryway, a gnarled and withered hand reaches out and draws the blanket aside. An elderly woman in skirt and kerchief peers down into Jasper's surprised face. "Come to visit Mother Gird, have you?" she cackles. "Luckily for you I'm making a nice stew. Everyone should be able to have a cup! Come in! Come in!"
The others are taken aback by the offer, but eventually everyone but Al and Dell agree to enter the hut. The hut is as small within as without, and the Company is jammed in among the knickknacks, beast skulls, and hides on the shelves and walls. A large cabinet is along one wall, and a sizable iron pot burbles and roils on a fire in the middle of the hut, next to a square trapdoor in the floor. The stew in the pot smells horrible, and the occasional fish head and frame boils up to the surface. Mother Gird and the Company exchange small talk about her life in the swamp and how she fends for herself in her aged state.
Raven notices that the hut lacks a bed and asks Mother Gird where she sleeps. Mother Gird seems somewhat flummoxed by the question. She pauses for a moment, stirring the pot and nodding to herself. Then, with gleaming eyes, she answers Raven's question. "With the fishes, of course, where you'll soon be!" she cackles as she flips over the large iron pot, dumping boiling hot liquid all over the floor of the hut and the Company's feet.
The searing liquid scalds those whose feet are not heavily armored, Jasper and Antonus taking the brunt of the pain, as it flows over and around the Company's footware. Croaking and squealing, Mother Gird begins to change in shape, gaining several feet in height and turning a deep green color. Her form grows more hideous, and she lashes out at Perrin with iron-hard talons that extrude from her fingers. The Company rises to the attack and finds themselves unable to move! The fish stew has glued their boots to the floor!
Beneath the hut, the croaking and squealing of Mother Gird is clearly heard by Al and Dell and by the bog goblins that boil up out of the water to attack them. Not daunted by the overwhelming numbers, Al pulls out his axe and starts hacking the bog goblins to pieces while Dell unleashes his magics. The bog goblins begin to fall under the axe of the doughty dwarven war and the magical bolts of the half-elven mage, but then their reinforcements arrive. Strange warty hag beasts rise up out of the water and attack.
Female in shape but horrifying in mien, their gaze is enough to shock the heart. One look causes Dell's heart to flutter in a non-pleasant way, but Al seems immune to their evil charms. The watery hags are weak of frame, and Al cleaves one into chunks. While Dell avoids their gaze, the remaining hags glare their evil-eyes at Al. Al chortles, then gasps, stiffens, and keels over. Dell continues to slay the bog goblins, but the warty hags grab at Al drag him into the lake.
In the hut, the space is too constrained to fire a longbow, and Mother Gird carefully places herself out of easy reach while she whittles on Perrin. Raven and Jasper, bearers of longer weapons, turn that ploy against her, smashing her with bastard sword and halberd, while Perrin futilely tries to smite her with his mace. Perrin's blows tend to bounce from her apparently iron skin, but Raven and Jasper's have greater effect. Mother Gird seems to be taking the worse of it, as Perrin's highly enchanted armor serves to deflect her claws. Rather than continuing this futile fight, she grabs her kerchief from her head and sets it spinning. As the winds begin to whip around in the hut, Mother Gird drops through the trapdoor into the lake. The winds form into a whirlwind, irritatingly tossing debris and knickknacks into the Company, but more importantly blowing the roof and one of the walls off the hut.
Antonus cringes as the wall with the cabinet on it flies off the hut and into the pond. The cabinet's doors pop open from the force of the blow and papers begin sailing out of the cabinet into the pond. Antonus can clearly see that the cabinet has a bookshelf packed with books within it, and some of the books look like his! "Please, please, don't let those papers be from my spellbook!" he chants to himself. The wall of the hut acts like a raft, and the cabinet floats in the pond. "I've got to get out of here," thinks Antonus, enchanting himself to flight. "Bobwin, get us up and out!" Antonus disappears from sight, reappearing hovering in the air dozens of feet above. The rest of the Company takes his departure to heart and begins smashing the boards beneath their feet to get free.
Raven tumbles through the floor of the hut into the pond and flounders about. "Raven, Raven!" shouts Dell, trying to get his attention while still struggling with the swarming bog goblins. "Warty hags dragged Al off to their underwater lair! They blasted him to death with their eyes! I guess it makes you hungry!" Raven nods his understanding and dives for Al. Much to his dismay, he finds two mergoyles in the water blocking his path! His bastard sword is not the best weapon for an underwater battle and fights against them with little effect. A strange darkness begins to flow up through the water, almost as if smoke was rising through the pond, and wraps itself around Raven and the mergoyles, hindering vision.
Back on the surface of the pond, Antonus and Mother Gird grabs for the books while Perrin and Jasper try to fight her, hindered by the boards stuck to their feet. Antonus stuffs the books into a bag as quickly as he can, hoping to take advantage of Mother Gird's distraction. Antonus tries to fly away with the books, but Mother Gird's reach is deceptively long. She stretches out one clawed hand and grabs hold of the book bag, her strong arms reeling Antonus in. Antonus screeches in fright, dropping the books he has just recovered, and yells, "Take the books, just don't hurt me!"
Mother Gird seems to take this to heart, letting the mage fly away up into the air. "Hah! Now I'll show her," Antonus thinks, as he blasts her first with magical bolts and then with lightning. "Never let a mage get distance from you!" The magical bolts seems to dissipate on Mother Gird's flesh and the lightning simply ceases to exist after approaching her, much to Antonus's dismay. Apparently the battle must be won by Jasper and Perrin and their weapons, not his magic.
Jasper, finally having removed the boards from his feet and recalling a similar unfortunate event in the Pomarj, swings his halberd at Mother Gird in a great arc. His wet hands, the water of the pond, and the uncertain footing caused by the wood remnants on his feet cause him to slip and slide and lose the halberd from his grasp. The great axe flies through the air at Mother Gird, and she snatches it from the air as it sails by. "Thank you," she snarls, and she then smashes Jasper in the head with it. Jasper collapses, pole axed. A much surprised Perrin quickly suffers a similar fate.
Elsewhere in the pond, Raven surfaces for air, having slain the mergoyles in the murky water at considerable cost, and then continues to swim on, searching for Al and the hags. The smoke-like substance boils out of an underwater cavern visible at the bottom of the pond, and Raven heads for it. Once in the cave, the trail of blood and gore is plainly visible, even to a surface dweller, and Raven swims after it. The cave twists and turns, small bog goblin bodies fleeing by Raven in the murk, until finally it opens into a larger, clearer cavern. There, the hags crouch over Al's body, their claws stripping long strands of flesh from Al's thighs. Already, the thighbones are clearly visible, the long muscles having been ravaged by the ravenous hags. The sight is shocking, and the evil-eye of the hags dangerous to Raven, but his rage keeps his heart beating. With quick blows, the hags are dispatched and Al's corpse recovered.
Mother Gird stirs herself out of the water to close with Dell, who is finishing off the last of the bog goblins. Out of spells, Antonus dithers overhead. Then, he pulls out the wand that shoots a paralysis beam, the wand that destroyed, at least to Antonus, a demon. He aims down at Mother Gird, angling behind the fell creature, and triggers the wand. A blue beam of light arcs downward and flows over Mother Gird. She stops moving. "Haha! I have defeated her in single combat!" crows Antonus. With a sloshing sound, Raven steps out of the water, dragging the bone-jutting corpse of Al. He looks over at the faintly glowing Mother Gird, places two hands on his bastard sword, and hacks her to death.
Perrin and Jasper are both dragged up out of the muck and examined. Fortunately, the halberd's blows, while strong, were less damaging than the rending claws of Mother Gird, and Perrin can be restored to consciousness. His prayers are enough to restore Jasper, but clearly not Al.
"What's in the bag?" asks Dell.
"Our books," says Antonus, "except for one of Pfiffwin's. That's the paper floating on the lake. It looks like some duplicates as well. She must have made an exact copy of two of my books and one of Pfiffwin's." Dell's eye's flash at the sound of magical tomes. The Company searches through the remains of Mother Gird's hut, finding some giant-sized gold coins with the mark of the frost giants on them, as well as an assortment of coins from Geoff and Sterich. Most of the Company's belongings are hidden among the scattered knickknacks, except for Al's horn. After some food and rest, Raven swims back into the underwater caverns to search for Al's horn there. Indeed, the bog goblins have the horn in the caverns, and each of the warty hags has a collection of gemstones.
"The tomes are magical and adopt the image of that closest to them," explains Dell, pointing at the shifting books. "I can separate them out eventually, but we shouldn't open them until we're in a more secure environment." Antonus looks crestfallen, but Raven merely grunts his agreement.
"What next?" asks Antonus.
"We should plan to return to Castle Crag to reunite with Otto, Winthrop, and the others, and then undertake my holy quest, like some of you agreed to do after we got our stuff back," exhorts Perrin. "We could even pick up Samantha along the way, if she is interested." Raven turns to Perrin and fixes him with a gimlet eye.
"We're returning to Castle Crag so that Al can regrow a body. Nobody touch his body or his ring. After that, we'll talk," states Raven. "But next, next we burn this hut to the ground."
Antonus turns on Al, the destroyer of the orcs' raft, and begins to berate him about his destructive tendencies. The first fraying of nerves leads to much grumbling and recriminating. "Perhaps we should head down the Javan to Castle Crag," suggests Perrin, shouting over the fractious Company. "We can get reinforcements there. Perhaps Otto is back and can track our enemies for us."
"We are not leaving my precious books in the hands of some unknown swamp thing!" squawks Antonus. Much to his surprise, Raven agrees with him.
"No one steals from the Company and lives," thunders Raven, as Dell squirms in the background. "Dell will make Pfiffwin fade from sight, and we will send him down the river towards Castle Crag for reinforcements. The rest of us will follow the now cold trail into the swamp."
"Cold trail?" asks Dell. "It's a stream heading up into the Rushmoors. How hard is that to track?" With a few gestures and mutters, Dell causes Pfiffwin to disappear. The squelching of small feet in the mud fades as Pfiffwin begins his long hike south towards Castle Crag.
While Dell and Raven glare at each other, Adrienne again calls on her goddess, Lydia, to make the water seem like solid sand. The Company finds themselves, at least those who cannot fly, lifted slightly out of the mud and onto the top of the Javan River. A short jog brings them across the Javan and down towards where their boat was driven ashore.
After several minutes of searching, Antonus finds the stream where he saw the disturbance in the mud. "See!" says Dell. "No need for a tracker." Dell looks around, a look of false puzzlement on his face. "I wonder which way to go," he says, mockingly. "Maybe...away from the river? Guess even I can track them!" Raven turns several shades of purple trying to master his tongue, and, in the end, he waves his arm, beckoning the others on, and hikes into the swamp.
The side of the stream provides an easy marker to follow until, as streams are wont to do, it splits and splits again. The Company pushes on, following the deepest of the streams at all choices, and they get deeper into the Rushmoors. Here, deep in the swamp, things buzz, whir, and croak. Swarms of insects bedevil the Company. Even Raven, who remembers the retreat through the Hool Marshes, is shocked by the size and vehemence of the bugs.
As the Company stumbles onward into the swamp, what appeared to have been a copse of flattened trees resolves itself into a group of giant lizards. They bellow their hunger at the Company and begin to slide forward towards them. Jasper roars back at them, trying to convince the giant lizards that attacking the Company is a bad idea. "Not food. Sharp pointy death!" bellows Jasper, emphasizing how bad an idea it is to try to eat the Company.
The giant lizards aren't convinced and begin to clamber across the mire towards the Company. "Enough noise," says Raven, drawing his bow and aiming at the largest two lizards. With careful fire, he drives arrows into the eyes and heads of the two largest lizards, turning them into leathery pincushions. The rest of the giant lizards suddenly pause in their approach.
"Not food!" roars Jasper. This time, the lizards are convinced, and they scuttle back off into the swamp, avoiding the Company.
The Rushmoor is difficult to hike through, and the waning sun drives the Company on to find a suitable campsite. A hillock rising up out of the swamp, still damp but not muddy, is the best that can be found. The Company sets up camp there for the night.
The night passes miserably, filled with hordes of many types of biting insects, both flying and crawling. On the last watch, Raven and Adrienne hear the sound of creatures stirring for the morning light. Great croaking frogs and strange reptilian roars begin to echo through the dimness. A faint light glows brighter. "That's not right," says Adrienne, getting Raven's attention. "The sunrise should be over there, not where the light is, and the croaking is getting louder."
Raven hurriedly rouses the rest of the Company as gigantic frogs begin hopping into the campsite, leaping and landing on the Company. Hovering above the battle, growing brighter during the conflict, are three glowing orbs of white light. As each of the giant frogs fall to the Company's attacks, the orbs grow brighter and brighter. "Will-o-wisps!" shouts Antonus.
"Wills-o-wisps!" retorts Dell. "Haven't I taught you anything?" A shaft sent by Raven at the glowing orbs does it no harm but provokes a painful bolt of lightning in response. The ease with which the glowing orbs electrify the Company, and the difficulty even Raven, their doughtiest warrior, has in hitting the glowing orb, sends shivers through the Company. Antonus, hoping to mislead the strange swamp creatures, summons lights that dance and appear to fade off into the distance, as if one of the glowing orbs' brethren had come and fled. None of the glowing orbs, flee and, if possible, the bolts of lightning they send strike harder and faster, as if Antonus's efforts to mislead them have irritated them instead.
"Protective circles," cries Dell. "They are otherplanar and will be repulsed." Antonus, having learned something from Dell's teaching, is already so protected, and Dell and Perrin both summon their own protective circles. Adrienne, her piousness sufficient to protect those near her, summons an even greater circle by calling on her goddess. "Everyone else get near Adrienne," points out Dell, as the wills-o-wisp immediately lose interest in the protected members of the Company. Those unable to summon a protective circle quickly run over to the seeress to hide under the shield of her goddess. The Company eyes the approaching sunrise and hopes that their circles of protection will last until the dawn. The wills-o-wisp, unable to approach their prey, eventually lose interest and float away.
After such an experience, no one wants to go back to sleep, and the Company fretfully waits for the sun to rise. In the pre-dawn light, Jasper talks with a night heron skulking through the rushes. The bird, large enough to hold a thought in its head, speaks expansively about the abundant fishing in the Rushmoors and the vast swarms of frogs that are easy snacks. After some prodding, the night heron tells Jasper about place in the Rushmoors where the birds aren't safe. The water tastes like dirt and steel, and birds that linger in the area disappear. This sounds to Jasper like a nasty place, but Raven alights on it as a reasonable goal. The Company heads that way.
The slog through the swamp is more difficult than it was the day before. The ground is more treacherous, and slime-filled mud and muck grab at the Company every step. Wavering into sight against the reed-filled horizon is a hut, a hut on stilts. "Is that what we're looking for?" asks a mud-spattered Dell. Dell looks at Raven, and Raven looks at Jasper. Jasper looks around for something with which to talk. The frogs, bountiful in the area, croak about the comfortable breeding pools, but the red-winged blackbirds, nervous and flighty, say that the hut is filled with death. When Jasper relays this to the others, the decision is clearly made.
The Company heads for the hut.
The hut itself sits over the middle of a wide pond. A small landbridge juts out to the hut, but the hut sits over the pond proper, not the bridge. The hut is small and mean, barely enough space for a single room inside, but a thin trickle of smoke rises up from the middle of the hut's roof. Cobbled together from random pieces of wood, branches, and bone, the hut looks almost unworldly. A ramshackle ladder, held together by gut and rope, leads up from the landbridge to an opening in the side of the hut, an opening covered by a blanket or cloth.
The ladder is too clear an invitation to ignore, and the Company warily approaches the hut. The sound of movement inside the hut echoes outside. With Raven covering the entrance, Jasper begins to climb the ladder. It rattles and clatters against the side of the hut. Before Jasper reaches the entryway, a gnarled and withered hand reaches out and draws the blanket aside. An elderly woman in skirt and kerchief peers down into Jasper's surprised face. "Come to visit Mother Gird, have you?" she cackles. "Luckily for you I'm making a nice stew. Everyone should be able to have a cup! Come in! Come in!"
The others are taken aback by the offer, but eventually everyone but Al and Dell agree to enter the hut. The hut is as small within as without, and the Company is jammed in among the knickknacks, beast skulls, and hides on the shelves and walls. A large cabinet is along one wall, and a sizable iron pot burbles and roils on a fire in the middle of the hut, next to a square trapdoor in the floor. The stew in the pot smells horrible, and the occasional fish head and frame boils up to the surface. Mother Gird and the Company exchange small talk about her life in the swamp and how she fends for herself in her aged state.
Raven notices that the hut lacks a bed and asks Mother Gird where she sleeps. Mother Gird seems somewhat flummoxed by the question. She pauses for a moment, stirring the pot and nodding to herself. Then, with gleaming eyes, she answers Raven's question. "With the fishes, of course, where you'll soon be!" she cackles as she flips over the large iron pot, dumping boiling hot liquid all over the floor of the hut and the Company's feet.
The searing liquid scalds those whose feet are not heavily armored, Jasper and Antonus taking the brunt of the pain, as it flows over and around the Company's footware. Croaking and squealing, Mother Gird begins to change in shape, gaining several feet in height and turning a deep green color. Her form grows more hideous, and she lashes out at Perrin with iron-hard talons that extrude from her fingers. The Company rises to the attack and finds themselves unable to move! The fish stew has glued their boots to the floor!
Beneath the hut, the croaking and squealing of Mother Gird is clearly heard by Al and Dell and by the bog goblins that boil up out of the water to attack them. Not daunted by the overwhelming numbers, Al pulls out his axe and starts hacking the bog goblins to pieces while Dell unleashes his magics. The bog goblins begin to fall under the axe of the doughty dwarven war and the magical bolts of the half-elven mage, but then their reinforcements arrive. Strange warty hag beasts rise up out of the water and attack.
Female in shape but horrifying in mien, their gaze is enough to shock the heart. One look causes Dell's heart to flutter in a non-pleasant way, but Al seems immune to their evil charms. The watery hags are weak of frame, and Al cleaves one into chunks. While Dell avoids their gaze, the remaining hags glare their evil-eyes at Al. Al chortles, then gasps, stiffens, and keels over. Dell continues to slay the bog goblins, but the warty hags grab at Al drag him into the lake.
In the hut, the space is too constrained to fire a longbow, and Mother Gird carefully places herself out of easy reach while she whittles on Perrin. Raven and Jasper, bearers of longer weapons, turn that ploy against her, smashing her with bastard sword and halberd, while Perrin futilely tries to smite her with his mace. Perrin's blows tend to bounce from her apparently iron skin, but Raven and Jasper's have greater effect. Mother Gird seems to be taking the worse of it, as Perrin's highly enchanted armor serves to deflect her claws. Rather than continuing this futile fight, she grabs her kerchief from her head and sets it spinning. As the winds begin to whip around in the hut, Mother Gird drops through the trapdoor into the lake. The winds form into a whirlwind, irritatingly tossing debris and knickknacks into the Company, but more importantly blowing the roof and one of the walls off the hut.
Antonus cringes as the wall with the cabinet on it flies off the hut and into the pond. The cabinet's doors pop open from the force of the blow and papers begin sailing out of the cabinet into the pond. Antonus can clearly see that the cabinet has a bookshelf packed with books within it, and some of the books look like his! "Please, please, don't let those papers be from my spellbook!" he chants to himself. The wall of the hut acts like a raft, and the cabinet floats in the pond. "I've got to get out of here," thinks Antonus, enchanting himself to flight. "Bobwin, get us up and out!" Antonus disappears from sight, reappearing hovering in the air dozens of feet above. The rest of the Company takes his departure to heart and begins smashing the boards beneath their feet to get free.
Raven tumbles through the floor of the hut into the pond and flounders about. "Raven, Raven!" shouts Dell, trying to get his attention while still struggling with the swarming bog goblins. "Warty hags dragged Al off to their underwater lair! They blasted him to death with their eyes! I guess it makes you hungry!" Raven nods his understanding and dives for Al. Much to his dismay, he finds two mergoyles in the water blocking his path! His bastard sword is not the best weapon for an underwater battle and fights against them with little effect. A strange darkness begins to flow up through the water, almost as if smoke was rising through the pond, and wraps itself around Raven and the mergoyles, hindering vision.
Back on the surface of the pond, Antonus and Mother Gird grabs for the books while Perrin and Jasper try to fight her, hindered by the boards stuck to their feet. Antonus stuffs the books into a bag as quickly as he can, hoping to take advantage of Mother Gird's distraction. Antonus tries to fly away with the books, but Mother Gird's reach is deceptively long. She stretches out one clawed hand and grabs hold of the book bag, her strong arms reeling Antonus in. Antonus screeches in fright, dropping the books he has just recovered, and yells, "Take the books, just don't hurt me!"
Mother Gird seems to take this to heart, letting the mage fly away up into the air. "Hah! Now I'll show her," Antonus thinks, as he blasts her first with magical bolts and then with lightning. "Never let a mage get distance from you!" The magical bolts seems to dissipate on Mother Gird's flesh and the lightning simply ceases to exist after approaching her, much to Antonus's dismay. Apparently the battle must be won by Jasper and Perrin and their weapons, not his magic.
Jasper, finally having removed the boards from his feet and recalling a similar unfortunate event in the Pomarj, swings his halberd at Mother Gird in a great arc. His wet hands, the water of the pond, and the uncertain footing caused by the wood remnants on his feet cause him to slip and slide and lose the halberd from his grasp. The great axe flies through the air at Mother Gird, and she snatches it from the air as it sails by. "Thank you," she snarls, and she then smashes Jasper in the head with it. Jasper collapses, pole axed. A much surprised Perrin quickly suffers a similar fate.
Elsewhere in the pond, Raven surfaces for air, having slain the mergoyles in the murky water at considerable cost, and then continues to swim on, searching for Al and the hags. The smoke-like substance boils out of an underwater cavern visible at the bottom of the pond, and Raven heads for it. Once in the cave, the trail of blood and gore is plainly visible, even to a surface dweller, and Raven swims after it. The cave twists and turns, small bog goblin bodies fleeing by Raven in the murk, until finally it opens into a larger, clearer cavern. There, the hags crouch over Al's body, their claws stripping long strands of flesh from Al's thighs. Already, the thighbones are clearly visible, the long muscles having been ravaged by the ravenous hags. The sight is shocking, and the evil-eye of the hags dangerous to Raven, but his rage keeps his heart beating. With quick blows, the hags are dispatched and Al's corpse recovered.
Mother Gird stirs herself out of the water to close with Dell, who is finishing off the last of the bog goblins. Out of spells, Antonus dithers overhead. Then, he pulls out the wand that shoots a paralysis beam, the wand that destroyed, at least to Antonus, a demon. He aims down at Mother Gird, angling behind the fell creature, and triggers the wand. A blue beam of light arcs downward and flows over Mother Gird. She stops moving. "Haha! I have defeated her in single combat!" crows Antonus. With a sloshing sound, Raven steps out of the water, dragging the bone-jutting corpse of Al. He looks over at the faintly glowing Mother Gird, places two hands on his bastard sword, and hacks her to death.
Perrin and Jasper are both dragged up out of the muck and examined. Fortunately, the halberd's blows, while strong, were less damaging than the rending claws of Mother Gird, and Perrin can be restored to consciousness. His prayers are enough to restore Jasper, but clearly not Al.
"What's in the bag?" asks Dell.
"Our books," says Antonus, "except for one of Pfiffwin's. That's the paper floating on the lake. It looks like some duplicates as well. She must have made an exact copy of two of my books and one of Pfiffwin's." Dell's eye's flash at the sound of magical tomes. The Company searches through the remains of Mother Gird's hut, finding some giant-sized gold coins with the mark of the frost giants on them, as well as an assortment of coins from Geoff and Sterich. Most of the Company's belongings are hidden among the scattered knickknacks, except for Al's horn. After some food and rest, Raven swims back into the underwater caverns to search for Al's horn there. Indeed, the bog goblins have the horn in the caverns, and each of the warty hags has a collection of gemstones.
"The tomes are magical and adopt the image of that closest to them," explains Dell, pointing at the shifting books. "I can separate them out eventually, but we shouldn't open them until we're in a more secure environment." Antonus looks crestfallen, but Raven merely grunts his agreement.
"What next?" asks Antonus.
"We should plan to return to Castle Crag to reunite with Otto, Winthrop, and the others, and then undertake my holy quest, like some of you agreed to do after we got our stuff back," exhorts Perrin. "We could even pick up Samantha along the way, if she is interested." Raven turns to Perrin and fixes him with a gimlet eye.
"We're returning to Castle Crag so that Al can regrow a body. Nobody touch his body or his ring. After that, we'll talk," states Raven. "But next, next we burn this hut to the ground."
