Difference between revisions of "Amanita (Chapter 20)"

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Amanita (Act III)#Chapter 20

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-Cain was really excited about the eyeball -- he was showing around it to everyone who'd look.  I know he's a pretty enthusiastic guy, but I didn't see why an eye was worth getting so worked up over it, even if it was a Zakarumite relic.  Hell, you'd think being a Zakarumite relic would make it a bad thing.  But if it made the old guy happy, that couldn't be bad.  If it made everybody on the docks happy, that would be good... which was probably why the old fart was making such a big noise about it.  I smiled, and treated myself to a cigar.  My good deed for the day was done.
-It was sliding towards sundown, but I didn't feel like quitting yet.  Back in the jungle, I found a couple more streets branching off the river.  All the smaller streets must have been eaten by the trees.  I couldn't find a trace of anything, not even paving stones.  The larger avenue ended in another big Zakarumite complex, home to more spiders.  These guys were a bit smaller than the others, and didn't keep maggots.  In all this time, I never found bolts.  It wasn't that they rotted away -- there were plenty of arrows.  Hratli sold bolts, so they know what crossbows are.  Maybe Kurast archers just don't like them.
-Beyond a pool with bubbles coming up from the bottom, the ground sloped down and turned marshy.  Tree men were out in force.  Poison worked slowly on them, but it worked, and they didn't move very fast.  I could walk away and wait for them to die.  I only had trouble with them once.  They'd chased (if I can use that word) me onto a patch of land surrounded by water on three sides.  They were almost dead, so I wasn't too worried until I saw something white coming up through the water behind me.  The white thing rolled over, and an arm broke the skin of the water.  Then the face came, a swollen blotch of pulp without eyes or mouth, a mass of dough with human hair on it.  Zombies... and even nastier than usual.
-I ran through the trees, letting one or two get their shots in before they died.  Who says I'm not generous?  They collapsed while I was picking my ass up out of the mud, a trade-off I'll always be happy to accept.  The zombies were as vulnerable to poison as ever, but I think being water-logged made them slower than usual.  I had all the time in the world to look around, search for goodies, even explore ahead while they wandered around dying.  One had a necklace, a chain of green stones half-embedded in the area under the head.  I had to cut the head off to retrieve it.  How these bodies had survived, I don't know.  Maybe the ones who died in the river got preserved somehow.
-Another batch of Flayers was guarding another side avenue.  The shaman got his first.  Even then, he still had time to raise a couple of his friends.  I could really get to hate those guys.  Down the avenue, I found about a dozen wicker baskets.  Stone buildings had fallen, whole streets were gone and forgotten, but wicker survived.  Unless the Flayers were using them, and I don't know what they would want with baskets.  They don't carry much stuff, and if the way they act in combat means anything, they don't store food.  They're meat eaters and then some.  Confuse them enough, and they'll try to eat each other on the spot.
-There were no buildings at the end of the avenue, just a broad hill surrounded by marshy ponds.  On top of the hill, temptingly out in the open, was a shiny gold strongbox.  Between it and me, Flayers, tree men, and zombies.  Of course I had to take them out: I had to know what was in the box.  First I sowed confusion in what passed for their minds, and took down the trees and zombies.  I wanted the Shamans, but there were too many bodies in the way to get a clear shot.  At least the little buggers could only raise their own kind.  Once the big boys were resting comfortably, I could get the shamans.  Getting them to stand still and die was the hard part.  An odd thing happened while I was hitting them mentally: two of the three shamans started attacking their own, and got taken down by their minions.  Most of the time, followers turn on their masters.  Could this be jealousy?  Maybe I can use that, at least to stop them from resurrecting their underlings.
-When all the Flayers were finally dead, I approached the chest.  I'd seen the big green thing with tentacles in the pond, so I knew what it was that was making bubbles.  I did not expect two giant frogs to jump out.  The tentacle thing should be big enough to eat frogs like that.  They jumped me quick, and spit blobs of poison that knocked me on my ass again.  Then the tentacles came up, and spat more poison.  Ambushes are great, but to make them work you need to kill fast.  Poison is not the right tool.  I poisoned them right back, drank an antidote, and checked out the strongbox.  No saint bits here.
-I struggled through the marshes for a while, picking off slow-moving enemies at my leisure.  When it got dark, I could hunt the moving trees by ear, to say nothing about the wet noises the local zombies made.  After the ground started to rise again, I started seeing fires glowing through the trees.  If that meant civilization, it was a little late.  My boots couldn't get any more mud in them anyway.  The thought was short-lived.  As soon as I got within sight of the torch, the Flayers came.  They were still kind of cute, in their little flowered sarongs.  If they weren't trying to kill and eat me, I think I could like them.
-Sad to say, they were trying to kill and eat me.  A rough dozen with knives and spears led the assault, with blow-gunners and shamans behind to whittle me down.  Fast, organized, and suicidally brave -- the Iron Wolves would have real problems with these guys.  As for me... a little examination has told me they're hungry, jealous, and made up of several clans who violently hate each other.  It only takes a little knocking around to start the infighting, and the shamans are the easiest of all.  Age doesn't always bring wisdom.
-They tried all kinds of things to deal with me.  One group of three found a lance, and charged me like it was a battering ram.  Another time, a shaman tried wearing a chainmail jerkin.  It might have been a good idea if it didn't hang completely over the guy carrying him.  He couldn't see where he was going, so he tripped and brought them both down.  That started what might have been a real knock-down fight inside that mail, until I intervened.  Sometimes, you need a third party to resolve interpersonal issues.  The cleverest use of resources had to be a pair of blow-gunners running around inside a breastplate, firing through the arm holes.  Only one could shoot at a time, and they couldn't move very fast, but their mobile fortress worked fine until I caught them and kicked them into the river.
-A side avenue led to a small lake with a little building in the middle.  A Flayer-sized bridge led out to it, and on the shore was a waypoint.  It was almost midnight.  Back on the docks, I went to visit Alkor before I turned in.  He had stuff to gamble, and was about the only one still awake this late.  I burned some cash into the local economy, such as it was, and got a rare ring out of it, which was actually quite decent.
-"Not bad, not bad at all," I said, admiring my new ring.  "I even like the color better than my old one.  I've spent a lot of time gambling.  It's hard to get good stuff."
-"I know that, I have spent much time letting fools gamble their money away.  In gratitude for the luck I have brought you, I expect you will wish to compensate me somehow."
-"Oh, sure.  I'll do you the honor of letting you buy my old ring."
-His face wrinkled like a prune, eyes almost disappearing.  "As though you need the money!  You are the sort of girl who likes her drinking and gambling, yes?"
-"Yep.  But not together."
-"Most excellent!  As you are done with gambling, I present you with this potion, brewed from the ashes you brought to me today.  It disgusts me to display generosity to someone as ungrateful as you, so drink it now before I am sick in it."
-"Those were ashes?"
-"Indeed!  Most special ashes.  Drink, it will do you much good."
-"I'm not in the habit of drinking things crazy old alchemists give me.  What's in it?"
-"A small amount of life, distilled and vitalized.  Drink, and do not worry!  It will eventually be good for you, and you have all night to recover anyways."
-You can't argue with logic like that.  The brew clawed its way down like bad whiskey and lit a fire in my gut I knew I'd need to sleep off before I did anything else.  That night was not a good one.  There was never any pain, and I didn't feel feverish, but I got so hot, I knocked a hole in the floor and dunked myself naked into the river just to get some relief.  Natalya even sensed it, and came by to see what was up.  I told her it was probably swamp fever and sent her away.
-I finally fell asleep in the water, my head resting on the hut's floor.  When I came to, it was almost noon.  I was wrinkly as an old woman, covered toe to tit with leech bites, and felt a lot more lively than I had any right to.  Also ravenous.  After a huge breakfast of fried frog, rice, and bananas, I went back by waypoint.
-The little building led down into a wet, swampy pit, with water oozing out of the walls and puddled on the floor.  There were bones on the floor of the entrance room, stripped clean and gnawed by sharp teeth, but no clue about the building.  A small tunnel led away; I crept down to another room.  There were Flayers there, with a shaman and a group of mummies.  I was surprised any amount of preservatives could win over Kurast's climate, but there they were, shambling about, making soft squelches as their innards sloshed around.  At least they weren't Horadric mummies.  Two kinds of resurrectors would be annoying as hell.
-The room looked like it might be a temple, with a columned hall and two symmetrical alcoves.  The next room was more of a mystery.  Part of the floor had collapsed and filled with water, wiping out any clues.  While I was looking around next to the pool of water, I heard a click.  I ducked, and a jar of poison vapors smashed against the wall behind me.  The gas was old and weak, not a problem in itself, but the noise was.  A tentacle monster reared up out of the pool and knocked me back into a corner.  Then, quicker than anything, my newest least-favorite monster scuttled in: skeletal Flayers.
-Being unburdened by flesh, they were fast but not very strong.  That wasn't the problem.  I found out what the problem was when they surrounded me.  When one dies, it explodes, and that explosion hurts a lot.  Normally they'd be far away from me, but these guys were right in my face and not going anywhere.  By the time the first went ka-boom, I'd poisoned them all and couldn't get out.  The trap kept pelting me with bottles, the tentacle kept spitting, and the Flayer skeletons were going off like fireworks, one after the other.  I don't know how many potions I drank just to stay alive.  But there were only six skeletons, and eventually they all went off.  The tentacle stopped spitting; I think it looked nervous.  I shot it just as it tried to dive, and watched the water turn red.
-A deeper level of the pit had misty ghosts, a kind I've heard are found in swamps.  There were tombs here and there, but I didn't think this place was a temple.  For one thing, there were too many traps, and I don't think Flayers are up to building mechanical traps.  A pity the traps only targeted me and anything I'd confused enough to attack its friends.  The deepest level convinced me this was not a temple.  It was full of tombs and traps, enough to convince me no one was meant to have free access here.  This had to be some rich family's mausoleum, or maybe a bunch of rich families.  The amount of loot was enough to convince me they were rich, anyway.
-The jungle was still knee-deep in Flayers.  Any deeper, and they'd have to start stacking.  Fallen logs actually made good defensive points, particularly over water.  They wouldn't try to jump over water, so on a bridge, they'd all stack up behind the one or two actually on the bridge.  I could stun the whole bunch, then any behind them.  Once they started getting confused and trying to eat each other, I had almost complete chaos.  Sowing chaos is a lot of fun if you have the power to do it right.  Finally, I found what had to be the center of the new Flayer empire: a tiny village.  No, literally: the huts were about five feet high.  Human remains in various states of butchery and rot were lying around here and there.  It surprised me that Flayers would leave anything.  Maybe since the jungle started growing, it's been a race between their teeth and creeping decay, and decay has been winning.
-There weren't many Flayers in the village.  They'd probably all come out to take me on, and there weren't many left to guard the old homestead.  Just this once, I decided to go with a battle cry: "Greetings, tiny hut people!  It is time for your weekly beating!"  Then I swept the village out.  It didn't take long.  The last one, hiding inside a hut, had a bronze knife that looked like a Taan sacrificial dagger.  With a satisfied "see you next Thursday," I took it.
-The dagger was the Gidbinn, to no one's surprise, least of all mine.  I handed it over to Ormus and watched.  Taan rituals are not for the faint of stomach.  There's a reason Ormus has those scars all over his chest and arms.  I don't know any other mage clan that will do things like that, but it does summon up energy.  After he was done, the Gidbinn was left floating on a pedestal next to the pyramid.  All the sorcerers looked relieved.  I couldn't see any difference, but I don't consider that necessarily a bad thing.
-It seemed like everything was falling into place.  First, the eyeball, which cheered everybody up.  Then I stumbled across the Gidbinn, exactly what we needed, exactly when we needed it.  I don't believe in saints or fate, but it did feel like something was working for me behind the scenes, trying to make things easy for me.  Thing is, I don't like getting help from unseen hands, they always have their own agenda.  And I don't like it when things look easy.  I don't like it at all.

Difference between revisions of "Amanita (Chapter 20)"

Latest revision as of 15:49, 13 February 2017

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