Hello, Everyone!
Last time, on their way towards the Dry Hand's camp, our heroes stopped in Frinkeltong (Mary’s home town). They weren’t allowed to get in because of the city’s curfew but managed to spend the night in a small room built into the wall. Mary wanted to sneak out and visit her home but was dissuaded by Bruno and Agatha. She didn’t like it. Felt like she was being patronised.
“I have a bad feeling,” Aurum said when the morning came. “Why did the guard say that friends are being ‘deceitful’? Has there been some kind of treachery in the city? And what if there’s a hidden dragon in here, too? There’s one everywhere else, the conspiracy might go deeper than we’ve been thinking.”
Mary felt the same way about a lot of things lately. She used to scoff at Aurum’s suspiciousness, but ever since Tesaya’s betrayal, she’d started doubting everything herself.
However, as much as it scared her, there was nothing to be done about a hidden dragon among Frinkeltong’s citizens. Unless someone had a way of detecting those creatures, they were powerless here. They had enough on their plates already. Racox and Nurvureem had to take the priority here.
They’d be able to put more effort into other important stuff after.
When they managed to acquire horses, it was already around nine in the morning. They rode off north-west, with the fastest speed their rides were capable of. However, the light snowfall made them choose their way more carefully and slowed them down.
About an hour into their journey, they came upon Racox’ campsite from the previous night. Mary recognised it from her Scrying. A crowd of travellers was gathered around it, most of them tense, some even scared. When Mary and the others came closer, they saw why.
There were two bodies strewn on the ground, a male and a female, both horribly shrivelled, as if they had been dried up from the inside. They had been found like this, the gathered people said, about an hour or so ago.
Mary and her friends looked around the scene for any sort of clue about Racox and his involvement in all this. The effect on the two corpses reminded Mary of one of her own necrotic spells. According to ‘Powerful Necromancers Through The Ages’, the Hand of Vecna contained many spells within itself. It wasn’t unthinkable that Blight or something even more powerful would be one of them.
There were strange puddles of yellow liquid around the campsite. They examined one and found that it looked and smelled like pus. Mary shuddered. What kind of a creature could discharge as much pus and still be able to leave the site?
Back to the corpses, people had started walking off one by one. Some faster travellers had been sent to notify Frinkeltong’s authorities about the incident, and most of the rest didn’t want to have anything to do with whatever had happened out here.
Aurum used the moment to ring his Dyrum bell and talk to one of the corpses, and this time Mary stayed for the interrogation. It wasn’t so hard to watch when the body was of a complete stranger.
The woman's corpse breathed in and her eyelids fluttered but didn't open. The mummification had glued them shut. Aurum asked her about what happened and she answered, with a hollow voice that made Mary's skin crawl.
"I didn't see who it was," she said. "It was late in the evening, we had stopped to rest for the night. There was laughter from above, and then there was nothing."
"Did you see anything yellow, like a blanket? Any sound or touch? An unfamiliar smell?"
"No, it was dark. I heard the beating of wings, I heard someone speak, and then it became very cold."
After she’d answered the last of their questions, the corpse just breathed out and slumped down next to the other one.
"He's flying," Bruno murmured, looking at the snowy sky with concern. "He must be fast."
"We shouldn't have stayed the night in Frinkeltong!" Mary said, feeling the claws of guilt clench on her chest. They had abandoned Pamagos' people to deal with Nurvureem, and now they were about to lose Racox, too!
"That long rest was a mistake!” she added. “We should have found a way to keep going!"
"How?” Bruno snapped at her. “Unlike you, we three need to sleep!"
This felt like an attack, and so, Mary defended.
"What do you think I do during the night, twiddle my thumbs?!” she snarled. “While you snore peacefully, I read about what we have to face in the morning! I don’t just stand around doing nothing!"
“Stop it!” Agatha stood between them. “If you two keep bickering, we'll end up like those people over there!” She pointed to the shrivelled travellers. “What's going on between you two, anyway?!”
“Nothing,” Mary said.
“I have no idea,” Bruno said at the same time.
“Oh, come on, really?!" Mary shaped. "You said that I'm incapable of thinking for myself!”
“What?! When did I ever say that?!”
Mary repeated his words exactly as they were, but neither Bruno, not Agatha seemed to see her point.
“Maybe I didn’t explain it right,” Bruno said. “I just said you acted foolishly!”
“Oh, so I’m a fool now!”
“You need to realise that your actions have consequences and…”
The blood pounded in Mary’s ears once again. She opened her mouth to bark out a reply but gritted her teeth instead. What was the point of talking to him anymore? As if he’d actually listen to her.
“Yeah, right,” she said flatly. “All right, Bruno.”
“No, don’t be like that!” Agatha said. “Bruno never wanted to offend you, he just said that you acted hastily and with little thought, not that you’re a fool!”
Mary, who had never, ever, had ‘little’ thought in her life, and even when acting hastily, had a million considerations running inside her mind, smiled bitterly. They weren’t going to understand. Plus, they were now two against one. She couldn’t win this.
“All right, Agatha,” she said just as flatly as before.
“No, we…”
“I said it’s all right. It’s perfect. No need to talk about it anymore.”
“I wonder if the horses would be fast enough to catch up with the Dry Hand,” Aurum said. “Can we find out how far ahead he is already?”
He was looking at the horizon thoughtfully, as if he hadn’t been paying attention to the tense conversation at all. But maybe that was for the best, Mary thought. What if he took Bruno’s side, too?
The dwarf Scried on Racox. The Dry Hand was at least a few hours ahead of them, flying on the yellow cloth-like thing inside some sort of a platform. He was heading straight North, which was a problem. There were no roads in this direction. They had to abandon their horses and continue on eagle-back.
Two and a half hours later, Aurum gave a signal that he was able to see Racox with his sharp eagle eyes. Everyone's teeth were chattering, and Bruno, perhaps colder than everyone else, shivered uncontrollably in his metal armour.
(Mary used her wand to warm everyone up as much as she could, hitting Bruno with her spell more often than anyone else. Being at odds with him didn't mean she didn't care.)
She exchanged a few Messages with Aurum and relayed his observations to the others. At first, he said, Racox was just a dot in the sky. Then, little by little, more details came to view. The yellow thing looked like a large triangular blanket, it was glinting in the daylight. Then, at one point, the eagle gave out a screech.
"It's Diohastos!" Aurum exclaimed in Mary's mind. "Racox has raised his corpse and is riding it!"
Soon, all of them were able to see it. The Gold dragon--or what was left of it--was beating its wings, slowly advancing towards the Dry Hand's destination. Only the skin was left of the once majestic creature – blown up like an empty waterskin, stitched up where the dragon’s limbs had been cut off. The shine of its golden scales was dulled and sad, as if it understood the unnatural nature of what had been done to it.
Racox was perched on top of the dragon skin, inside a wide saddle with high railings which nearly hid him from view. Almost as if he was expecting them, the man looked back. He raised his dry hand and shouted a spell in the wind.
Suddenly, darkness enveloped Mary and made her skin feel like ice. The eagle under her screeched and poofed, forcefully transformed back to its original human form.
All four of them flung towards the ground.
Oh, no! Our heroes are falling to their death. Again. We know that they are capable of saving themselves but what do you think about the state of poor Diohastos? I know we haven’t met him before he died, but it feels so wrong, what Racox has done to him!
See you next time when our fight will finally begin!
Take care and be well!
(Also, here's a link to the Chapter Guide, the Glossaries (Part 1 and Part 2)
and the Map for the series. You're welcome!)
An important disclaimer: Mary Windfiddle's story is my notes from a D&D game turned into a narrative. All the worldbuilding and NPC encounters belong to our DM, and all the actions of the other main characters (Aurum, Bruno and Agatha) belong to my co-players. My contribution to the story is only everything Mary-related (actions, reactions, inner thoughts), as well as the writing itself.