[puffyn]

---- Arcoscephale, Turn 56 ----

Todd got us hopelessly lost, of course. We must have passed that particular circle of jagged rocks three times before he sat down, glummly, by the side of the river. He muttered unhappily about the opacity of prophet-blood and the disagreeable tendancy for sheepskin to decay after only a few thousand years. He had not been moping for more than an hour when our scout ran into camp, breathless at the news that a large army was approaching. I had my sword out and was mustering the troops when a second scout arrived with the happy news that the army was ours. And sure enough, there was an excessively tall man leading the way, talking amiably with Tushar

I was relieved: so Tushar had prevailed upon Rod and his army to head south. ("But there is still our ancestral time-share by the lake to free," Rod had protested feebly, before Tushar hit upon the magic word "apocalypse" to lure him here.) The brothers firbolg had a joyous reunion: the only ones who can find any happiness in the grim succession of ever-bloodier battles. I asked Tushar what news he had heard while in the north.

"It's not good, Pandokos," he said. "R'lyeh had only recently overrun the lands on the other side of the great river, and there were many refugees in miserable hovels on this side. They all wanted another mountain range or two between them and the terror they had left."

I told him what I had learned of the battles far to the east, where Maude was fighting back huge R'lyehan armies, how Man was surely going to fall soon, and then the full force would be brought to bear on us. There were reports of attacks throughout Arcoscephale -- crazed soldiers of R'lyeh rising from nowhere and attacking, though the local patrols easily killed them all. And we knew there were large armies just south of us.

"Oh, I ran into someone who knew you," said Tushar. "Name of Seleucus, sound familiar?" How could it not? He had been with Alexandros' main force, when we were left behind. By rights he should be back in Sparta now, with his wife and daughters... what was he still doing here? "Same as you, Pandokos: hiring himself out to the best-paying good cause." He had marched his hoplites the other way, toward the heart of R'lyeh land. It occurred to me that perhaps my troops and I hadn't been left behind: that not a single one of the brave lads who marched with Alexandros had left this land alive. I certainly won't...

Tushar's army camped by the river with us, and the next day we were joined by Balachandra, Andromache and the rest of the mystics we had left at the Jervellan Wall. "Well, we're all here now," said Rod cheerily. "Lead on, Todd." Todd looked around awkwardly, cleared his throat a little. "What, surely you know where we've going, after scouting it out for so long?" asked Rod. "Here, give me that scroll."

He looked at it and laughed. "South," he said. "The apocalypse has gone south for the winter."