PBEM Game: Yarnspinners 2 (Running)

[puffyn]

---C'tis, turn 51 ---

"The last story is called Aetonyx gets burnt at the stake."

Laph paused for dramatic effect, but it was hardly necessary. All the hatchlings, even Shem and Tari, who had heard her practicing the story, stared at her wide-eyed, and a few of the littlest ones began to cry, until Mother Zisura came and comforted them. Only Fela looked unconcerned, but that may have had more to do with her paying rather more attention to the bizarre and unnatural way light seemed to fall on the floor next to her mother. Such interesting shadows...

"Don't you have better things to do than make the hatchlings cry?"

"Quiet, Ruli," said Laph. She cleared her throat.

"Now, this story happened long ago, in the days just after Ermor had finally fallen away from life and light, and there was much hatred in the newly formed theocracy to our south. The Marignonese blamed all lizards for the stupidity of a few thoughtless sauromancers, who had foolishly traded away the secrets of their great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers, and then gone and gotten themselves killed..."

"Now that sounded almost bitter, egg-sister. It hurts me, right here," and he pointed to the ethereal hole in his side that was credibly lance-shaped. "And here..." and he held up his trampled tail. "And..."

"Shush!" said Laph loudly, which caused everyone to stare. Corporeal undead were one thing, but most lizards couldn't see ghosts, especially not these hatchlings, children of mostly average city-lizards, destined to become merchants or city guards, to whom the supernatural was better left to their rare and gifted cousins.

"You know how you can get me to be quiet," said Ruli, but Laph had finally noticed the Fela was staring right at them. It shouldn't have surprised her, of course, her littlest hatchling had always seemed the sort, just like her (lamentably-deceased) uncle. But she felt a knot in her stomach anyhow, which puzzled her. Shouldn't she feel happy that Fela could See?

Laph herself had been a little surprised that she could see Ruli in this form, because she had never seen a single ghost before now. I guess haunting someone's every step would be no fun at all if they couldn't perceive you were there, she sighed. Brothers.

"Now Aetonyx had cause to journey to Marignon," she continued at last. "He went during the month of Carrofactum, because he hoped that the spirit of peace and goodwill of the holy month would allow him to conduct his business in safety.

"But alas, Aetonyx was betrayed. He was staying, as he had before, in the house of a prominent trader from Vanheim, named Vanlade. They had shared several interesting and amusing stories in years gone by, which I will not share with you today, but this was to be their last story together, save one. For one evening, not long after Aetonyx had arrived, there was a knock on the door.

"Vanlade and Aetonyx had discussed escape plans before, in case of just such an eventuality, and worked out a system of signals by which Vanlade would tell him it was time to flee, for the Inquisition was not unexpected. But Aetonyx was caught quite unawares when, with nary a sign from Vanlade, his bedroom door was roughly pushed aside and black-robed inquisitors filled the room, seizing him and binding him so tightly he had no time to think of escape.

"'But why?' he asked his former friend, as the monks began chanting from the Scroll of Remanding the Heretic into Custody, For Eventual Painful Burning Thereof, stanzas 15-23.

"'I am sorry,' said Vanlade, not looking him in the eye. 'My life here is too comfortable, too profitable to Vanheim. I cannot risk what I have worked for to help you, so the fathers and I have come to... an arrangement.' And he turned away as the friars argued over the proper number of Cleansing Whips to be used, and whether there should be shackles or manacles or both.

"On the day of Aetonyx's burning, he was led through streets packed with huge, jeering crowds, for word had spread that here was the leader of the perfidious death-lizards, who had tutored Ami herself in the arts of darkness, although in truth Aetonyx had never had much skill for sauromancy. But all lizards looked alike in Marignon, and they would all burn just as satisfactorily.

"Because of his reputation for craftiness, Aetonyx had been kept bound and guarded at all times by men made impervious to his wily tongue owing to the sensible provision of having had their ears cut off, and he was never given a single opportunity to escape. So after walking through a barrage of hurled fruit and insults and the occasional duck, Aetonyx was tied firmly to a wooden stake in the middle of an enormous pile of wood.

"Will he escape? Gosh, Laph, I'm worried, what will happen? Laph ignored him. Death had made Ruli so snarky.

"The Archbishops of Amirdon and Elkland, whose faction was in power then, read long and rambling homilies on the Evils of Being Lizardish, until finally Aetonyx yelled out that, if they would just set him on fire already, that was okay with him. So they did. The fire raged all night and into the next morning, and the pillar of smoke could be seen as far away as C'tis."

There was stunned silence when it became clear that Laph had finished speaking, and several hatchlings had tears in their eyes.

"That was harsh. I thought all your stories had to have happy endings," said Ruli, snickering a little.

"Clearly you weren't paying as close attention to me as you should have been," said Laph softly.

"Well, it's awfully hard to, seeing as how my own egg-sister doesn't care enough to do me a tiny little favor..."

Laph waved him quiet with her hand. She scanned the dozen or so hatchlings, wide-eyed and terrified, though Fela, she noted, was glaring at her with a very skeptical expression on her face. Good.

"I don't believe that's what really happened," said Fela.

"No?" said her mother, then laughed. "I suppose not. When the people of Marignon finally put the fire out and dragged Aetonyx's body out of the rubble, no one knew enough lizard physiology to determine if he was dead or not, and since his skin was cracked and charred and he didn't move they assumed he was, and threw him onto the trash heap at the edge of town. By and by, Aetonyx was able to pull himself up and through a series of improbable events made his way back to... Yes, Shem?"

"But... but... the fire..."

Laph smiled. She should have had children long ago, they were wonderful for feeding her lines. "Oh, yes, the fire, of course. Well, Aetonyx had always trusted Vanlade to come to his aid, but at the same time he was not so stupid as to fail to take precautions on his own, so that he would still have a few tricks to play even if his friend deserted him. So every time there was a knock at the door, Aetonyx had made sure that he had secured upon his body a burning pearl, which he had gotten from the Cave of a Thousand Grieving Phoenixes which I told you about last week. That way, he would be mostly protected from fire, and only his skin would get burnt. And every hatchling knows how easy it is to change your skin..."

"Oh, burning pearl, very nice, why didn't I think of that?" said Ruli, rolling his eye-sockets. "Didn't seem to do me any good..."

"That's because they were troglodytes, you fool, fire resistance was totally pointless," she snapped. The yarn was over, and the little lizards looked satisfied, which was good, although Tari appeared to have fallen asleep, and where had Fela gotten to?

"C'mon, Laph, next time won't be so bad, and besides, I'll still be immortal, so what could possibly go wrong?"

"No, Ruli, for the last time, you were a terrible wraith lord," said Laph firmly, staring him down. "And you're making a pretty lousy ghost, too," she said, and nodded toward Fela, who was experimenting with passing her tail through her ethereal uncle. It went all cool and shimmery...

"Uncle Ruli, I know you're there, tell Mom she told the story wrong," said Fela.

"And how was that?" said Ruli, carefully enunciating, so his voice sounded as crisp and clear as it possibly could while still resembling leaves floating in the autumn wind.

"Because she was just making things up 'cause of the war and the meanies in Vanheim who won't help us, and that never really happened," said Fela indignantly. "And, and, she shouldn't lie."

"Sage words, from a winter-egg," said Ruli, winking. "Pity Mom doesn't like telling the truth and, oh, I don't know, keeping promises she made."

Laph sighed. "Fela, I promise you that every word I said was true," she said.

"But did they really happen?" said Fela doggedly. The ethereal presence seemed to convulse with what might have been laughter.

"Go play with the others and we'll talk this over later," sighed Laph. "And Ruli, I promise, I'll find you a better form soon." Just as soon as she could come up with something... safe.

[Sedna]

Hey kids,

I've brought the maps for yarnspinners up to date: turns 42 - 51. Hopefully this will help any loyal readers follow the epic the battles now raging (slowly) across our fair land.

Start looking at the new maps here

Sedna

[djo]

I've written about half of my turn 54, and I need more inspiration! How about another turn?

We're close, so close now...

[Sedna]

Muszinger

Muszinger recalled a hymn from his childhood. He was sitting on a hard wood bench between his parents. Up front, a man convicted of heresy flogged himself in a wild frenzy of remorse. The choir, high in the lofty recesses of the cathedral lifted up a slow, lonesome song:

And I will lift you up on eagle's wings

The words echoed in him as marched the ornate halls of the palace of Pythium, always just on the edge of real hearing and imagination -- angels' music.

There had been angels defending the gates and towers of Pythium. Hosts of beauty which made the heart ache to look at them and flaming swords to cleanse the wickedness from the hearts of men. Gawain and his knights had tossed them aside like chaff in their charge, and then hunted them down on horseback, hacking their bodies to bloody chunks, which they burnt, dancing around the pyre. Then they sacked the rest of the city, burning and looting.

But now the palace was quiet. Little streams of water murmered in the stillness. Muszinger came to the foot of a spiral staircase. How long before, it could not have been more than six months, had he climbed that other tower in the cathedral at Saran Forest? How many nights ago had he read those orders which had started all this madness, which had plunged the world into bloody war?

Bear you on the breath of dawn

Muszinger reached the top of the tallest tower in Pythium, and gazed back toward the broken tower of Saran, and beyond that to the Mountains of Madness and Fort Doom. These few leagues where he had been trapped for years now-- fighting, always fighting. The broken tower still shone a sickly green, and the stories of the evil king of death, Antrax, unleashed upon a hapless world by Polgrave, had reached the ear of every soldier. Polgrave! Dear friend, lost to the light... and now death stalked the lands north and west of them, cutting of any hope of reuniting with loyal forces. Death rode at the head of a wave of nightmares: every heretic burnt by the inquisition, that was the rumor, each bent on seeking revenge upon the living, be they warriors of Man or Marignon.

Make you to shine like the sun

Muszinger watched the stars. Why had the LORD forsaken Marignon, and which in his time? For now, the borders still held, in one bloody battle after another, but they could not last. Avoca had been struck down by heavenly fire in his office in the capitol as he sat praying for angelic aid. Spire was even now stuck desperately alone in a flood of Ulmish and Van armies. The Archbishop of Marignon, if the reports are true, has been driven mad by the evils of Ermor. No, Marignon would fall. The mighty kingdom which had grown so great in the last years would wither utterly to a flickering ember.

But the greatest threat never came from without, but from within, from the rotten heart of man. Polgrave, utterly mad, and doomed, and fallen into blackness. Dear friend, now a pawn of death, and controlled by the black ichor infecting his veins. And according to Esclave, Wic was performing human sacrifices, and promulgating some now gospel about bringing forth the devils to hold back the flood of death which swirled around Fort Doom.

And hold you in the palm of my hand.

Yet the greatest darkness now in a sky of night was Afti-el. So pure when she arrived in this world, so full of heaven's light. What fell beast now stalked the weary world, trailing sickness in her wake? What twisted darkness had brought her low? How had the plans of the almighty LORD been so utterly perverted, that his greatest servant would lead to the destruction of Marignon?

Marignon would fall. But still Muszinger would ride out one last time on the LORD's crusade. He would track down and banish Antrax if he could, and if he could not... he would take his eternal reward. If those stars still held a heaven, he would see the living face of God. And death, afterall... What was it the prophet had said?

There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.

Even drought bears fruit.
Even death is a seed.

[djo]

Vanheim turn 54:

In which Anteirios thanks his dead sister, and Molly says good-bye.


Anteirios

She was very pale, and when I embraced my sister Tilneia, she was cold and stiff. But she lived, or something like it. For forty years, we believed she was dead. Now, she stood before me. Someday my curiosity would prevail, and I would question her regarding her condition; not today. My emotions flooded my thoughts, for my sister had returned.

"Thank you," I whispered as I held her.

"For what?" she asked.

"For rescuing my son."

She pulled away from me. "Not soon enough," she replied, with pain in her voice. "Pherios will never be the same again."

"He's with us again. Shh. Don't say another word. Just know: I will be forever grateful."

She contented herself with a small nod and thin smile. She'd changed so much, and yet so little, still chastising herself for minute failings while ignoring accumulated achievements, just as she had before. She had changed, yet in her time away from us, she had not forgotten her family. I had not forgotten her. And now I had the opportunity to learn the answers to questions I thought unanswerable.

"Forty years," I said. "It seemed so much longer. But why? Why did you...leave us?"

"I've missed you terribly," Tilneia replied. "I was so lonely. I kept telling myself we'd speak again, eventually. I knew we would. Forty years is not forever. Our father traveled for fifty before returning to marry mother. Our view of things in Vanheim is always long."

"Father wrote," I said. "Please, dear sister, don't be offended by my questions. You know my faults. I haven't cured my curiosity. And I will bury every question if they would drive you away. But if not, I need to know. Why?"

We sat and drank our family's good wine as she told me.

"There is a way in which you and I are more alike than either of us is like Belletennares. You do not have Alteion's gift of prophecy. Nor do I--almost.

"It was a single blinding vision," she said. "I had not known it before, nor have I since. But in that instant, I saw Vanheim's need, and the means to fill it. You are a scholar, brother. You must have seen it. We were not what we had once been. Magic that had propelled armies to victory over the giants was lost, within our own living memory. Belletennares tried to explain it to me once, why he could not call lightning anymore. 'It is,' he said, 'as if my mind were a leaky cask. I continued to pull the tap, just as I always had, but the flow of ale became slower and slower, and eventually it was gone. And I no longer remember how to brew any more.'

"I knew we would need the knowledge of magic again, so I hung myself from an ash. I suppose it was audacious, or at the least, pretentious, to think I could follow the paths of the gods like that, as if I were some legendary figure. But it worked! It open my eyes to all the secrets of life and death. It was a beginning. Then I made peace with the dwarves hiding deep in the hills, and so I came to Vanheim. To learn, to research, to teach myself, for that moment when I was needed."

"In hiding," I said. "For all those years, I didn't know the Lady of the Tower was my sister Tilneia."

She would not meet my eyes. "I was afraid. Would you accept me? I hoped so, but I couldn't bear the thought that you might not. Could our house protect me? Forty years ago, I feared not. Vanheim had no tradition of necromancy then. Our house was not as strong. They would have persecuted us, brought us down. You know that is the curse of our house, to bring ill tidings of the future.

"And now...I would not give up what I've learned, but it seems my moment was lost. Perhaps I did not see truly. Perhaps my time is not to come for another decade, or century."

"You are wrong," I said forcefully. "You have guided Vanheim into this War of Ascension. We believed that Belletennares and Pherios warned us of the present times, but we were wrong. You were there first. This age is the age of House Alteion, and it is you who gestated it."

I believe she was pleased at the image, but her smile vanished quickly.

"Then let us see it remains so," Tilneia said. "For I do not wish to live in the age of Vethru."


Molly

At least we had a few more months together before Pherios had to leave. It was good having him around to help understand the visions. We worked on it all the time together. The future was a pretty big mess, but we made enough sense of it for Belletennares to do pretty well up north. Hurray for us!

It was fall when we went for our last ride. We headed up into the hills near his parents' estate, him on his big, black, spooky-untrackable Van horse, and me on my little pony. We both knew, without saying, that it was the last time. We're both seers. It makes things easy between us. He's like the big brother I never had.

We tied our horses and strolled along the hilltop overlooking the estate. We talked about the weather, the war, who was away and who was at home. But then I told him how Mistepeillia and Sennei treated me like family, and how much I liked that. And that was the beginning of the good-byes.

He smiled and tipped his head, which was funny, because unlike Tilneia, who could never keep her neck totally straight, Pherios still had really good posture.

"You've grown up a lot in the time I've known you," he said. "How old are you now?"

"Twenty," I told him.

Pherios laughed. "Still a child, if you were a Van. I'm only fifty-six, and if it weren't for the war, I'd still be at my studies.

"They've been tough times," he continued, "But you've come through them a fine young woman. You're bright, and loyal, and you've learned to stand up to Vans older than my uncle. And I've seen all the young man who trail after you with wide eyes and sweet words."

I blushed. I wondered how he saw it. I knew I appeared as a wren in his visions. I laughed at the image of a gaggle of silly geese following a tiny songbird around.

He laughed, too. "You've made my hard times much easier," he said. "You saved me, once. And I couldn't have done the rest without you." And then he said it, what we were both dancing around. "I'm going to miss you."

Knowing it was coming didn't make it any easier to hear. I felt my eyes fill up with tears. "I'm going to miss you, too."

"It isn't clear what will happen--"

"I know." It was the one future we never discussed. It was dark, really dark.

"I have to go," he said. "There's no other way. And you know that the things we see don't always--"

"I know. It's OK. I figured it out," I told him.

"Figured out what?"

It's funny he didn't see it right away. He'd been living it for years. "The visions. Why we have them. It's not to avoid the bad roads. It's so we know the right roads when we come to them. Right?"

Then he hugged me really tightly, and I didn't want to let him go. But we both know what has to happen, has to happen. We mounted up and started to ride back.

"You never flinched, or looked away," Pherios said. "After I came back. Like this."

"Shut up," I said. "You're practically my brother."

He smiled. "I don't know, you're not very tall," he said, "and all my female relatives have blond hair."

"Shut up!"

"It's true," he insisted, conveniently forgetting Irulia. I let him.

"I'll pack you some meals. You can't cook."

"You don't have to. My mom and Aunt Sennei said they would."

"You'll need it all where you're going," I said, and he sobered.

Because we both saw it. Vethru was headed into dead lands, where there was no game, no crops to scavenge. And that's where Pherios would follow. To Ermor.

[djo]

You know, we can still finish this thing up in under a year! Just a few more turns to go...

Vanheim 57

In which Pherios asks for Galameteia's sword, and Belletennares ponders the worth of it all


Vethru

"Damn," I swear, throwing the knife onto the table. "Take it away."

I toss the blood-soaked smock on the floor as the corpse is wheeled out. Quellian Ji flutters to my shoulder from the corner he's been hiding in. I should've made him a crow, way back when. Crows don't get as squeamish at the sight of carrion. But no, he was a sailor, and his world had some truly marvelous oceans, so I made him a seagull.

"Hey, boss, I didn't know you could read entrails," he says.

"I can do anything," I reply. "Usually I get other people to do it for me. But it doesn't work right in this world. Bleeping censored dammit, I need a gods-be-damned seer!"

"Are you sure about that, boss? The last four didn't work out so good."

"Shut it, bird."

"Or is that five? Let's see, Pherios, Galameteia, Molly, the lizard, Belletennares...OK, I guess that's one for you. He hasn't run away. Four!"

"Not now!"

Fortunately for him, he shuts up. What do you expect, philosophy from a seagull? He makes his jokes, then he shuts up. It's the only shtick he has.

I don't really need a seer. One of them visited me yesterday.

He'd gotten even sneakier since I hung him. Ji and I were walking back to the castle when he stepped out of the shadows in a small courtyard. There were guards everywhere; he found a way through them to the one place on my path they couldn't see.

"You have something of mine," Pherios said. In the dark, you couldn't even tell what he was. Dead like me.

"Right when I didn't expect you," I replied. "And that, I suppose, is what I should have expected."

"Galameteia's sword," he said. "I'd like it back."

"Your emotions betray you," I told him. I've always wanted to use that line.

"You don't need it. It means something to me. Give it to me, and I'll give you something you do want."

"The world?" I asked.

"The future."

He had me there. "Come up to my tower," I said. I wasn't planning to recapture him, and Pherios didn't ask. I guess he knew it already. He just smiled, and in that smile I saw a maturity that warmed my heart. OK, that's a metaphor. I don't exactly have a heart, and most of the things I use in its place exist on another plane and work best at liquid helium temperatures. But that's really beside the point.

It warmed my heart. I could see it in his smile, in his eyes, in his confident posture. He'd become what I had hoped he could become. I saw that he had mastered life and death, the past and the future. If only he hadn't turned away from me...we would already be ruling this world.

You bet I would trade him his dead girlfriend's sword to hear anything he had to say about the future.

I gave him the blade. He pulled it from its sheath, raised it to his eyes, and watched the thing glisten in the lamplight. For a long moment, I wondered if he had made peace with Galameteia's fate. Pherios couldn't hurt me, but I didn't want to have to hurt him if he decided today was revenge day. But without expression, he returned the sword to its sheath, and, as I knew he would, kept his end of the bargain.

"Ermor," he said. "It all ends in Ermor."

"When?"

"Three months."

Hmm. I guess that splinter sect in Marignon was right after all. Who would've thought it?

Before I could ask more questions, he was gone.

So I really didn't need another seer, or any more animals to cut open. I had it from the horse's mouth. Ermor. It made sense. The source code I was looking for dealt with density. And in this whole world, which was swimming in dead, where did one find the spirits? The insubstantial dead? The incorporeal? The ethereal? The bodiless? In Ermor. Where the Soul Gate lies.

I send word to Belletennares. We're going north.



Belletennares

I can no longer make any sense of this world. The armies of every nation run rampant; if alliances still hold, I can only assume it is due to oversight. We are plunged into chaos, and I foresee no peace for us, those who have survived the turmoil long enough to look upon this, the end of days.

Marignon is dying. We have pushed them to extinction in the north, save for Archbishop Spire and his damned ethereal lions. My scouts say they have few territories left, and they will fall within months. Elsewhere, our armies face other armies across new borders--Tenecheia's demons, Ulm's armored legions...will they move south? The dragon of Ulm, Griffin, has struck our lands and left as precipitously. Will he return in force?

And what of Vethru? His search, for I now know, thanks to the investigations of my brother, sister, and nephew, that he searches for runes of great power, take him north--to Ermor. He asked me if we could defeat the armies of Ulm that besiege Ermor. I told him their forces were vast, that they were a thundering herds whose iron boots trod the earth to dust. That they had iron priests and black Templars. But I also told him, truthfully, for deception in wartime must only be used against one's enemies, that I doubted their skill in magic. He promptly ordered us there, to face this army, so he may plunder whatever riches or knowledge that dead capital contains. It is perhaps the first order he has given me more specific than "defeat our enemies."

I do not know if we have any possibility of prevailing against that steel-clad host, and if we were to prevail, whether we could then defeat whenever forces the zealots still hide behind the walls. But he was insistent; I believe this end-of-the-world frenzy has taken him as well. And at the end of the world, it is best to be sure that god is on your side. So I shall obey, despite what he has wrought upon my nation and my family. I will go to Ermor. I will stand by him in battle. He will not be alone.

Not quite.

My nephew has a plan.

[puffyn]

I'm all for finishing soon (says I, not having played my turn yet)... it would be nice to have a little bit of a pause before starting Yarnspinners 3 on Dominions 3: When version numbers collide (?).

Um, here's my yarn for Turn 54:

----
The army paused to wait for dawn. Pots clanged with the hasty evening meals, and lizards shouted to each other to erect the tents and sharpen their falchions one last time. The whetstone ground well into the night. Off in the distance, tall white spires rose from a battered looking castle; some of the damage was clearly years old, while the rest had a more recent origin. There were few lizards to mark the sunset, however, since most were curled up against the cold, dreaming of vengeance, and perhaps of an end of all this fighting.

Pythium was to fall again in the morn.

Laph squinted at the last stack of papers, with barely a centimeter left in her candle. She had hastily drafted her speech for tomorrow, to be given from one of the spires in the distance, and she hadn't even bothered to write a contingency speech in case things went differently. Was she getting lazy in her old age, she wondered? Or was it that foregone a conclusion that it just didn't matter anymore?

She smiled when she picked up the next letter. It was in a bright red envelope, with some bizarrely mystical line drawings on it, and was addressed: "To the yarnspinner. Super-duper-secrett. DONT OPPEN THIS!"

Inside, Fela wrote:

"Dear Mom, Uncle Ruli said I should always inkripped things I send you, and he gave me this super cool secrett paper to write on, in case this is stolened by the enemy. (PUT IT DOWN, YOU DUMB MARINON SPY!) Tari says they're too stupid to be able to read it, but I said Tari was dumb for thinking that. Anyhow, I have been very dillijint and have watched Man's border every day for the last week, and there are no strange cloud creatures or anything, and it really looks quite peaceful, so they're probably not going to attack us sneakily like you were worried. Also, Shem stole my baby scales, and won't give them back, make him stop. Love, Fela."

The next letter was very curt. "CONFIRMED. Engagements between Vanheim, Marignon continue; Vethru seems committed to our fight after all. T'ien Ch'i mobilizing to south, moving on former dead lands. Campaigns progressing well." It was signed by the new Head of the Guild of Empoisonners, who was leading the southern campaign. Laph didn't bother trying to remember his name; there was little point.

Cole wrote a very long and erudite letter, and Laph reflected that his long convalescence was doing wonders for his handwriting. She puzzled for a while over his last paragraph.

"... and I almost pity the few remaining archbishops in charge these days of a crumbling empire, abandoned by their divine ruler. I have some VERY IMPORTANT plans on that matter, but mustn't reveal my secrets before the time is ripe. Let me just say I plan on fighting fire with fire, as it were.... such a pity I cannot join them myself for a good knight roast."

Laph blew out her candle and went to sleep.


Aceline came from a long line of lizard-handlers, and even after the practice had been all but abandoned on order of the new lizard overlords, someone had (wisely) stopped and thought that, perhaps, a trained handler was actually a good thing when it came to bog beasts.

Aceline had two main qualifications for the job. The first was that she was a combat veteran, from the AYE war. The second was that she could count, which was a particularly useful skill in making sure none of the bog beasts wandered into the main camp and accidentally poisoned everyone to death.

".. three of them, come on lads, that's easy!" came the voice of the distant knight, rallying his band in a charge that was aimed more or less directly toward Aceline. She caught a glimpse of a bright shiny shield, and was momentarily disoriented.

"... five, sir..." she heard dimly, but things were moving fast now, and she had signaled the bog beasts to engage in battle formation seventeen. To the lay observer, all bog beast battle formations looked suspiciously like the giant reptiles just sitting there until their attackers fell over gasping from the poison, but that was why a specialist such as Aceline was necessary.

Besides, this time she was attempting a new flanking maneuver, and as the knights rushed past her hiding spot at the edge of the woods she motioned the largest of the bog beasts, who had been hiding with her, toward the unprotected flanks of the knights.

There were, as a matter of fact, six bog beasts. She noted idly where the innumerate knight commander fell, so that she could return for his shield, in a week or two, after the fumes had dissipated.