This story is split between episodes being posted on the second Monday of every month. You can find the first episode here and the previous episode here.
Of Dice and Glen Episode 4: Approaching the Quarry
The following morning, the sun peeked up over the roofs of the trees.
From up in her tree, Luna stirred, twitching and barking under her breath. She growled low in her chest and snapped at some invisible foe. Eyes still closed, she pushed off from the trunk and dashed toward some target, snarling furiously.
With a loud thud and a yelp of pain, she woke on the ground.
Shaddar awoke just in time to see the tiefling plummet. If she had been anyone else, he might have rushed to her side to see if she was okay, but he got the impression this was fairly normal for his companion. If not, he didn’t want to embarrass her by drawing her attention to it.
“Morning, Luna,” he said, stretching as he got up. “Sleep well?”
If she had appeared wild the previous day, it was nothing to her “morning look”. It was unclear how she had thrashed around way up on a tree limb, but her hair was matted and stuck up at the back, her clothes were disordered and bunched, and her face wore a truly savage expression that, more than her usual carefree demeanor, spoke of her demonic ancestry.
“Filthy little flicker-tail tree thieves!” she snarled, to no one in particular, eyes darting all around their camp. “You tasted DELICIOUS!”
All the birds and critters near the camp fled for their lives.
Shaking his head in wonderment, Shaddar began packing up the camp, not wishing to disturb what could only be an odd morning ritual.
Scrambling to her hands and knees, she shook herself all over, then scratched behind a horn, ferociously. Rising to her full, humanoid height, and clawed at her tangled hair with both hands.
“Good morning!” she almost sang, bouncing over to her draconic friend with a grin. “I slept fine but it’s your turn to hunt for breakfast. Wait. Nope. I’m too hungry for that. EVERY BEAST FOR HERSELF!”
With that, she dashed off into the forest, bent double, clawing the turf with all four limbs for extra speed.
Laughing, Shaddar pulled out his last squirrel from the previous night and ate it as he finished packing up camp.
In a surprisingly short time, the tiefling returned, sauntering into the clearing with one hand outstretched in a none-too-flattering imitation of a noblewoman.
“Oh, I do say, dragon-beast, jolly-well fetch my warrior husband. He could skewer you on his lance with his eyes closed.”
Luna had smeared her berry breakfast across her face, aiming for a crude facsimile of the lip colouring rich women wore. It also appeared that she may have made an attempt to wash some of the mud off, though that was almost entirely because it had become itchy.
Shaddar shook his head in disbelief and laughed.
“You ready to carry on, m’lady?”
Utterly delighted by Shaddar’s playing along with her game, she tried to simultaneously giggle and appear serious. The result was bizarre and ineffective.
“Why yes, good sir!”
Shaddar easily picked up the tracks of the goblin and led the way into the woods.
After about an hour of travel, they came upon a small clearing filled with churned mud and footprints. Every tree had been hacked and slashed viciously. Many had globs of sap oozed from their wounds.
After a closer look at the tracks, the dragonborn declared, “Not just goblins. Kobolds, too.”
The tiefling however, was paying no attention to him. Instead, her tail was lashing through the grass as she dashed from one bleeding tree to another, whimpering and examining the wounds.
“Birch!” she whispered, her voice catching in her throat. “No... No... Oak... You poor sapling... Aspen! How...”
“A bunch of them came together here,” Shaddar said to himself. “They must be nearby.”
He walked over to the distressed tiefling and placed a comforting hand on the top of her head. Small wisps of smoke were coming from his nostrils.
“It’s horrible, isn’t it?” His voice was hard. “We’ll make them pay for this disgusting destruction.”
Giving an alarmed screech, she slapped away the comforting hand before she could discern its meaning. Breathing hard, she backed away from him, her black eyes wide with fear.
“S-sorry,” she gasped, stopping a couple feet from him. “Yes. It’s horrible and they’ll pay.”
At that point there was a high-pitched cackle nearby.
“Goblin,” Shaddar hissed, spinning in the direction of the sound, drawing his swords.
Once again matching him, she armed herself and, with obvious difficulty, stood with her back to him, braced for the attack that was coming.
“I wish I could get into a tree and drop rocks on them.”
After a moment there was some more goblinish chortling.
“You might get that chance yet,” Shaddar said, keeping his voice down. “They sound like they haven’t heard us yet. Maybe we can get closer and find out what they’re doing here. Maybe even get the drop on them.”
“Get the drop of rocks on them,” she agreed, quietly. “Do you want to flank them?”
For once, the impulsive tiefling was planning, strategizing. She didn’t know how many of them they were up against, but from all the damage it had to be a fair number.
“Good idea,” Shaddar said. “I’ll head straight toward them and you circle around to the other side. Move as quietly as you can - we want to take them by surprise, if possible.”
Not wasting any sound on words, the savage tiefling child nodded once and followed the suggestions the dragonborn had made. Moving as silently as she could in her emotionally charged state, Luna rustled through the forest, then around the location the sounds emanated from.
Shaddar, wishing his scale armor lent itself better to stealth, snuck forward as quietly as he could.
Between two small hills, there was a dip in the ground where fewer trees were growing. There were odd bits of worked stone jutting out of the ground in a vaguely circular pattern. One of these had a rope tied around it, dangling down into a hole where more stonework had been revealed beneath the level of dirt.
Two goblins stood, facing the hole, jabbering on in their foul language about nothing of importance.
A tired kobold emerged from the hole, carried a bucket of dirt and stones to a nearby pile and deposited it. On its way back to the hole, one of the goblins smacked the lizard-like creature on the back of the head with the flat of its scimitar.
As the kobold yelped and fell into the hole, the two goblins chortled and laughed evilly.
Forcing back a hiss of loathing at the evil creatures playing out this pitiful scene, Luna crept around and behind the pair of goblins, saying a swift and silent prayer of thanks to whatever god had an ear out.
Uttering a high-pitched war-cry as loud as she could, to press her obvious surprise, the wild-looking tiefling burst from around a trunk and charged straight at the goblins, slashing at one with her scimitar.
Thinking quickly, she brought her dagger around for good measure and jabbed at the same stinking creature. The second attack hadn’t been well thought out and missed miserably, though she hoped the frenzied movements might throw the goblins further off balance.
Muttering imprecations about impatient tieflings, Shaddar followed shortly after Luna, swinging his sword at the same goblin Luna had attacked, targeting the wound Luna had caused and quickly finishing the monster off.
Before it could react, the goblin was gurgling on the ground, choking on its lifeblood.
Confident his first opponent was down, Shaddar spun his second sword around towards the other surprised goblin, but the creature was able to bring its sword up in time to block the blow.
The second goblin quickly overcame his surprise at being attacked by what appeared to be a pair of demons. With some aggressive cursing, the goblin raised its own rusty scimitar and slashed at the larger demon. The blood rushing from the dragonborn and staining the curving sword caused him to hoot in glee and dance idiotically on the spot.
Discover what happens next in Episode 5: Surprises
If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.
Can you put a link to the next episode in each installment of the story so that it is easy to read the story in the correct order? At the moment I can go through the story in reverse, but there is no way to read it in sequence except by going through all your posts.
ReplyDeleteThey're already there - at the end of each post where it says "Discover what happens next" you can click on the episode name :) The colour difference is slightly hard to see if you've already been to the page, which is probably why you missed it.
DeleteThanks. I was looking in the wrong place. Duh
Delete