<name tag: rook>

Xera again! Mr. X has almost all his other super powered characters up in the air over at Danger Babe Central as he juggles them in a short story comic, the long story comic, and now a Halloween comic! Wow! That is a lot of super heroine jugs a jiggling! So I guess I am going to hang back from the capes and cowls for one more tale and revisit his famous Xera sword and sorcery character in a rushed attempt to answer his call for Halloween short stories.

I am rather shamelessly abusing the poor wench; Mr. X has created her as a sort of hard as nails, rough and tumble, back alley wise (in more ways than one), panther footed, out drink an army of orcs, sexy death dealing loner. Something that would have fit in easily into Robert E. Howard’s pre-history penned worlds or Tolkien’s eldritch folktales and the genre they spawned. I instead have made her more and more; a somewhat naïve, wide eyed, easily fooled, best of intentions, opportunistic, young lass, who knows she needs to be cynical and hard dealing in order to survive but is too large hearted and trusting in her nature to stay out of trouble despite her constant guard against trusting too much. I have kept the sexy and the death dealing superb swordsmanship and the drinking. But have traded in her black leathers and Conan-ish world of crude barbarian unplanned wood and furry loincloths for the look of impossible fantasy armor and surreal skilled craftsman cities. I just think with the way things are right now in the real world, with so much collapse and ruin and the falling apart of things and the depression that brings, that it might be nice to throw out a little savage splendor and towering magnificent wonder. Just sort of remind people that when things do fall they tend to rise again… eventually.  Rook.

TOOTH AND NAIL

“Superb, superb,” The merchant was fondling the small silver skull with its large ruby set in the center of its brow and squinting through a jeweler’s magnifying eye piece at it with wet thick lip smiles, but the young girl across from him couldn’t help feeling that he was actually staring down her bent over cleavage and put a somewhat miffed steel gloved hand upon her nearly naked jutting out full round hips as she started to speak. But he seemed to sense her agitation and cut her off. “You always bring in the best merchandise, Xera.” He unclenched his right eye and let the jeweler’s glass pop out and land in his left hand’s palm which pocketed it automatically as his right hand held the silver skull and both his eyes now fastened their gaze upon the young girl’s valley of firm ivory breast flesh. “Yes… always the breast stuff.”

The girl pursed her lips in a sour look but made no move to lean her breasts out of the slobbering view of the man, for the moment, as she knew how the minds of men worked, when they worked. And instead cleared her throat and forced a smile. “So Telis, what would you like to give me… for the skull?”

“Oh I would like to give you-” he coughed into his left fist and cleared his own throat. “Ah, sadly I could never even come close to the items true artistic value. We live in such crude simplistic times. Nothing as noble as when this was so finely crafted; I am afraid there are few who could appreciate its true value and those are so far removed from this poor hovel of a city.”

“Perhaps if I took it to Pintails? I hear he has a penance for collecting trinkets like this.” The girl reached out a steel gauntlet hand and gently but firmly removed the silver skull from the stuttering merchants stubborn grasp after a few tugs and pretended to look it over with a sleepy smile as she turned it this way and that in front of her massive cleavage.

“HA! I would like to see that! You deal with Pintails! You really shouldn’t drink before bartering, girl! That man wouldn’t give you, er, give you the time of day let alone… five silver coins?”

The young girl stood up from her leaning on the counter of the merchants shop and quickly slipped the silver skull into a leather pouch on her hip belting it shut and thus removing it and her breasts from the flummoxed merchants gaze. “Oh I think I can do MUCH better than that. Good day, Telis.” And the girl spun on her stiletto heeled metal boots and left his small shop.

The merchant squawked and waddled after her shouting and gesturing up to the door of his shop, “you won’t be able to get more than, er, fifteen silver coins out of him, if that! Fine! Go then! Waste your time and make a fool of yourself! You will be back! Twenty silver coins and that is my finial offer! You won’t find any other who will match that! I won’t be so generous when you come crawling back latter! Twenty-fine and you are robbing me blind at that you heartless girl!”

The girl had truly meant to turn around at the doorway and take his offer of fifteen silver coins but the sun was up now and the shawl of the dawn chill had fallen off the air and the market was a bustle with mobs of shoppers and hawking merchants and the smell of straw and dung and the piping hot steady current of the bakery’s fresh loafs coming out of the wide stone ovens and cooling on the wooden racks and Telis had become a little TOO familiar with his stares of her breasts of late, so she decided to stretch her legs and walk the market stalls.

Besides she still had some coin in her purse and was in no real hurry to sell the skull she had found in the ruins just off the path in the nearby forest. Nor was she in a rush to return to Giant Tree Inn and its greasy short fat innkeeper/owner and his constant jobs and tasks he came up for her and their ‘SERVICE ESCORT XERA’ which she frowned and then smirked at yet another of the ubiquitous flyers that was plastered to the stone wall of a blacksmith’s shop. The papyrus poster showed the silhouette of a curvaceous young woman holding a sword above her head while she stood wide stance centered upon a large heart shape with the words; ‘SERVICE’ to the left of the image, and ‘ESCORT’ to the right and the word ‘XERA’ underneath the straddled legged image. Only the ‘S’ of service and the ‘E’ of escort and the ‘X’ of Xera were capitalized upon the flyer. Under the image and three main large printed words were in smaller type the following blurb; “no job too small no job too big. Let our excellent escort fulfill your escorting needs. Inquire at Giant Tree Inn.”

And business was booming. Or at least Xera seemed pressed to keep up with the demands of the escorting jobs the oily black haired tavern keeper kept lining up for her. But her purse remained strangely light. She did not understand all this, ‘overhead’ and ‘marketing cost’ and such that the innkeeper of Giant Tree Inn kept going on and on about when he counted out her meager share of coin. And the whole business of charging her room and board (she had no idea what board she was paying for but it must have been a very large and detail carved one and she would like to find it and smash it and shove it into the fire for all it was costing her!) and she was certain his tally for spiced wines and ales and the odd cold capon she imbibed was hugely inflated by the stocky short man! She was thus inclined between finishing an escorting mission to venture into any nearby ruins to scavenge a bit or take on the odd quick job on the side to supplement her small wages.

Thus upon finishing up escorting the man with the limp (very, very, very slowly) to the city of Ven Dost, which she now found herself in, she ventured out to the nearby whispered ruins to poke about a bit and see what she might find. What she found was a pack of ravenous wolves, a few angry skeletons (no doubt upset about being gnarled on by the wolves!), and the small silver jeweled skull. She and her escorting was becoming well known and popular in the small scattered cities circling The Giant Tree Inn and she had been to Ven Dost enough times to have traded with Telis and a few others to know which one would pay best for such and such an item. Telis was indeed her best bet for selling the silver skull for the best price as his contacts with the more distant and prosperous larger cities to the north and south were superior than anyone else’s in the immediate area and the girl had every intention of returning to him and taking his coins. So she was utterly stunned to find herself munching on her cinnamon red candy apple on a stick and standing outside the stone and iron gates of the large imposing house of Pintails?!

She was even more stunned when she tossed the sticky stick and apple core aside and bold as polished brass strode up to the black iron gate and yanked upon its lone bell. The bell was set upon a curl of black metal and it jangled loudly to the slim chains pull. It took an understandably long time for a surly man in bright silk hose and livery to answer its summons as the tall white well mason wall enclosed a small lush green garden with blooming young fruit trees and poignant flowering shrubs that had a small stone path that slightly weaved through the showy vegetation to conjoin the front door of the house to the front gate.

The man who stopped abruptly in front of the closed gate was not happy to see her as apparent from his cold eyes and arched eyebrow. “YOU do not have an appointment.” He looked as if someone was holding a plate of day old fish guts under his arched large nose and was desperately trying to ignore it.

Xera sucked on her sticky fingers and fished out her skull. “I heard Mr. Pintails was interested in buying such things.” She held up the skull in front of her at the pale deadpanned faced man who appeared to be utterly ignoring her and staring at some point apparently about a foot above her head.

“Servant’s entrance!” He shot out a stiff pointing left arm in the general direction of the left of the house and then spun on his heels and vanished behind the waving persimmon trees.

The girl startled and then shrugged and replaced and belted up her skull and moved questionably along the white wall. It was not that large of a residence, well in comparison to a palace or official residence of say a king or such, but it did seem to fill up most of that side of the city block and so she had to follow the wall and its side walk all the way around the corner and down to the far end where a small black door sat. It snapped open at her first knock and she startled back again.

A different man was there smiling at her. He had his long shirt sleeves held up by some bicep garters and snaps and his hands were covered in white sticky plaster of bread dough and flour. He seemed pleasant and was trying to clean off his hands with his apron front as he continued to smile at her broadly. “Come in, come in!” He gestured with his short sandy hair head and she smiled back at him and somewhat cautiously entered the side door. She expected to be entering into a kitchen from the man’s appearance but instead it was a small enclosed court yard full of crates and barrels and sacks and the man having fastened the heavy latch upon the door lead her quickly to another open door and motioned her inside of that.

 After fastening the much more serious looking lock of this heavy ponderous door the man upon almost giddy feet lead her down the narrow corridor past several branching off hallways and closed doors until he popped a latch and sauntered into the sweet smells of a bustling kitchen.

The whole house seemed to be made up of white walls and black doors and the smells of baking sweets and basting fowl as the young girl followed the man into the kitchen and watched him collapse with a sigh upon a black chair at a black table and continue to rub his hands.

“I am told you have something that you think I might be interested in?” The man smiled at her and adjusted the small round glasses on his face. He sat there in the chair splayed legged while the kitchen staff moved about around him.

“Uhm, are you Mr. Pintails?” The girl asked hesitantly. He was in fact too well dressed behind that messy apron to be any sort of hired help, but the idea of the master of a house working in the kitchen seemed a bit odd to her.

“Afraid so,” the man shrugged and a scullery maid smiled behind him as he reached out and pinched off a piece of pie dough and ate it.

“Well, I, have this to sell.” Xera opened up her pouch and held out the silver skull.

“The man frowned and then whistled and taking his eyes off the skull looked at the girl, “do you mind if I take a closer look at this?”

Xera nodded her ascent and the man carefully plucked it out of her hand and turned it slowly over and over in his hands. “Do you mind if I ask where you got this from?”

Xera related her adventure with the den of wolves in the nearby ruins and the skeletons she had fought and slain/shattered and the silver skull she had found at the bottom of a pile of rubble of a collapsed crypt. She left out the part about getting stuck in a stone round window because of her huge boobs and that it was from several efforts of struggling tugs to free herself that she had fallen backward and landed hard upon the mossy stone flagging with such force that the stone pavement had given way and tossed her and much of the flagging into the previously hidden crypt.

“The sandy haired man raised his eyebrows at her tale and grunted. “I had thought that old ruin to have been fully explored a dozen times over and ransacked down to nothing but bones and pebbles but here you are and here this is.” He held up the skull and smirked at her.

It was impossible to determine his age, but he was obviously no longer young. His face was covered in wrinkles whenever he smiled and freckled from age and his sandy hair was thin and sparse and his light pale blue eyes seemed somehow tired and careworn despite his constant smiles. But it was his hands that gave him away, for they were very wrinkled and long and thin and so despite his at first youthful demeanor and rail thin body she would have guessed him to be well into his fifties, but she could tell he must have been a very handsome man when he was much younger and that he had undoubtedly lead a very amorous life with his smirks and smiles and the easy going nature of his young servant girls who were quick to laugh with him.

“Well, I will give you two gold coins for it if you can part with it.” He started to hand it back to her and stopped sudden and looked her in the face (a thing few men could manage to do unless she was up to her neck in a mire.) and paused and then spoke slowly and carefully again. “And perhaps a few more gold coins if you are up to a task I have in mind.”

He got up from his chair and Xera with the skull now back in her hands confusedly followed him a touch wary for whenever men mentioned money and some ‘task’ they had in mind for her it usually meant she had a fight to keep her knickers on in front of her.

He tossed the apron on a small drawer table in the hallway and lead her down it and up some stairs and then down another hallway and through some doors and rooms and then finally lead her into a large room full of books and tables and a desk and shut the door behind her before venturing into the room and set about lighting a few lamps and shutting the large curtains on the wall of windows and proceeding back to his oil lamp lit desk.

Xera relaxed a little when she noted there was no bed in the study and sighed with some slight relief when she realized the man was digging in his pockets for a ring of keys rather than digging for something else in his pants. The man trimmed the wick in the lamp and beckoned her over to the large wooden desk which was covered in piles of papers and books as he took the key ring bristling with keys that he had removed from his front pocket and unlocked the desk and shuffled around in the drawer of papers he had thus opened.

In time he took out a sheaf of papers and set these upon the desk top and proceeded to place these carefully aside as he scanned each one in turn. He stopped on one and then positioned it before her as she stood on the other side of the desk opposite of him so that he carefully eventually turned three large pages to face her. “Yes, here we are. I am somewhat taking you into my confidence, though I have no real reason why. Just a hunch I guess; instinct or the power of your character perhaps. But you do seem a very honest type to me and your tale you just told me bodes of an ability and martial skill that your soft looks belays. I will be frank with you. I have here the composite of four years of careful research and adventure. You can not see it thus solidified but a number of stout souls much like yourself clawed their way through slim and muck and blood and gore to gather this bit or that bit  of a moldering scroll or tomb or purchased on behalf from this distant caravan or that faraway land to bring me back some bobble or tidbit to create this here seamless whole. You look on four years of efforts and expenditure and yes some misfortune and death. But it was worth it! For here I have the exact location of the Circlet of Cyblime. The recent wars have stripped me of all my ablest men, suborned and with little hope of them being returned anytime soon, and the times are such with monsters on the rise and bandits infesting the lands that, well the best of the sell-swords or either impressed or dead or gone privateering. I have been waiting six long months for an adventurer of your metal to stumble across my door and now here you are!”

“Hmmm, this looks like the city of Al-Shamrack. That is almost three days journey into the desert of Kesh. Which in turn lies a fortnight from here through the de-militarized zone of the war ravaged lands of Fantezh. Look, I am sorry, but I only wanted to sell a skull today not take on such a long and perilous adventure.”

The sandy haired man nodded grimly, “I was afraid you would say that. Well, my offer for the skull still stands as dose my offer to both fund and reward an expedition to retrieve the Circlet. Please keep that in mind.” The man rattled the keys in another drawer of the desk and produced a bag of gold coins out of which he dropped three gold coins upon the desk.

Xera retrieved the skull from her leather pouch and held it above the desk eyeing the coins, “I thought we said two gold coins?”

“For your discretion, I hope even if you will not agree to such an undertaking in the near future, you will respect my wish not to have you discuss the matter with anyone else.” The man seemed generally saddened by her declining of his adventure of the circlet.

Xera nodded and set down the skull and scooped the gold coins into her hands and dropped them into her leather purse.

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It took one hundred copper coins to equal a sliver coin and fifty silver coins to equal a single gold coin. A good meal with over flowing mead mugs could be bought for a few silver coins with copper change coming back to spare. THREE GOLD COINS! She had never had so much wealth upon her at one time. Well not in coin of the realm anyway. It was enough to buy her a horse, a new sword, tackle and saddle, a new sword harness, and perhaps even a new suit of armor. Well, that might be stretching it a bit but it sure beat Telis fifteen or twenty silver coins?! HA!

She was on her way to wave her three gold coins under Telis nose right now and perhaps make him hustle about as she had him drag his most desirable goods down and parade them before her as she waved them away. The old rum pot did have a few items she was truly covetous of but he knew it and was asking a whores month in wages for them! Humph! Still easy won money?

A young boy ran up to her and began burbling all in a gush, “thebirdmanwantscharightfastlike!”

“What?” She understood street urchin well enough but with three gold coins in her purse she did not feel inclined to be rushed about.

“I say, the birdman he wants cha!” The young shoeless boy pointed over his shoulder and took off like a flash. He continued rushing ahead and then rushing back to her and then rushing a head and then rushing back to her until after several blocks she walked up to the birdman with the boy out of breath.

Most cities had birdmen. They were usually very old men, who lived up in lofty spires or on top of roofs or on cliffs just outside the city, but this one lived in the cities central square or so it seemed. He was an old man in his official birdman red robes covered in birds and his robes of office covered in thick crusts of bird droppings.

The birds did not scatter as she approached though a few of the young pages assigned to him took to their heels as she settled in to stand before the well lacquered in bird poop old man and folded her arms under her huge breasts.

Birdmen were a dying breed. Few these days had the ability to speak the ancient language of birds but those few who did always found ready employment in any major city as they were the communication life line to the entire world. No horse and courier or carriage and post could outstrip the speed of a sparrow or dove or hawk when it came to traversing the expanse of land and water to deliver a message. Even as she impatiently waited the birdman was nodding at a wren whistling upon his splattered shoulder and then he turned his dark round glasses cracked and thick with dust to a page that he whispered the message and who then ran off to deliver it to whomever it was intended in the city.

“The page you sent said you wanted to see me? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just have him give me the message?” She did not really care about the message as she already had a good idea who it was from and what it pertained, it would be from the innkeeper of the Giant Tree Inn and he would have some new job for her to hurry about and complete, and with three gold coins in her purse she was in no mood to hurry about anything. She could get and stay good and drunk for a week on three gold coins!

“For your ears only,” the birdman smiled his cracked few brown teeth at her and she tried not to shudder. Men ALWAYS wanted to see her in person, they just wanted to stare at her, make her stand there for as long as possible and ogle her, and with three gold coins in her purse she really wasn’t in the mood.

“So here I am; what is the message?” Pages came and went and the old birdman muttered and received messages from and to both bird and boy. He was keeping her there on her heels on purpose enjoying eyeing her young beautiful face and full pert bosom and narrow thin waist and her full round hips and long luscious legs and teetering and drooling though he was keeping a better show of it than most men managed but that was probably more due to his metal goggles with their black cracked dusty lenses and his layers of bird shifting stiffened robes that helped hide the usual apparent arousal that her presence always caused.

“The message is from the Giant Tree Inn from the keeper, never had a proper name that I am aware of, just the innkeeper or keeper,” the girl frowned at that, but he was right as far as she knew the man had never mentioned his name nor had she thought to ask him of it?! “Message goes as follows: ‘Have received second half of payment for escort to Ven Dost from client per armed military post. Well done. Have arranged new job to escort; see Mr. Hidings at Ven Dost docks. Things quiet here, never mind what you may here.’ Thus ends the message. Do you wish to send a reply?”

“Stay out of my room! You perverted sot... That’s the reply.”

The birdman giggled and smiled, “that will be eight coppers, er, or were you calling me a perverted sot?” It was also cheaper to send messages by birds, a copper a word. To just send a single sheet of paper folded over and wax sealed by military post cost five silver coins.

“Hmm, what’s this about trouble out at Great Tree Inn?” The girl counted out the eight copper coins hesitating at five and eyeing the old man and dropped them into the bucket at the feet of the birdman. He whistled a tuneless tune and ignored her with a smile until she dropped another three coppers into the bucket.

“Well a little birdy told me that there’s been some bandit trouble of late; much more than what passes for usual in them parts and venturing all the way up to the very roots of the great tree at times.” The old man nodded and then called to a bird and muttered to it and sent it off. “I would usually offer the service of a hawk or eagle or an owl to spy it out for you but the military has bought them all up into service and all I have left are pigeons and sparrows for the most part. Good at relaying a message or two or into the stew pot, but not much good for spying and understanding what they are looking at for the most part. Sorry girl.”

The young woman nodded and left the square and its multitude of birds and scurrying boys. Some armed with sticks beating away the stray cat or two.

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The Ven Dost docks were a few stone staircases down from the main part of town which contained its square and market and business and small stone courthouse and jail. The city was not a main port and the trade here was quiet and consisted mostly of grain or milled flour bound for the larger cities along the river way and a few merchant galleries putting in to drop off wares, as Ven Dost had only a few factories and these consisted of a woodworking shop producing furniture and a textile mill that processed wool from the local sheep and the mill which processed the wheat and flax and hemp and a small but rather famous cheese house that produced highly regarded cheese from both goat and cow milk. All of these were family owned. The city consisted mostly of a few merchants and traders surrounded by farms which produced a surplus of goods thanks mainly do to the number of labors living cheaply in the nearby spacious city and the security afforded by its local militia watch. Fishing however was poor in this area of the river and other than the supply of a trade route and power to the mills it was not used for much but a farm irrigation water supply and sewer. Well water and small fast running brooks thankfully supplied the drinking water for much of the town and farms, unlike many other river towns which both drank and dumped its waste into the same source and thus often came down with illness and plague. The war had not found Ven Dost yet and probably wouldn’t as other than man power which was dutifully paid in conscription every year there was nothing of strategic or material value in the small wooded vale nestled between the hills and feet of the mountains that anyone could possibly want. With the irrigation it was an ideal place to raise cereals wheat barely hops and small livestock but other than a few nearby ancient ruins of elder races the quiet place was almost singular of its neighboring towns as being quiet unimposing and decidedly a politically sleepy little backwater.

Why then should a man of Mr. Pintail’s wealth take up residence here? Well, it was a common enough story. A family gaining some wealth in one area branching out its family into another and buying up this and that business venture and so forth until they stand out as the seemingly only rich family in an otherwise small town. In Pintails case he owned the bank in the town of Ven Dos as his powerful merchant family owned much else in other towns. But he had not somehow gotten around to buying up or out the family business in the small town but instead seemed absorbed in building his small castle of a home and collecting trinkets of all kinds and joyfully paying to pave the dirt streets or put in a storm drain system along those new stone streets or buying new weapons and arms for the volunteer militia or adding gates and walls to the perimeter of the town much to the bandits chagrin or tearing down wooden warehouses on the docks and replacing them with stone ones. In fact most people thought that Pintails family had exiled him to their sleepy hamlet and here he remained spending money on larks of city improvement projects and his own inscrutable mania for collecting relics. He spent a great deal of time and money on digging around in the many ruins that littered the forested hills and mountain sides.

He no doubt would have won numerous accolades from all except for his annoying habit of bedding almost all the single women in the town and surrounding farms. But aside from that he seemed a right proper and well educated man.

So it was that instead of logs half sunk into the steep bank Xera found herself walking down wide stone steps and instead of stepping down upon a wooden pier she found herself setting clinking metal boot upon a stone pier with stone wharfs and stone warehouses that were decidedly out of place in such a small river town. The young woman clinked and chinked her way up to a small stone building built alongside the several stone warehouses and watched two men in a large wooden wheel run in place while the crane it was attached to raised up a hemp net full of crates up out of hold of a ship and up over onto the stone dock.

“I am looking for a Mr. Hidings. Do you know where I might find him?” The broad back of the man she was addressing looked away from the men in the wooden wheel and over his shoulder at Xera.

“That would be me. What would you want of me then?” He had a wicked looking scar that ran down his face and another couple along his neck and arms.

“I am Xera,” she bowed low and heard the man grunt as he got a full gander of her huge swaying pendulum breasts. (Was it her fault she seemed so much taller than most men?!) “Of Xera’s Escort Services fame.”

The man chewed on a fox tail and spit, “never heard of it.”

Xera sighed, “Xera of Service Escort Xera, fame.”

“Oh yeah, I have a job for you!” The man walked bow legged down the stone jetty. “Walk this way,” the man growled over his shoulder. Xera frowned and then shrugged and began to ape the man’s bow legged waddling strut. “I have a package for you to deliver. Here it is. No wait that’s not it.” The man scratched his head and looked around the cluttered dock at all the piles of cargo and bags and crates. “Damn war has everything all fouled up. I need to get me papers.”

“Ah, wait please, am I to understand I am not escorting a person but am instead delivering a package?” The girl was trying to keep her three gold coin pride in check and the indignation out of her voice.

“That’s right lass. Already sent half the pay to Great Tree Inn by military post.” The man smiled rolling his foxtail around his mouth and then went waddling back to his stone shack. Xera followed him but did not shadow his waddle as she was stoop shouldered and sighing in dejected humiliation. ‘Escorting men through dangerous terrain had been one thing but now to just be a lowly courier. Ugh!’

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At the far end of the stone dock was anchored a small black ship. Inside its inky hold a small pallid man hissed and whispered to a pair of large yellow glowing eyes, “Master we have moored upon Ven Dost docks.”

“Excellent. You understand my plans. You are to hire a local of the right… temperament and use her and her whiles to gain access to Pintails estate. I want those papers he has… those maps, those diagrams, those… bobbles he has acquired. Then you and I will move inland to the ruins and recover the circlet. There are to be no mistakes. Am I understood? Good. See that it is done then.”

“We must make haste if we are to reach the ruins in time for the full moon. Place yourself into the container as I have suggested and I will have some of the locals act as porters to take you on ahead to the ruins. We could have used some of our own men of the ship’s crew if only we had not become waylaid by contrary winds in the gulf and you had become… hungry. But hurry master inside the vessel that I may seal it and set your plan into motion.”

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“Alright. It is a stone vase about three or four feet in height. And says here it is going inland. That’s funny I thought it was heading up river? Oh well inland, then, so you will be wanting to rent a dog cart and donkey then, eh?” The man smiled at her and Xera rolled her eyes and muttered curses to the rafters of the man’s small stone hut.

Xera found the stone vase. A foul looking urn its pealing orange rusted black sides etched with odd looking inscriptions with its heavy thick top well sealed in wax sitting upon the far end of the dock. She winked and smiled two strong men into grunting it into the dog cart that a boy brought already hitched and grabbed the donkey’s bridle and set out away from the docks to maneuver up the broad stone stairs to the main road leading inland. Behind her she failed to see sitting in the shadows just inside the open warehouse door a second large urn this one of polished stone blue with bright gold birds and trees chased upon its surface with a large paper tag tied with a pink bow, saying; ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LOVE ELIOT.’

Xera stopped for provisions in the market and a rudimentary map as well as some fodder for her donkey which she shoved in around the large urn in the cart. And set off snarling upon the winding road that lead up into the forest and then up into the foothills and mountains.

She resisted the urge to visit the birdman and send a rather telling message to Giant Tree Inn but birds did not cuss well and it cost five copper coins to have them shit on the head of someone and she was reluctant to break one of her cherished gold coins for such a thing. She could only hope that the slimy innkeeper would someday get his. Unbeknownst to her this day of wished for comeuppance was today.

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“But I tell you for the last time! I AM THE HEAD OF THE SHADOW OF THE TREE GANG!” The oily black haired innkeeper of Giant Tree Inn howled as he spun slowly upside down in his bindings over the camp fire that blazed in the ruins just down the road from the Giant Tree where the dragon had unfortunately eaten up the last leader the innkeeper had in place, Crippler, and apparently either eaten or frightened off the old lanky bone scholar who had translated his orders through the large black raven who even now sat upon a half cracked away bust and shrugged at him as he shouted curses at it in bird-talk.

One of the scurvy lot of his unwitting simpering gang of highway men stood up and threatened him with a sword, “Here now none of that! The raven here has always been our leader. It was him who always showed up and gave us our orders! Your just that weasel-ly little runt of an innkeeper from Giant Tree Inn! What do you take us for, fools?! Ha-ha-ha!” and the whole lot started laughing and waving their bows and spears around.

“Yes! YES! I take you for fools! You idiots who do you think was telling that stupid bird what to say for all these years?! HUH?!” The blood was rising or draining down to his head and the fire was becoming uncomfortably hot.

“Oh that’s rich!” Another one shouted out and prodded him in the forehead with a spear butt.

The innkeeper snarled at the large raven but again it only shrugged and seemed entirely confused and raised up a horny leg to show the thick chain ensnared around its ankle. “UGH! Well, with the scholar gone who amongst you can even TALK to let alone UNDERSTAND the bird?!” This impromptu meeting with his gang in the middle of the night to ask why they had not been following his raven decreed orders of late was not going well; which was to say they had not been doing anything at all that he had been telling them to do, and then the bird had simply failed to return one day! And that had been the last straw! Though he had always been careful not to show himself to his gang before aside from Crippler, it was time to set things straight and choose another leader to replace the dragon snacked Crippler. But now they had grabbed him and trussed him up over a fire and seemed intent upon refusing to listen to him! Yes most certainly not going well at all. “I say again, who amongst you can even understand that molting lice riddled beast?! HUH?!”

“The boy of course!” The gangly fellow who had just poked him in the forehead with his crude spear now pointed it at a ragtag disheveled gutter snipe of a shoeless boy who was sitting upon the half collapsed arch petting the leg of the large black bird. The boy made some incomprehensible sounds and then felicitously yanked on a feather causing the raven to squawk and chirp and then turned back to the men gathered around the campfire and spoke softly to the men in the gang. “The leader says he is lying and should be killed.”

“Why you little shit! You don’t even speak bird!” The innkeeper fumed.

“He says you should start by gouging out his eyes,” the boy turned intently to the bird and secretly yanked another feather causing it to caw some more. “And then cut out his tongue and put live coals in his mouth and sew it shut.”

“Why-why- you little monster!” The innkeeper howled.

“That bird sure has gotten a mean streak in him since old Crippler died.” One of the gang said as he got up and yanked a bare knife from his belt.

“Yep, almost inhumane in a way.” Another spoke as he rose up to help the first man by grabbing hold of the innkeepers shoulders.

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Xera stood up at her camp fire rapidly with sword drawn and eyed the flickering ring of light around the base of the dark well of night. She peered intently where she had heard the twig snap and then was most surprised when a man walked boldly into her camp! It was Pintails and he was not only out of breath and exhausted but had one hand clamped over a bloody wound in his left bicep. She sheathed her sword and helped the man stagger to a seat next to her campfire and then eyed him suspiciously. He was sweating and gasping for breath and she stood up to listen to the night for several moments before returning to the man and seeing to bandaging his wound.

“I was attacked in my home. They got the papers and the key. I knew they would need some time to sort things out so I fled before them. I must admit I am surprised to have stumbled across you on the way, but I had heard you had a new commission to deliver an urn to the north. Strange that, that you should be heading in the direction of the Circlet of Cyblime.” The man winced as she tightened the simple bind to his arm.

“I don’t understand. I thought the circlet lay in the desert city of Al-Shamrack, in the desert of Kesh, that lies several hundred miles to the south from here.” Xera moved away from the man and stood up again eyeing the dark and her munching unharnessed hobbled donkey with its still loaded cart nearby.

“Yes, well I am afraid I involved myself in a little subterfuge in that. The circlet lies in the ruins not more than a few miles from here at the root of the Forsaken Mountain. I was not sure I could trust you, you see, but after you left and told no one and took this other job. Well, I realized my first instinct of your honesty was well founded. I have been betrayed a number of times in the past by less noble, er, adventurers. I am sorry for deceiving you.”

“I still do not understand. Did you arrange then for me to transport this stone urn so I would be here conveniently for you to find? And how did you manage to become wounded and why are you out here all alone and unarmed in the night in such dangerous woods?” Xera drew her sword as she spoke. She always drew her weapon when she was confused and uncertain in a dark and foreboding place. It had proven a good habit.

“What? No. I had one of my servants follow you about town and he saw you talk to the birdman and then he paid the birdman to find out what you were up to. And he watched you as you left town with the urn in the dog cart. I had not thought to have you followed any further trusting that you would most naturally return back the way you came once your delivery was made, until the incident at my house earlier this night. A young woman had called upon me and then suddenly she and another man, a rather foul fiend, attacked me and took my keys and ransacked my library. They found the papers and such and the key to the crypt in question and while they were thus busily employed I took my chance of escape through an upper window. The wound I received earlier in the attack I used to feign such weakness as to mislead them into neglecting to tie me to the chair I collapsed into in the study. I knew they would need some time to fathom out the right papers from the piles of counterfeit I had shifted them with as a precaution and took to my heels to raise the watch, this I did but the pair were gone before the watch could reach my home. I knew at once my best hope lay in reaching you before the culprits could make their way up the forest path and either bypass you or overtake you in their endeavor. Fortunately I have spent years in these parts searching the ruins of the forest and knew a short cut that would overtake the winding path and had a good idea of how far you would have gone with a donkey and cart and where you might have made camp. In that guess I proved more or less right.”

“But these others where are they?!” Xera moved to the edge of the ring of campfire light and peered into the ominous forest darkness.

“If they came straight upon their way and did not meet with any others then they would be about twenty minutes yet away from this spot and we may yet waylay them and bring this to a close.” The man had regained his breath and now stood up holding his left arm.

“I still find it strange that I should have been hired to deliver an item to the very location you have said the circlet can be found?” Xera shook her head in puzzlement.

“What on Earth are you talking about? You mean you were hired to deliver this urn to the ruins at the foot of the Forsaken Mountain? But that is impossible no one lives there! There is a village nearby built in some ancient ruins but that is much farther to the east. Men-Yal-Haut, it is called. I assumed you were taking it up through the Northern Pass to the city on the other side, Bel-Meth.” The man was now as puzzled as she was.

Xera walked over to the urn in the cart and tossed open a leather satchel full of supplies and dug out the paper order form. “It distinctly says, ‘To deliver this stone urn to the ruins at the foot of the Forsaken Mountain.’ I even bought a map and everything.” She had tilted the paper to the camp fire to read it and now the sandy haired man grabbed it and read it himself.

“But this is incredible. It makes no sense. And no I did not manufacture this in order to have you just so in place to ask you for help in retrieving the circlet.” The man handed the young girl back her paper which she thrust back into the leather pouch and eyed him carefully.

“Perhaps your two thieves arranged the whole thing? That seems likely. In any case it would be best if we set a surprise trap for them before they come staggering around the bend and see the campfire and surprise us!” With that Xera moved quickly down the path into the darkness and slipped into the thick foliage along one side. The sandy haired man hesitated and then looked around him and picked up a sturdy looking branch that had been hauled up to the fire with others for fire wood and still grimacing at his wound followed the vanished girl into the darkness.

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The innkeeper of the Giant Tree Inn came staggering through the door to the great tree with a bloody clout upon his head and in such a disheveled state that the twin hunters, brothers named Dingle, who roomed there and whom he had left in charge of the bar were taken back in alarm at the sight of him. He angrily waved them off and ordered them to bar the main front door and make preparations for an attack. “I have just escaped from the clutches of the Shadow of the Tree Gang and they are hot on my heels to ransack this place!”

No sooner had the large double doors of the inn been barred then a furious pounding set upon them with calls to ‘open up!’ ringing out from a dozen muffled voices.

“That’s them greed has lent them faster feet than fear of my life has given to me,” the oily haired man staggered to the bar and collapsed upon a stool as he set about mopping his sweating face with a bar rag.

The two twin hunters flew up the side ladders half hidden in the shadows the great doors carved posts, jambs, and sills and soon were up in the arrow slit niches that ran on either side of the top of the door. There bows and several quivers full of arrows sat patiently waiting. In a heartbeat both men had armed themselves and notched arrow.

“Give them what for lads. They are a scoundrel’s lot and deserve no less than a face full of quills.” The innkeeper nodded. Both hunters aimed and let fly. Howls broke out from the other side of the doors and the men notched more arrows and sent them whisking through the arrow slits in rapid succession.

“That will teach them heartless bastard sons of bastards,” he clamped the bloody rag to his bleeding forehead and poured himself a tall drink and downed it and splashed some on his face for good measure. As he reached to pour himself another glass the whole tree shuddered and moaned. “What in the seven gloriously pussies of the great divine was that?!”

One of the hunters looked grimly back at the bleeding innkeeper, “fire.”

The living tree shuddered as the besieging men began to heap flaming brands upon its roots. The flames soared higher and higher and the tree twisted this way and that and then suddenly first one and then the other enchanted chains snapped their sigil bound anchors and the tree took off in great lopping strides and was gone.

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Xera had been the subject of several ambushes in her young life and not all of them had occurred in a bedroom. She put these experiences to good measure and sprang her trap well on the two unsuspecting figures that had come walking up the forest path in the dim gloom of a half shaded lantern. One of them was a foul looking man whom she ran through without compunction the other a young woman whom she lead back at bloody sword point to her camp. The sandy haired man came out of the brush and joined her at the camp.

“There was a man with her at the house.” Pintails looked back over their shoulders his makeshift club still in hand.

Xera talked over her shoulder in turn to him but kept her eyes on the young woman. “I put over a foot of cold steel through his chest and left him for dead upon the path.” Xera eyed the woman who was busty and pretty and dressed in semi-transparent white silks. “Is this the woman who attacked you in your house?”

“Yes, her name is Carmen. She works at the Misbegotten Hare tavern in Ven Dost. When I left the bedroom to get refreshments she must have scurried down and unbolted the door and let that other fellow in, he was a nasty one.” The sandy haired man tossed his branch down upon the ground next to the fire and clamped a hand on his sore stiff arm.

“Bedroom?” Xera half frowned half smiled at first the sour faced girl and then the man now fidgeting in the campfire light.

“Yes, Miss Carmen has visited me on a number of occasions before which is why I suspected nothing up till the moment she stabbed me.”

“Oh,” Xera smiled and held out her hand to the girl who reluctantly produced a slim dagger from a sheath hidden on her ankle and slapped the naked blade into Xera’s palm. “Nice.”

“Enough of this let’s just get the papers back and the key and march this girl back to the watch,” the sandy haired man was giving the girl in white silks a nasty look.

“She obviously has no papers upon her. Unless they would fit in that fat little bulging coin purse on her jaunty hip; I mean look at her, do you think there is any place of concealment on that body in that outfit?” Xera gave a half laugh back at the man who looked the nearly naked girl a once over and then fumed.

“Well then they must be back on the dead man’s body. We must procure them at once!” The man looked out into the dark with some mixture of agitation and trepidation and scowled.

“Be my guest,” Xera waved the girl by sword point to take a seat upon one of the logs she had pulled up to the fireside when she had originally made her camp and joined her. “Carmen and I will make ourselves comfortable until your return. I left the body in the middle of the path. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding him.”

The man looked surprised and then agitated and he started to leave and then turned and removed one of the burning brands of the fire to use as a makeshift torch and with a last stony stare stormed out into the night.

“Men,” Xera smiled at Carmen who in turn laughed.

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It was several minutes before Pintails returned to the camp, pale and obviously shaken. “He’s gone. The body is gone,” Pintails ran a trembling hand through his sweaty damp hair and tossed the burning brand into the fire.

“What?” Xera leapt up to her feet and eyed the dried blood on her sword which she had been resting across her knees.

“You must have only wounded him and he has fled.” The man looked around them in the dark and then picked up a few of the dried branches and tossed them into the fire to increase its light.

“Impossible. I have seen and made enough dead men to know one when I kill one. The sword pierced his heart and the point came out his chest. He died instantly.” She looked out into the dark and then quickly back at the girl who looked worried and surprised at the news and then back out into the night and then quickly back at Pintails frowning at the man who had sat down and was staring up at her.

“Then he must have had confederates who recovered his body and the papers and the key while we were escorting the girl back to camp,” the man glared at her steady.

“Nonsense, then why haven’t they attacked us or you while you were out there alone and unarmed? More like a predator dragged the body off the path and you missed the blood spore in the dark.” The man shrugged up at the woman. “Carmen and I have been talking. She knew of only the man with her and another he called, the master. Who was to meet them at the ruins at the foot of Forsaken Mountain. Apparently this man, Vaughn and his master were to pay the girl the other half of her wages once they arrived at these ruins and she had planned to make her way up the Northern Pass to Bel-Meth and then down the river to Sarogoth where she had family. She said nothing about any other men.” Xera looked back at the girl who seemed confused.

“I have heard of this Vaughn and his so called, Master. They have been looking for the circlet of Cyblime for some time and our paths have crossed more than once. You are lucky we found you Carmen. This Master is a five thousand year old vampire who covets the circlet almost as much as I do. Had you and Vaughn managed to reach the ruins at the foot of Forsaken Mountain, you would have been paid only in your death. For the circlet to be of any use to the Master, he would need a human sacrifice to make it work.”

Xera narrowed her eyes at the tired looking man who breathed through his open mouth and sat half hunched over. “Perhaps it is time you told us all you know about this circlet and this Master.” Xera raised her sword point to the man’s face who sighed and laughed.

“Where to begin on something that one has spent a better part of one’s life on? Well, the Circlet of Cyblime was crafted by the dark ones in the ancient times and was given to their priests to wear to commune with them. Eventually it fell to conquest and spoils and ended up in the hands of the great priest king Cyblime who was said to wear the circlet and became immortal by it.”

“Obvious rubbish if the ruins of Forsaken Mountain hold his tomb,” Xera slowly sat down but kept her sword ready across her knees.

“The circlet stopped ageing but was powerless against murder. Cyblime was killed by his jealous fellow priests and that act plunged his empire into chaos over ten thousand years ago.” The sandy haired man smiled at both women and seeing a wine skin lying propped up against the log he sat upon helped himself to a pull.

“If this Master is a five thousand year old vampire why would he bother with a circlet of immortality? Is he not obviously already immortal?” Carmen puzzled out loud and accepted the wine skin the sandy haired man offered her and squirted the wine into her mouth before passing it to Xera.

“Undead, not immortal. There is a ritual by which the Master hopes to use the circlet and a sacrifice to reverse his undead state. Become living again but forever un-aging and thus truly immortal save for death by violence, but immune to withering age or disease or pestilence. Other than a violent accident or murderous intent he would live forever a flower never wilting, or in his vile case, a serpent never sleeping. We can’t let him reach the circlet. His ritual will destroy it forever as well as yet another human life and soul.”

Xera whipped her lips with the back of her hand and handed the wine skin to the sandy haired man who placed it back down between his legs against the log. “Then perhaps it was he, this Master, who discovered the dead man I slew and recovered the papers and key from his body? He then hid the body and with a prize so great at hand. Simply circumvented us and is making his way to the tomb even now?”

“No, Vaughn said that the Master was already on his way. That he had preceded us and would be waiting at the ruins when we got there.” The girl Carmen looked up to the left slightly as she tried to remember her conversations with the wiry misshapen man. “He said that the Master was being escorted to the ruins and would be there before us. That their ship had just docked that morning and that he would go on ahead so we would not be slowed if we were pursued.”

“How can a five thousand year old vampire who will turn to dust in a single ray of sunlight make his way through daylight to the ruins? Wait a minute? Ship? Dock? Escorted?!” Pintails jumped up to his feet and stared over at the moldy looking urn that sat in the dog cart not more than five feet from them.

“You don’t suppose that it contains…” Xera leapt up to her feet with sword at the ready.

“If there is a five thousand year old vampire in there then opening it at night would be the height of folly.” Pintails voice had instinctively fallen to a whisper.

“Well, then let’s not open it.” Carmen shuddered as she rose to her feet with a fire brand clutched in both hands.

“I am more inclined to think it will open of its own accord.” Pintails whispered again and swallowed hard. The three of them stared at the large orange and black blistered and pealing stone vase frozen as the fire crackled and snapped at their feet.

*************************************************************************************

“This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of,” Pintails was pushing alongside Carmen on the back of the dog cart with the large stone urn inside while Xera tugged at the bridle of the donkey as they struggled up the steep winding path by torch light. “To actually be transporting a five thousand year old vampire, through a murky woods, in the middle of the night, to a destination of his choosing, where he hopes to find a circlet to make him an immortal human, by sacrificing YOU, and then no doubt killing me and her, AND I have to push the bloody cart on top of it all!”

“Quiet back there. I know what I am doing.” Xera held her torch in front of her in her right hand while continuing to yank on the tired donkey’s bridle with her left hand. “According to the map we should be only a few hours away from the ruins now.” Xera looked up into the heavy tree limbs and the night sky beyond.

“Bugger your map! I have been to these ruins dozens of times! We are nearly upon them and your idea by the way makes no sense to me. We should have piled wood all around the cart and set the bastard on fire like I said” Pintails grunted as he pushed with his shoulder and winced against the pain of his wound. “And why aren’t you back here pushing, eh?”

“I am guarding.” Xera intoned dead pan.

“Well let me guard a while and you push this damn thing!” Pintails wheezed as the large wheel finally made it over the exposed root and clattered on ahead.

“I guard you push that is also part of the plan,” Xera moved a bit ahead of the clattering donkey and the cart and the sweating exhausted man and woman who followed it; shifting her torch to her left hand and fingering her sword hilt with her right. “Hmm, there seems to be some kind of light just up ahead. You two stay and guard the cart. I will only be a moment.” Xera quickly moved ahead. With no one pulling on the donkey’s harness it quickly slowed to a stop and stood resting in its harness.

“Now what?” Pintails peered around the corner of the cart which had a torch shoved into each of its corners to try and help light the dark root tangled road. “She’s gone! Now where has she buggered off to?”

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Xera approached the feeble flickering of light in the dark wood instinctively realizing that it must be very bright indeed to be seen over the flicker of her own immediate hand held torch which would have normally masked another such light. After rounding the bend in the road she saw that the light was not on the road its self but off a short ways into the wood and slipping into a slow stead crouching tread she moved off the roadway in its direction.

At first the brush and thick undergrowth wrapping the large roots of the trees made the way forward difficult but then she stumbled over what must have been a second road or path and soon found herself standing near a fast moving stream and a campfire raging away. The campfire was not as bright a light as she first imagined it must be but it was more of a bonfire than a small campfire with several logs built in a steeple fashion and a ring of stones set about it. A smaller circle of stones sort of blistered off the larger one and coals had been raked here from the bonfire to where several iron poles were thrust into the mossy earth along the brooks bank and pots of all sizes and descriptions hung upon the interval hanging chains bubbling and gurgling with the sweet smells of cooking food.

Just past the bonfire and its cooking pots sat an enormous wagon looking all the world like a house on wheels. Two very small men were busy at work at a large metal contraption and talking back and forth and obviously having some difficulty in repairing it. They scurried up and down small ladders with tools in their hands and small candles set upon headbands utterly oblivious of the young girl as she straightened up and boldly walked into their camp with sword at the ready.

“Now try that,” there was a snapping sparking and a muffled yelp from the other small man. “Hmm, no that’s no good you singed off half an eyebrow that time. Ah, we have a customer!” And the small man turned and beamed a very wide smile at Xera who in turn looked all around her for this ‘customer’?

The second small man popped up from inside of the pile of metal gears and shapes his ears still smoking and smiled just as broadly as the first man, “Wonderful, wonderful! We are always open!”

“That is, we never close!” The first small man bellowed and both of them shot down the steam spewing pile of metal and raced over to their cart and began rapidly throwing catches and levers and opening wooden panels until in but a confused moment Xera found herself standing before a large spacious storefront crammed with assorted wares.

The two men had also somehow managed to change out of their work smocks and into small smart little pinstripe vests with brightly colored jackets, but without pants or lower garments of any kind or shoes upon their long clawed feet. They were both less than three feet tall and had dark olive skin with large pointed ears and long pointed chins and mouths full of sharp pointy claws and- “You’re goblins?!” Xera exclaimed in shock and surprise and then instantly regretted her bad manners. “I am sorry I didn’t mean to shout so, but you see, well I have never met goblins who could talk or well had any kind of business before?”

Both men simply shrugged and nodded. “It’s the same old story isn’t?”

“You see my brother and I were cursed by a witch.”

“Misunderstanding about a broom we sold her.”

“And where we said she could stick it.” Both goblins rubbed their backside and made pained expressions.

“That’s when we came up with our new store policy,” one of the small olive skinned men jumped up and yanked on a rope and a large back canvas unraveled which read in large flowery letters; ‘ALL SALES FINAL’ and in much smaller letters in one tiny corner; ‘NO WITCHES.’

“I… see” Xera had set her torch down at the edge of the fire while the small men were rushing about getting their shop ready and now had her free left hand fingering her chin in thought while her right hand continued to burnish her sword. “So you two, er, gentlemen are merchants then?”

“Merchants?! Bah! We’re more than that! We are inventors and explorers and discovers of rare and wondrous things!”

“Knickknacks and gobblygoos from the depths of the Earth and from the Stars!”

“But where are our manners?! I am Lickity and this here is my brother,” the goblin gestured to his brother who hawked a mouthful of phlegm and spat upon the ground and then smiled as they both bowed, “Spit.”

“Lickity and Spit, the, ah, goblin merchant explorers and whatnots… yes I see. Well I suppose I will be off, unless you have some horses you care to part with?” Xera looked around the campsite frowning at all the odd tarp covered strange shapes around her.

“Horses? No, an orc ate our last pair, sad really fine fellows, that witch really gets around. That was when we decided to build our new transportation wonder over there, call him Bob for now. Stands for, well, er, haven’t got that far yet. Anyway he is as strong as a forty mule hitch and runs on nothing but water and live coals.”

“When he runs,” the other brother sourly intoned.

“Anyway, enough chit-chat let’s get down to business. What will you be interested in this fine evening my lady?” The goblin rubbed his hands together gleefully and his long boney face took on a wicked sinister expression (which unfortunately is the only expression a goblin face can take on.)

“Well, I don’t know I wasn’t really intending to do any shopping at the moment. You know, middle of a dark nasty wood, late at night, long tired exhausting day…” Xera loved to shop and the three gold coins in her purse were just burning a hole there!

All through her hesitation the goblin brothers were almost fit to explode with apprehension that she may not buy something and were fidgeting around something fierce and waving hands at each other to calm down as they pawed their own heads in worry that she might leave without spending so much as a copper or two. “But that’s exactly when you SHOULD do all your shopping,” one brother shouted hopping from one foot to the other.

“Exactly, exactly! I ALWAYS do all my shopping late at night in a dark wood when I am exhausted after a long day!” He waved his long thin arms and huge clawed hands in exasperation.

“In fact, that is the ONLY time I will ever do my shopping.” The other brother put one hand on his small hip and another brushed back across his bald scaly scalp as he looked up at the rafters of the shop/cart a bit miffed.

“The problem here is, well first DO YOU HAVE any coin?” The brother called, Spit turned his long narrow skull at an angle to her and leered as his claws clattered against each other as he clasped his hands and hummed.

“I have a few gold pieces and silvers. I don’t tend to travel with too much coin on me. It weighs one down so.” Xera waved her sword about in an offhand manner.

“Gold?! Excellent! Excellent! Then really the only problem is simply figuring out what you simply can’t live without from all our excellent wares! Now where to begin?!”

“Well, that sword she is waving about is of such a questionable quality that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend she peruse our extensive assortment of fine quality weapons.” Spit was tapping a claw over his large wide eyes.

“Swords! Swords! Of course why did I not think of that! Got a barrel full of ‘em!” Lickity was racing about the shop as quick as lightning. While items clanged and clattered and simply where kicked aside this way or that as he ransacked barrels and crates and boxes.

“But really that armor HAS to go. Simply horrendous!” Spit was nodding now and then shaking his head and tisk-tisk-tisking up a storm of ill-concealed disdain.

Lickity froze in his mad gamble and then dropped the arm load of swords he had and shouted, “Right! Armor!” And set about racing and crashing about again as he searched all the boxes at breakneck speed.

Xera frowned down at her armor and muttered in a somewhat puzzled alarm, “what’s wrong with my armor?!”

“What’s wrong with it?!” Sit looked shocked. “Perhaps it would be easier to simply constrain ourselves with what is RIGHT with it so as not to waste the night away. HUMPH!”

“This is perfectly good armor! From one of the best foundries in Sarogoth, I will have you know!” But Xera’s voice was not as firm and certain as she had intended it to be and she kept looking over her armor as she turned this way and that in it.

“Sarogoth?! Well, yes and a mud pie is the best delectable in a pigsty. But really, Sarogoth?! I THINK? I may have heard of the place once or twice not really KNOWN for its armor though now is it? More known for its fleas and dysentery from what I remember hearing. But really, Sarogoth?! Maybe we were wrong in offering to sell you our wares. Perhaps we were a tad hasty? You see we only deal in the finest, the rarest, the most supreme quality merchandise the realm can offer, and magical, most if not all of our items are of magical properties. Sarogoth… humph. Why I never.”

“Well, er, I thought it was a very large and nice city when I was there and-” the goblin merchant Spit cut her off with such a look of bugged eyed horror and then disgust that she froze and felt very small, very small indeed.

“Perhaps it would just be best if you go,” Spit waved his hand at the young girl and motioned with his chin.

Lickity had also frozen in his mad pell-mell race about the shop and looked alarmed and shocked as he stood half wearing helmets and armor and half laden with them in his arms. “Ah, give the poor girl a chance Spit. I mean, maybe she has never been to a really fine establishment before? She dunno know better.”

Spit had half turned away from the girl with his arms crossed across his tiny chest and then looked down at her with one indignant eye, “well, I don’t know. We do have a reputation to maintain.”

“Oh yes, please. Please let me look over the armor.” Xera gave her best smile and sheathed her sword.

“Well… alright but try and not get the things too dirty with your fingers.” Spit relented and both Xera and Lickity burst in relieved smiles and Spit instantly joined them in their excited enthusiasm.

“Well, the first problem with that so called armor you are wearing now is that it is so bulky and cumbersome I can scarce conceive of how you can trudge about in it let alone fight anything more than a tankard of ale up to your lips.” Spit was sorting through the pile of armor Lickity had deposited in a heap upon the broad wooden shelf that was at about the girl’s chin level.

“Bulky?!” Xera looked down at her armor. It consisted of metal glove/gauntlets, metal bicep covers, metal shoulder pads, metal helmet with ear flaps and nose guard, a metal bustier which left her H-cup cleavage exposed and jiggling, a metal banded skirt which fell to her mid thighs but hiked up quite a bit to expose her half naked buttocks where a silk skirt and silk panties did their best to conceal what every male seemed most egger to see, a pair of metal thigh plates, knee guards with side solar dial extra guards, metal shin guards, and metal boots. For all its covering the metal work was fluted and etched so it had a delicate look but it did ride heavy as one walked about and at the end of the day she was very exhausted. Still considering the entire backside of her legs were exposed except were the straps holding on the front metal pieces sunk in and her entire upper chest was on full display (and distraction!) she could hardly call her set of armor bulky or cumbersome. In fact, she often felt it blushingly too revealing and would have liked a bit more covering not less! “This armor is actually fairly light in its construction I am not sure I would call it bulky or cumbersome.”

“Well, I would. Look here what do you think of this!” And Spit carefully laid out several gossamer pieces of fine bits of shiny metal and silken fabrics that shimmered and glimmered in the lamp Lickity had fetched and held aloft.

“OH! Gosh! They ARE beautiful!” Xera loved beautiful things but often found herself painfully pawning them after a while for ale and food. “Glittery, so, so glittery, oh my, but too skimpy to wear into combat surely?!”

“What?! Nonsense silly girl! Look at that label there,” the goblin turned the fine fragile garment over in his large black clawed hands and Xera peered closely at the label stamped into the small metal piece. “FANBOYZ SERVCIE FAN-TITS-SEE ARMOR... THE LESS IT COVERS THE MORE IT PROTECTS!”

Xera raised up her head from reading the small print and scratched the back of her head, “the less it covers the more it protects?! How does that work?!”

Both goblins shrugged and said simultaneously, “its magic!”

Spit continued, “The Fanboyz Service Fan-tits-see Armor line has been doing for armor what the Plus One Sword Company had been doing for weapons for the past ten years. Very highly rated and much sought after, I can assure you!”

“Hmmm, I don’t know? It looks like it would be light and easy to move in but I really can’t fathom how a piece of flimsy see-through metallic cloth can provide as much protection as an inch thick plate of steel?”

“Wha?! You have doubt?! But of course you do. You are from that Sarogoth place. Here let me show you!” And with that he quickly yanked off his jacket and vest and put on some of the Fanboyz Service Fan-tits-see Armor on his body. “Now hit me Lickity!” And without hesitation Lickity began to pound Spit with a large steel banded club.

Xera winced at the blows but they seemed to do little damage to Spit who stood stock still smiling at her. That is until Lickity delivered a shop shuddering blow to Spit’s head who’s eyes bulged and his smile went wonky as he wheezed, “not wearing a helmet you imbecilic twit.” And he gave a weak smile at the girl and tried not to fall down.

“Are you alright?” Xera asked him with both her hands clasped to the sides of her face in alarm.

“Never better,” Spit wheezed and then recovered a little bit. “After all I am wearing the latest in protection in the Fanboyz line!” And he managed to give a big smile as he leaned his shoulder with his elbow and forearm on the top of the wooden countertop between him and her and arched an eye brow at the girl. She in turn tried very hard not to laugh as he looked very foolish in the bra top and silks of the armor. “Wana try it on yourself?”

“Well… I am not sure. It seems a little, um, revealing.” Xera was holding up one of the pieces of the so called armor and noting how she could see the fingers of her other hand easily through the shimmering metallic fabric.

“Measuring time!” Spit howled and both he and Lickity produced fabric tape measures and leapt over the shelf counter and upon her in a blur.

“This is no time to be shy girl, we need a good fit!” Spit was shouting as he and Lickity danced around her somehow yanking off her armor and thus her clothing in a mad twisting whirlwind of pulls and tugs. In a heartbeat she was utterly naked with her right hand clasped over her left nipple and its elbow pressed in tightly over her right nipple and her left hand locked over her thick hairy proud pubic mound!

Somehow despite her loud protests issuing from her red embarrassed face and her firm clamping white knuckle grasps on her exposed body parts the goblins managed to get all their prying measurements without any obstruction to their dancing efforts what so ever?!

With measurements in mind they leapt back over their counter top and set about muttering and figuring and thinking and scratching and eyeing the ceiling as they worked out sizes and such. As the poor girl still naked and still red faced slowly spun to a stop dizzy and still in shock over what had just happened and confused as she was still not really sure what had just happened.

“It’s a challenge, it’s a challenge,” Lickity scratched his head, ass, and exposed scrotum at the same time.

“Oh, no denying that, Mr. Lickity. No sir-ree. Never quiet had such a challenge before… let’s see that would work out to an H-cup in the breasts, and quite a bit tight at that, but that’s how they are wearing them this year. Small back big front though, for all that front weight, wonder how she stands? And very narrow waist there, twenty one inches, tiny considering those full round hips jutting out there at an almost thirty-seven was it now? And she is a tall one, six one, oh my.”

“Let’s try a thirty-eight double HH-cup with a twenty-one waist and go for a thirty-six on the hips because as you say, they are wearing it a bit tighter this year.” Lickity had one eye closed as he waged a finger at his brother who nodded furiously.

“Right, right, you are my brother o’mine. We will have to cobble between two sets and do a bit of alteration but I think we can just manage it.” And Spit set to work as sparks flew from their work bench at the back of the shop.

“Give us half a mo,” Lickety nodded at the stunned embarrassed girl who hoped no passerby had overheard all her personal measurements being so publicly brassed about. And then he joined his brother at the work bench as the night filled with the ringing of hammers and the curses of pricked fingers as needle and thread raced through the murky woods.

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Pintails walked around the cart for what must have been the thousandth time peering into the murky darkness of the wood and cursing the missing Xera, “Where on Earth can that girl have wandered off to?! Ah! There you are!” Xera somewhat staggered out of the torches set at each corner of the small carts collective ring of flickering light with a sort of lopsided smile on her face and a little bit weak in the knees. “Where have you been?! You just wandered off and left us here weaponless and alone with a five thousand year old vampire! And where are your clothes?”

Xera waved off the annoying man’s questions, “I,er, scouted ahead to make sure the way was clear and safe. The ruins are just around the next two bends in the road.”

“I could have told you that,” Pintails whined.

The barmaid got up from her seat upon a rock and approached Xera, “so there isn’t anyone waiting at the ruins? And I LOVE your new outfit.”

“No, I saw no one, and thanks it is sweet isn’t it?!” Xera smiled down at her new Fanboyz Fan-tits-see armor and spun on her heels looking at the front and back. Xera was wearing a small sliver circlet across her brow glittering with embedded gems and small silver wings upon the temple ends to help hold back her long flowing hair. Upon her forearms she wore silver winding coiled bracelets that were fashioned out of a single long twisting strand of wire embedded with blue gems. They wove up from her wrist to her elbow on both arms and glowed in the night air with a white hue so bright that she was no longer carrying her torch, her way being lighted by the bracelets upon her forearms and their almost identical fragile looking twinning silver strands the made up the stiletto heeled foot wear she now wore, as well as her shin guards. These pieces were all of single strands of wrapped about sliver wire curling this way and that like a creeper vine with strange blue opals set in the wire swirls centers. Both the silver wire and the blue stones glowed brightly and lighted the dark air about her.

Upon her torso she wore a sliver shimmering band that ran under her mighty breasts, this band had a pair of sliver cupped bowl like shapes that jutted out from the band. These helped support her firm huge breasts and then rose up and covered from the underside her large puffy areolas and nipples. Her massive firm breast flesh over spilled the edges of the bands supporting struts and cupped covers as they were sunken in tight in their fit.

Upon her upper arms and shoulders she wore fragile looking elaborately carved small silver plates of etched metal and around her slim neck she wore a metal collar set with gems and from these a gossamer glowing transparent cape fluttered about her shoulders and naked back upon unfelt currents of gentle wind.

Upon her lower body she wore three sliver slim chains. They appeared to have to have been steeped into in order for them to be worn but in fact there were tiny secret catches in the tiny chains. One loop ran up her full round buttocks crack and around her hip and then back down over her crotch, so that it looked like she had stepped into a single loop of sliver chain and pulled it up one leg until it was wedged tightly in her butt crack and over her groin. An identical chain mirrored this on the other leg, so that both slim sliver chains ran up her butt crack and over her side hip and then down to run on either side of her labia and pubic mound completing the circle. A third sliver chain ran around her narrow waist and was bobbed and weaved through the other two chains so they were all connected. It was as if someone had taken a pair of panties and kept the edge seams and removed the fabric of the panties themselves. The silver chains dug in tightly to her soft pale flesh and from the front waist chain several see-through metallic silks hung.

A sliver belt hung as well about her narrow waist from which several silver pouches hung. To this belt was added a sliver curved crescent of overlapping metal plates that made an overall triangular shape that covered her upper jutting hips from waist to the mid-sphere of her buttocks. It jangled up and down and looked all the world like a bunny tail.

Her sword and harness were gone and in their place she now held a small round shield upon her left forearm and a long sliver spear was clasped firmly in her right fist. The shield and spear tip glowed brightly with white light.

“You went shopping?! You left us here with a five thousand year old vampire to go shopping?!” Pintails was beside himself and looked incredulously from one woman to the other who ignored him and cooed and ahhed over the new armor and weapons.

Xera blushed at the girl’s praise of her armor but demurred at telling where she had purchased the equipment or of its cost. For it had cost her all her coin and then some. The two ugly goblin brothers had suggested a ‘trade’ of sorts to make up the balance. Something they called an ‘around the world’? she did not know then or even now what an ‘around the world’ was really, but it apparently meant the two tiny peckered boys got to cum in about every orifice upon her body as well as plastering her face, chest, and buttocks with their foul smelling goo.

It had been far from pleasant to be hammered in the mouth, pussy, and ass by pinkie sized peckers for what seemed hours on end. And worse every time they had spurted their goo and collapsed upon the ground smiling at her and she had gone down to the nearby creek to wash herself clean, when she had returned to the cart and her waiting new belongings the two boys had insisted that there was one more ‘charge’ or ‘surtax’ or ‘tariff’ and away they would go banging away at her body until she was all covered in goo again. She had made no less than six such trips down to the creek to wash herself and be on her way until on the seventh she got an idea to try and ‘wear out the boys’.

It was a very clever idea and this time instead of just letting herself be tossed around like a bag of beans she aggressively ground her hips and pumped like mad demanding the goblin boys to finish what they had started. No letting them blow their wads and sink smiling upon the mossy sward. No, she kept at them without let up and after their fourth eruption of non-stop sex the two boys had collapsed exhausted upon the ground murmuring weakly.

This time after washing her sticky body at the creek, when she returned to the camp she found both goblins fast asleep and snoring and she smirked at her cleverness and dressed in her new gear in peace and quiet. She also decided to help herself to some of the delicious smelling food, but nothing tastes much good when you already y have a belly half full of goblin spunk. But the small barrel of ale she polished off was good and she helped herself to a lovely dagger with thigh band and sheath which she gave the barmaid as a gift who was much pleased with it and set about placing it on her thigh. She also decided to retrieve her three gold coins and a few others as well as she thought that ‘eight around the worlds’ was payment enough and felt, in fact, considering how much they had pulled her hair and slapped her ass until it was beet red and came in her mouth again and again when she had expressly told them not to, that she had overpaid at that.

“What about me? Did you bring me some kind of weapon as well?” Pintails looked at the barmaid who had just finished putting on her sheathed dagger around her upper thigh and yanked down her silks at his stare with a miffed, ‘humph!’

“It will be daylight soon. We should be safe in taking the vampire to the ruins now as he cannot venture forth without destroying himself,” Xera grabbed the donkey’s bridle and began to tug as the other two reluctantly set about pushing on the back of the cart to force the large wheels over the root covered road.

“Xera how is it you knew the vampire would not come out of his urn and attack us while we were transporting him?” the barmaid queried and she pushed less and less and let the grunting sweating Pintails and the donkey do most of the burden.

“Well, it was a hunch really. I figured the creature would need to rest up as much as possible if it were going to attempt such a complex ritual and spell as Pintails suggested. Besides as far as it knows, it is being escorted to the ruins where it will be awakened by its partners at the appropriate time. It has no need to pop its head out now and then; and considering the way the urn has been sealed there is no way it could open it without destroying it and thus destroying its one known safe harbor against the daylight.”

Xera stopped up short. The sun had been up for some time but it took a while for the rays to penetrate the dark overhang of the thick tall trees but now they had reached the ruins and before it lay a well-worn glade where one could make out the old campfires of dozens of travelers who had rested here and the sun poured down brightly in the opening in the thick canopy rimming it.

The donkey continued on despite Xera’s letting go of the bridle as the road here gave way to a broad grassy sward which the donkey meandered to and set about munching on the dewy green grass. Pintails and the girl came up on either side of Xera and joined her in eyeing the ruins that lay on the other side of the grassy glade.

The ruins were overgrown and swallowed up on either side by a tangle of trees but they rose up in the center in piles of jumbles and broken walls to slant up into the rearing mountain at their back which in turn was riddled with caves. Flocks of birds erupted here and there and the trio slowly made their way up alongside the cart their eyes darting everywhere in the sudden suns blinding light.

“Now we open it,” Xera came away from one of the glades pocked campfire sites with a rusty looking metal maul in both her hands. Her shield and spear slung across her back her cape dancing about her like willow wisps. She sauntered up to the cart and with one fell blow struck at the stone urn with such force that the entire side of it cracked and shattered spilling out a content of dank bone and rusted metal.

The trio looked uneasily at the urn as Xera gave it a few more wacks until it was little more than a pile of broken stone and bone and a few grimy jewels and pieces of musty muddy gold. The donkey joined in their confused stares adding his munching bored one.

“I don’t get it?” The barmaid cautiously picked up one of the small gems and rubbed the grime off of it. “Did he just die that fast?”

“No,” Pintails joined her in carefully pawing through the smelly moldy pile holding up a rusted bit of metal that might have been a blade at one time. “These are the markings of the Antorich Kings. A civilization thousands of years in the past. They have several ruins many miles down the river from here, but I don’t understand.”

Xera frowned, “so where is the vampire?”

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“Ah, bring it in, bring it in! Be careful! That’s it,” the old man danced around with several of his guests smiling as the four large surly men placed the blue stone urn on the ground in front of the reception tables. “Eh! What’s this? That is not an Antorich burial urn? Let alone one of the royal house of Sy-moon-thoth! What is this, what is Professor Diggs up to at the excavation site?! What’s this card, ‘happy birthday Elliot’?! What? Is this some kind of poor joke? Because I can assure you it is not in the least bit funny. Heads will roll for this, heads will roll. Well, don’t just stand there open the thing! Perhaps we can make some sense of it from the contents!”

The four confused men along with several of the gathered colleagues set to work on the large wax sealed lid, struggling with it until with a howl it popped off. A gaunt tall man shot upright from the urn causing the crowd to recoil in shock. He tossed up and arm and screamed in the bright sunlight and burst into flames!

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“I have delivered the urn to the ruins as per my contract so as far as I am concerned my job here is done.” Xera folded her arms under her huge breasts and gave the disheveled Pintails a bored look.

Pintails was retrieving the rusty maul from where the woman had tossed it and with some effort managed to hold it across his chest at the ready with two hands and a bit of a strained face. “I doubt your contract said to bring the urn to the ruins and then smash it to smithereens,” The sandy haired man gave her a sneer and then boldly strode a few paces to the ruins before turning back to her. “Look my offer still stands. I will pay you ten, no twenty gold coins, if you will help me retrieve the circlet of Cyblime. You are already here; the burial chamber is just a little further.”

Xera had almost ten gold coins already in her purse thanks to the snoring goblin brothers and did not really feel like crawling around in a some dusty ruins when she was still a two day walk to the nearest tavern. Besides there was the donkey and cart and the rental fees piling up to think about. “Don’t you need those papers of yours and some kind of metal key was it? To find and access this little crown thing of yours?”

“The papers were maps and I have them memorized after all these months of pouring over them. As far as the key, well, I guess that is lost. But maybe this will do?” He hefted the maul. “There is a ritual and incantation to make the circlet work but in time I can rediscover that information of those lost papers as well. What really matters is just getting the circlet physically out of these ruins and back to my home. It is not something I can readily do alone but I will if I have to. But I won’t lie, with you and your warrior skills it would be much easier.”

“Do you so fear death that you prize this trinket so highly?” Xera eyed the man who had come walking back toward her.

“You don’t understand. It is not death, but aging. Getting old. You can’t understand because you are still so very, very young. You don’t know what it is to lose your beauty, your vitality, your energy, and your youth. To start becoming, well ugly, your hair falling out, your knees and joints cracking and popping, to have to start paying for sex where once women use to swoon over you and beg you for it. To have to take potions to have the stamina to-“

Behind the sandy haired man who had lowered his head in dejected monologue the barmaid raised her pinkie and wiggled it and then mimed a yawn and rolled her eyes.

Xera blushed and smiled and tried very hard not to laugh and then cleared her throat, “well, anything so precious to you should be worth a great deal more than a few dozen gold coins.”

The man yanked back up his head and blurted out, “no you misunderstood me. I only meant I had only twenty or so coins upon me. Right now. Of course if you help me retrieve the circlet and escort me back to my house safe and sound I will gladly pay you a hundred or two hundred more! Here, as a show of good faith.” The sandy haired man set down the maul and dug around his person until he found a small chinking bag and tossed it at Xera who caught it in one hand and opened it. “There are twenty five gold coins in there and some silver, all yours as a down payment if you help me now.”

“There are only fifteen gold coins in here and six silver,” Xera looked up and both she and the man looked at the barmaid who looked away and whistled a tune. “But since I am between jobs I will accept your offer. I will keep this as a down payment on the two hundred gold you still owe me.” Xera walked up aside the man and easily yanked the maul off the ground with one hand. “Now, show me this crypt.”

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It was not ‘just a little ways further’ as the sandy haired man had suggested. But rather an entire day’s journey zigzagging through the maze of forest tortured ruins, so that the sun had well set and new torches made and Xera’s Fanboyz Fan-tits-see armor a glow in a white shimmer before they had managed to weave their way through the toppled stone structures and found themselves at the massive stone door of the crypt. Xera’s Plus One spear had already sheathed its self in the bowels and hissing maws of dozens of foul beasts and creatures by the time they had stood before the stone portal and she had more than earned her keep having saved their lives from countless ancient traps by her keen knowledge and wits of years of experience raiding ruins and lost cities. So she was not in much mood to linger at the door longer than necessary and eyed it quickly.

She could tell in an instant the maul would be of little worth against such and an imposing structure. “We will surely need the key or else find some other means of access,” she ran her fingers along the metal aperture set in the stone no doubt designed to accept the key. “The design is strange. This lock cannot be picked.”

“The key is in the shape of a glass sphere. I-” the sandy haired man was cut off by a howling sound and a large furry shape knocked him to the ground. The barmaid who had sat down as was her habit upon any pause in their progress, screamed and yanked back from the somersaulting pair.

Xera instinctively shot forward and slammed the maul into the hairy creatures head causing it to fly off and smack into a pile of stone that once was a pillar, and thus no doubt saved the sandy haired man’s life for about the twelfth time that day.

The creature snarled and came up in a crouch. It was hairy but man-shaped and had the face of a dog and claws dripping blood but it wore tattered clothing that Xera dimly recognized.

“It’s a werewolf!” Pintails shouted as she scrambled back and looked up at the full moon over head.

“It’s the man I killed on the pathway!” Xera growled as she raised the maul for another strike.

 “It is the man who hired me to help him rob Pintails,” the barmaid added as she yanked her dagger out of its thigh sheath and scurried to place Xera and Pintails between her and the beast.

The werewolf still dazed from the sucker punch blow of the maul to the side of its head zeroed in on the barmaid as she was the only one still moving and launched its self into the air.

The maul in Xera’s hands caught it in the ribs and carried it back into the stone door.

“Werewolves are magical beasts you cannot kill it by brute force,” Pintails had managed to regain his feet and clutched at the freshly bleeding wounds on his chest where the monsters talons had racked him in its initial attack.

“Don’t tell me how to do my job!” Xera huffed as she brought the maul down with a sickening crunch on the wolf’s head. It slopped to the side with a snapping sound of wet bones. Xera eyed the silent beast and then quickly saw and yanked away the leather pouch belted to its side. She looked through it keeping one eye on the apparently dead wolf man. “Seems we have recovered your papers and the glass key.” She tossed the leather pouch to Pintails and then knocked the wolf man aside with a golf swing of the maul.

“I am telling you that beast is not dead. It will regenerate and come after us again. It can only be killed by magical means,” Pintails had caught the leather satchel and was digging through it.

“Fine, do you know or have such means?” Xera kept an eye on the blood oozing fury monster.

“I am afraid not, though fire will retard its resurrective powers a bit,” and he tossed his torch upon the beast’s corpse where it began to smoke and blaze releasing a foul stench of burnt hair. He had found the glass key and after looking it over in an anxious state breathed a sigh of relief and placed it in the large stone door.

The door opened.

Normally Xera would have lead the way but she hung back eyeing the now burring body of the werewolf as the other two entered the dark chamber half sharing half fighting over the barmaid’s torch. The room inside was small. It contained a single sarcophagus of black stone raised up in the center of the room and a black stone throne at the far end of the room.

The sarcophagus was empty its lid pulled aside. Upon the black stone throne sat a leathery skeleton wearing a gold circlet. The cadaver got up and walked over to the two stunned intruders with an outstretched hand its tongue-less tooth-less mouth a gap.

In a blur Xera flashed past Pintails and the barmaid and landed her maul on the neck and shoulder of the undead man. The figure slammed into the side of the black stone coffin and Xera yanked off the gold crown with the sound of the grinding of bone. The corpse turned to dust. “Here,” she handed the circlet to Pintails. “That would be two hundred gold you owe me. Plus tip, for I don’t know, saving your life thirteen times now?”

Pintails ignored her, his eyes wide and shimmering in the glow of Xera’s armor and the still startled barmaid’s torch. He held up the circlet above his head and lowered it upon his brow. “The circlet of Cyblime now the circlet of Pintails.” The circlet was gold and had several radiating out gold metal points no doubt meant to represent sun rays. Suddenly these metal sunrays shot inward piercing Pintails skull. His smiling face took on a look of shocked horror and then his body began to decay until he was no more than a shambling corpse who moved past Xera and the barmaid, his eyes staring at his withered hands and arms, until he collapsed upon the black stone throne and setting his elbows upon his knees clutched his skull like face and sobbed.

Xera and the barmaid cautiously back treaded out of the crypt just as the glass globe key cracked in the socket and exploded into dust and the door slammed shut!

Xera blinked at the barmaid who looked back at her with an open mouth. “Well, I guess there goes two hundred gold coins.” Xera whispered and then looked down at the smoldering corpse of the werewolf. “I suggest we leave this place in a hurry.” The barmaid nodded her ascent and both women fled the creepy tomb of Cyblime/Pintails.

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The oily haired man picked himself up off the floor from the pile of destroyed furniture and stepped over the moaning bodies of the two twin hunters Dingle, “I think we have finally stopped?!” carefully and cautiously the potbellied innkeeper slowly opened the barred front door and peaked outside. “We have stopped!”

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The bright early morning air was disrupted by the loud sound of hammering as the Dingle brothers pounded a sign into the rocky ground near the roots of the sleeping tree. The sign read; ‘GAINT TREE INN... CHECK US OUT IN OUR NEW LOCATION.” Upon the doorstep the innkeeper swept with a straw broom and stopped momentarily to look out at the brilliant sky that pushed clouds this way and that and then cautioned the Dingle brothers who had almost back stepped off the edge of the sheer cliff of the very high small flat almost inaccessible mountain top where the great tree had come to a rest.

“Well, this might hurt business a bit.” The innkeeper mumbled as a bank of clouds passed a few hundred feet below him and a flock of black birds circled the giant tree perched upon the top of the sheer sided small plateau before veering off and into the sunrise with a few laughing caw-caws.

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