Chapter Eighty-Two

December 15, 2012

 

24th of Vintagemonth

 

            We ride for the day and make a dark camp for the evening.  That night, during my watch, I hear several horses on the road.  I sneak back out of the woods and see a force of around a hundred mounted men traveling back toward the town from which we just came.  I wake Ulric, who says to leave them be.

            The next morning, we set off, and after some time, Korvinean veers off of the road and scouts ahead.  Around four pm, we come to a heavily farmed area.  We hold off on entering the area, and send Korvinean ahead to scout.  He comes back and tells us that there are undead tending the fields, but that they paid him no mind as he moved through the area.  He leads us through, and we see a large rock outcropping with a tower atop it.  Korvinean leads us up to a flatish spot in the rock and tells us that there’s a door here.  I manage to find and open it, but it is quite well hidden.  We go in and begin to navigate a series of tunnels there.  In one room, there is some sort of water creature, but it doesn’t attack us, so we pin the doors and keep moving.

            A few doors down, we come to a room with a raised dais.  The floor of the dais has an inscribed summoning circle that has binding elements in it.  Ulric asks me to borrow some chalk and blows some into the area, revealing a barbed devil in the circle.  He is well and truly trapped, so we agree to release him once we kill the wizard, and we move along our way. 

            In another room, there are shelves lined with jars and flasks.  I step in to take a closer look at them, and a voice asks, “What may I get for you today, sir?”  When I don’t answer, a figure coalesces in front of me and attacks.  He reaches his hand directly into my chest and grasps my heart.  It is quite painful, but we manage to kill it.  We move on up the stairs.

            At the top of the stairs, a girl walks out of a room.  She is young and beautiful and wearing a shackle on her left ankle and an iron collar.  She had just come out of a swinging door, and when we enter, we find ourselves in a kitchen.  As soon as Ulric moves to attack, the two guards in the room turn to counter.  One of the slaves, a man in a loincloth, immediately turns and pours a pot of boiling water over one guard’s head and pulls him to the ground with the pot over his head.  Once he is down, the slave pulls the guard’s dagger and kills the second guard.  He turns toward Ulric to attack, but pauses.  “Sir Briggette?” he asks, looking over Ulric’s shoulder.

            He pauses and looks around, “How did you get Sir Ulric’s armor?”

            Ulric is nonplussed.  He replies, “I am Sir Ulric.”

            “That is not Zurwald’s surcoat,” the man observes.

            Ulric lifts his visor and the man recognizes him.  He quickly explains the new county and asks the man how he knows us.  He was fighting with us about two years ago in some battle.  “What is your name?” Ulric asks.

            “I am called Gregor,” he replies.

            “Kneel,” Ulric requests.  He taps Law’s Claw on each shoulder and says, “Now rise, Sir Gregor!” 

            We help the slaves remove their collars, and give them instructions on how to get out through the passage in the bedrock.  He explains that most of the slaves here are affected by their collars and are unable to tell the difference between reality and fiction.  Ulric instructs him to take the men and meet us at the Hoffman rendezvous point in two weeks.  He gives us instruction on how to move through the tower to find the likely location of the mage.

            As we step out onto the third floor, we find a guard raping a young girl.  She is bound and bent over a table, and three other guards are standing in a line waiting their turn.  I shoot the one actively raping her through the head, and we quickly dispatch the other three.

            We continue up the spiral staircase, and when we enter the top room, we find four men in robes, each  carrying a scythe sparkling with different kinds of energies.  We battle, and as Ulric cuts one of the men down, all four of them go down.  Another man with a bastard sword attacks me, dealing a great amount of damage, but we are able to dispatch him as well.