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Dear Diary, Well. We were there at the dock, about to load up and sail away when Persephone (Kore) shows up. She was with that fire mage who had been giving Amber and Ariel so much grief and the two of them were smiling and talking like old friends when they caught up with us. I didn't know whether to curse or jump, I was so surprised. I have to admit that my first thought was that the old geezer had bewitched her somehow or used a mind warping charm. I was ready to do something about it when Kore caught my eye and winked. I waited, but none of us could think of anything we wanted to hear from him. Turns out the old geezer was able to surprise me after all. He had an unofficial message from the counsel. They had located the portal gate to the mainland, lost ever since the world went dark and Upharsin struck. The flood of chaos that had entered with Upharsin had disrupted everything, including causing Ostend to lose its gate -- the same type of gate that got us to the mainland. People had been searching for it for generations, but most thought it had been destroyed. It had not, but the location was one that usually they couldn't touch. One of the vulture lords had it. But he was an outlaw. Now most of the Couranth (the proper name for the chaos vultures) are outlaws of one sort or another, but he was a "real" outlaw, not just a member of a political group or faction that was out of favor, but a renegade, traitor and blasphemer far beyond the normal run-of-the-mill evil and horror that made up Couranth nests and their society. So the other lords would be glad to see him fall, even if they would not countenance, ever, the Council using the fact of outlawry as an excuse to officially move against any of them, no matter how much the hatred. On the other hand, if we chose to act, no one would raise a hand to aid him. It was a fine line, since the Couranth did not want their internal politics to create an excuse for outsiders to pick them off, one-by-one (no matter how much they deserved it), but at the same time wanted this wolf's head cast down once and for all. Kore could guide us to a starting place, and he had a sketch of a skrying of the heart of the nest where the portal lay, but that was the most they could do, that and wish us well. Kore assured me that this task was within our grasp. I'd burned with hate for the vultures since I'd seen one, and this was the heart of the calling of the blue lodge. For the others, they were eager to pull down evil, though I'm not sure they had thought through what this really meant. I think all the paid attention to was the fact that this creature was eating young children and that if we did not do something, his evil would continue unabated. I would have gone by myself, even though Kore warned me that if the others did not go, I did not have the ability to end him alone. I'd have rather died than left that sort of evil continue unchallenged.

We did take the time to check our gear, pick up some tents and a couple mules and take good care, though we still were traveling very, very light.  We left the boat under guard, with a council seal on it. This was serious.

As we followed the path with Kore, we ran into some initial trials, that helped us get back on track as a team. The wilderness around Ostend is still very untamed. We ran into shadow trolls, twisted dryads, thorn trolls (imagine a black rose with huge thorns, wrapped into a man shape -- unsettling, yet fierce in anger and beauty -- which amazed me for a troll), Tiev Gnack (the running ones, like skeletal man-rats), gelataneous creatures made of chaos tainted leaf molds a few feral trolls and some valk' ^ries that were carrion creatures, not messengers of a godlet. .It had been a long time since I was in a truly wild wilderness, untamed and deep, dark and shadowed where the trees often blocked out the sun. We eventually reached the edge of the creature's domain, and there Kore left us. It was a little strange. I could feel the chaos taint, but at the same time, the area was not as wild.

The edges were infested with bandits. We met some, robbers preying around the edges of the corpse that the Vulture had turned the land into, and thieves using the fear and stench of the place as a way to hide from those who might otherwise hunt them down in their lairs.

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TIt was soon enough that we met the first outliers of the twisted chaos thing that was the vulture lord we were stalking. Here and there we met evil creatures, wrapped in power like paladins, only corrupted by chaos. They led bands of undead scorpion men. Not the brave guardians of the sun, such as the Assyrians celebrated, but all undead. Some ghostlike, some calcified, some zombies and a few rotted away to mere animated skeletons.  We also met undead shapechangers. Both groups were slowly covering the land, "harvesting" the last of the peasants and other dependent folk who lived there. We also met higher breeds of the tiev. This Couranth was replacing his human domains with tiev creatures and twisted chaos trolls (what I think of as "real" trolls rather than the humanoid mermen and giants the city folk think of as trolls). We clashed with the bands we met, slaying them and burning the bodies, but moving on quickly. It was disordered, the master had summoned and invited and hired and been long absent, wrapped in some sort of sorcery. The land was lawless and every band was seeking to build power for itself against the day when the master might awake, if he awoke at all. As we got closer, we ran into some patrols. The vulture lord was attempting to re-establish the control he had let slip. His captains were humans, served either by tiev mercenaries, armed in metal, or by revived necromatic summonings. We watched as they demanded obedience from those they met. Some fell in line, some fell upon them and there was slaughter going both ways. At least one captain slaughtered all of those who agreed to follow him, raising their bodies as undead to serve instead. They crumpled into dust as Marie's arrows took out the captain.  Several times we rescued children from these bands and I used my marks to carry them back to Ostend. Finally we came to the great dome that masked the gate and the walls and collonade leading up to it. Behind it was a cliff-side with a ruined erie at the top and a great keep behind it. We planned our assault carefully. We could see the Vulture working on a ritual, cages of children suspended about him. Ariel froze the water and we struck straight to the core, surprising him as he worked the finish of the magic that had embroiled him. Surprised, he shapechanged, and his acolytes, kar manta all, rose to his defense. It was a bloody fight, but we managed to survive. Looking back, Wolfie striking with his mind, keeping his focus in spite of his fury, that was the difference. That, and the fact that when the Vulture died, the kar manta all twisted in agony and joined him. In the cages we found not just human, but vulture children as well. (Ok, I call them vultures, they are humanoid, feathered, look somewhat like phoenix-humans, but the tradition and taint go back generations). No wonder his peers hated him, feeding on his own the same way his own fed on others.

Of course that did not end it. Reaching the gate actually made it so I could not use my marks and we had so many children. That meant we had to escort them the forty dangerous miles to Ostend.

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I never volunteered to babysit. Someone mentioned that Amber had experience in that area, I think it was Ariel. Whoever it was, they didn't repeat the comment. THe children were scared and weak. We broke them out of the cages and organized them in lines, by age and strength, the strongest at the end, the weakest in front. Amber let the nature spirit in her being wash over them and heal them and you could see their spirits rise with their health. We took all of our remaining food and fed them. It was already night, but staying near the gate just did not seem like an option, neither did crossing back over the lake, so we entered what had appeared to be a keep emplaced in the cliff face behind the dome. It was more of a great opening and then a bare area, as if the Vulture had planned a new nest, but had not gone beyond leaving the old one, still a ruin above us. One of the Couranth children told us that their parents had struck at the nest to rescue them, but could not penetrate the gate's protective aura. They had been balked in futile rage by him at that edge, not having the anti-chaos force we could muster (being chaos tainted themselves instead). In the morning we began our march back, not stopping to risk the water and not searching for food in the ruins or the empty spaces. We had crossed five miles by noon, the children making good order, our familiars scouting and watching. By then we had been spotted by two groups who were dogging our trails and we had to stand and fight. Amber, Marie and Ariel went one way, Wolfie and I the other. We left Jean to look strong, keep the children from scattering, and to serve as a last reserve. I shouldn't have worried, those we faced were corrupt, but not as much of a threat as we had thought. Perhaps if we had let them get closer, but choosing to intercept them had been the right choice. Then I could feel the marks come alive again.

The mar

WIth the marks, it was easy. Time consuming and draining, a few children at a time, but easy, compared to herding them all barefoot and almost naked, malnourished and scared into a near panic, across fields and through forest. The mages were even more anxious to return with me than they had been to send us on this errand, I guess the lure of the gate was a bit much. But that meant that suddenly the gate connected to Ostend (where they had been trying to build a portal, and had something that could reach forty miles -- if there was a real gate at the other end). That may not seem like much of a change, but more than enough to make it worth walking back for the rest of the children to use a gate rather than travel with the marks in my arms. Gates are easy, using the marks drains magic and stamina and wears quickly. I wasn't sure how long I could have kept it up, but I wasn't about to let those children come to harm. I think it was about then I fainted from exhaustion. I woke up to find Wolfie holding me. We were back in Ostend.

The council was grateful, which actually surprised me. Nothing official, of course, but of the wrack and ruin in the Couranth eerie, and from the scatterings of his ritual, they took blood gems and hard runes (focuses of runic identity and force) and gave them too us. I guess if we had abandoned the children to fend for themselves we might have found those things ourselves, but I was pleased with the gifts.

Then they asked us if we could do them another favor, someone had been looking at the boat while we were out of town and had an idea.

Copyright 2001-2003 Stephen R. Marsh and Heather N. Marsh E-Mail comments and suggestions to: story (at) adrr (dot) com We would love to know how you got here and what you think about the site All Rights Reserved Terms of Use / Story Index

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