Spooky Mountain

Old Crow turned over the hill in his mind. He'd never been up it, but he'd been around it a hundred times. There just never seemed to be a reason to make the climb with the village of Stoat a mile to the south and the hamlet of Elsinore another three to the north. But in all his time wandering these parts, it just occurred to him, now of all times, that he had no idea what lay at the top of the hill he and his new friends were climbing.

And that made him worry.

Making their way through the dark the company was quiet, if not a little buoyant. Old Crow didn't know if it was their recent brush with death that gave them a spring to their step, of if it was the lingering effects of the mushroom tea, but he didn't want to spoil the mood with his own apprehensions. It was, after all, probably nothing.

After five minutes of stumbling though the moonlit woods to the west of the road, the ground started to rise in earnest. A full moon was breaking through the trees here and there, keeping the way at least partially lit. A few minutes more and the trees started to thin out as well, until the company could at last make out the hilltop silhouetted against the starry sky. The occasional tree and outcropping of rock gave the hill an irregular, sinister look.

"WHILE GEOMETRY DICTATES THAT THE SHORTEST DISTANCE BETWEEN TWO POINTS IS A LINE WITH THE LEAST AMOUNT OF CURVATURE," Lamont intoned loudly over a chorus of hushes and whispers, "we might want to consider taking a longcut."  Pierre and Eris looked at Lamont with a mixture of awe and suspicion. They'd never, in their short association with Cranston, known him to take the conservative view on any issue. This made them all the more nervous.

Elizabeth was having none of it.

"Oh, come on now. This is nothing more than a natural place, lit by the full moon. It's supposed to look magical and mystical. It's nothing to be afraid offfaaarrrggghhh!!!!-" Elizabeth dropped to her knees, a wave of sadness washing over her like, well, a wave. A deep, resonant despair flowed down from the tree-cloaked top of the hill. This was a Bad Place, and Elizabeth now felt it in her marrow.

Pierre, Eris and Old Crow gathered around her on the ground and asked what it was she was feeling.
"There's something terrible up there. Something wrong." Pierre shifted nervously on the hard ground, while Old Crow whispered a quiet prayer. Lamont fingered the tips of his pitchfork in anticipation.

Eris sat down on the ground, apart from the others. She closed her two eyes and opened her third, peering up the hill through the darkness. She leaned forward and splayed her fingers out on the dirt, trying to take the pulse of the land, trying to feel what it was that Elizabeth had felt. She dug into the earth with her fingers...

The others noticed her silence and turned to watch her, straining intently on hearing, feeling what was up there. They saw her hand, her skeletal hand that shone white in the moonlight, dig into the soft earth. One, two, three knuckles disappeared. Then suddenly, her whole hand tensed, and grabbed...

Eris felt her hand touch bone - bone like that of a human arm or leg. In her astonishment she pulled, trying to wrest the bone from the ground, only to find that the bone wasn't alone. It was attached, end to end, to another bone, and another and another and another - a seemingly endless chain of bones that ran up the hill, just under the earth's surface, in a long, macabre chain. Eris' eyes snapped open as she pulled hard to uproot the vile thing to show the rest of the party and looked down...

at a normal, everyday tree root.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Eris whispered.

Somewhere in the valley west of Spooky Mountain, a simple alpaca farmer named Milo was bedding down his herd. He'd spent years saving up coppers working as a dung wrangler, mucking up other people's stalls and hauling away the dung for coppers. It was barely profitable, but he was a hard worker, and his tenacity with dung had, in the long run, paid off. He'd managed to scrape together enough to buy five fairly healthy llamas, and was getting them ready for the coming winter. He'd fattened them up on the plentiful apples that grew in the valley, and he'd taken care to ensure their long coats were clean(ish) and relatively free from snags and mats. He'd named them all after stars in the sky, with Ayleth (the fat one) being named after a red supergiant, was the matriarch of the little troupe. Veyza, named after the white dwarf in the constellation Crabwalk Major, had a disposition to match. Little Vega, ironically named after the yellow supergiant of the same name, would often be found staring for hours at a fencepost, seemingly lost in thought. It was only after observing her do this a coiuple times that Milo soon came to realize she'd just forgotten where she was going. Finally the twins, Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali (binary stars) were the runts of the litter and served as a reminder to Milo that giving llamas very long and cutesy names was probably not a good idea.

A scream slid down the mountain like an apocalyptic toboggan. It hit nervous ears and jangled nerves, and froze the party in its tracks.

"What the hell was that?" asked Pierre.
"What should we do?" asked Elizabeth.
"Is there any other way around this hill?" asked Lady Eris.
"WOULD ANYONE LIKE SOME RICE?" asked Lamont.

Old Crow looked up the hill with the typical air of Chinan calm, mixed with the barely-contained panic of his whiter ancestors. "Let's think about this," he offered. "Surely we can come up with a plan to investigate cautiously while still making headway towards the valley on the other side.

"I'm going to summon some monsters!" squeaked Elizabeth. She started muttering under her breath and making the hand gestures the old gypsy woman had taught her. Everyone else took two steps back.

Milo made his way out to the barn, the full moon his way. Something had been disturbing his little flock, as strained braaas and braaaps had been coming from there for the past ten minutes. The sharp smell of ozone cut through his nostrils, which was a rare treat - years of working in the dung business had pretty much killed off his sense of smell. Turns out it had been a blessing, as llamas were one of the Gods' more pungent creations. Still, he wondered where the sharp tang of ozone was coming from as he approached the barn door. 

He opened it, and immediately had to shield his eyes from the dazzling rainbow hues that were emanating from the twins' stall. Effervescent blues, sparkling pinks, and ebullient yellows bounced off the roof beams and glistened. Milo stood mutely admiring the impressive display. Then, as soon as it had started, the rainbow display stopped, and Milo stood for a dozen heartbeats with his eyes clamped shut, waiting for his night vision to return. 

When it did, Milo crept forward cautiously and peered over the stall wall and into the space where the twins should have been. But they were gone, and only the biting smell of ozone and fresh dung told him that they were ever there to begin with.

"Not again," he sighed.

Elizabeth stood back and tried to admire her handiwork, She'd never cast Monster Summoning I before, and wasn't exactly sure what to expect, but she was pretty sure three llamas were on the 'disappointing' end of the spectrum.

"INTERESTING," chimed Lamont. "I'M SURE WHATEVER LIES AT THE TOP OF YOU HILL WILL NOT EXPECT LLAMAS." Elizabeth tried not to seethe at the comment, but she seethed a little anyway. She became determined to make it work.

"Llamas!" she hissed as loud as she dared. They turned to face her. The two on the right did so with an air of amiable stupidity. The one on the left, however, the black one, assessed her with the colld, hard stare of a llama that had done some serious time.

"I want you three to head up that hill and check things out. Get the llay of the lland," the others chuckled. She continued on, unperturbed. "Go up there and have a llook around." Snickers. "If you see anything dangerous, I want you to attack. Understand?" Two of the llamas snuffled and turned, and started to make their way slowly up the hill. The black one, however, kept its gaze fixed on Elizabeth. She started to open her mouth to berate the unmoving llama. "Llisten here, you..."

"I aM nOt LlIkE tHe OtHeRs. I aM tHe DeAtH oF lLaMaS. i Am HeRe To TaKe ThEm HoMe AfTeR tHeY pErIsH. nOw Is ThEiR TiMe."

Elizabeth regarded the black llama for some time, willing her mind to not only make sense of the exchange, but to come up with a witty response as well.

"You're welcome," was her two word reply.

A Prelude to Spooky Mountain

Old Crow looked at the carnage. Eight bodies littered both sides of the cave mouth. The cave itself reeked of vomit.

"I'm not cleaning this up," he muttered to no one in particular. Pierre stood up and wiped his chin. He looked around apologetically before kicking some dirt over the rum-soaked puddle. Lamont stepped forward.

"I'M WILLING TO BET THESE MEN-AT-ARMS WILL BE MISSED." Eris covered the ear nearest him and winced in pain. Pretty much everyone else did likewise. "PERHAPS WE SHOULD NOT STICK AROUND TO FACE ANY INQUIRIES FROM INTERESTED PARTIES." Old Crow nodded in agreement. He looked up into the night sky. The full moon was rising. There would be just enough light for a night march.

"Yes," he said in a voice that radiated a serene wisdom. "We need to get the fuck out of Dodge." He picked up an old satchel that lay near the cave mouth. He encouraged the others to take up their belongings. "Just west of here is valley that is none to well traveled. It should offer us a safe place to spend the night, now that the ways north and south will no doubt be watched. We can make it there in a little over an hour, with luck."

Elizabeth chortled. "Luck? Better start casting every bless spell we got. Did you see what happened down in that burial mound?" Everyone nodded in mute agreement. They shouldered their packs and loaded the horses.

"Old Crow," Pierre sidled up to the wise old Chinan as they headed down the winding path from the burial cave. "You've spent a lot of time in these parts... What lies between here and the valley you mentioned? Will it be an easy journey?"

Old Crow stopped and looked west, his eyes getting that faraway look they got whenever he had to search his memories for the threads to tie together for a tale.

"Ah, it's bullshit. A piece of cake. We'll be safe in our bedrolls before the moon sets." Pierre gave a sigh of relief, and stepped up his pace to catch up with the others. Old Crow smiled and reversed the ancient Chinan hand signal his grandfather had taught him by uncrossing his fingers and bringing them out from behind his back.