You Gotta Know When to Holden

The Thing swung its arm in a huge arc, swatting the two tiny figures off the rock and to their deaths. There was no emotion to the act, no regret. The Thing was not technically alive. Instead, you could say it was *made of life*, thousands of tiny, armored insects, bound together by the most ancient of magics. They moved as one, thought as one, killed as one. 

And Eris was controlling them all.

Her eyes were glazed over in a thousand yard stare as she directed The Thing this way then that, stomping, swatting, killing. It wasn't before long that the last of the Abenaki Boys lay broken and bleeding of the rocks of Spooky Hill. And when that moment arrived, Eris raised her bony hand out in front of her, made a fist, and then threw her hand, fingers out, at the Thing where it stood. 

It collapsed in a cascade of blood and chitin.

Old Crow crept quietly back to the stone room where Pierre was snoring and Elizabeth had just dosed herself with a sleep spell. He made sure they were both quiet, then hunkered down in the doorway to close his eyes and think. The thing that Eris had conjured didn't surprise him much - he'd seen some things - but it worried him something fierce. How did she do that? he found himself asking. He remembered her reaching into the earth to pull up the strange tree roots... And what was it that Jack had said about this hilltop being hidden?

Bone charm.

That's what he'd said. A magical ward keeping this hilltop hidden from prying eyes... And Eris had undone it in a snap with her... bony... hand. Old Crow jumped up with a start, checked on his two sleeping patients, then headed out into the pre-dawn gloom. He had a couple questions. He was hoping Eris had some answers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lamont sat on top of a blood-soaked rock, Jacques curled up in his lap. He held the warp marble in his hand and concentrated on it, trying to get an inkling of what the password was.

"Arquebus!" Nothing.
"Aquamarine!" Silence.
"Antiquarian!" The marble remained inert. Lamont went on like this for some time, much to Jacques' annoyance. It had been a busy night, what with the maiming and killing and helping Lamont decorate the hilltop with the heads and bodies of his enemies. Jacques had more than done his part and now, as the rosy fingers of dawn crept through the trees, he really just wanted to sleep.

"Aubergine!" Lamont took this last failure as a personal affront, and gave up. He looked up for what felt like the first time in hours. He too noticed the shy lightening, and slowly moving Jacque to his bedroll, stood up and stretched.

He made his way off the rock and onto the ground, and immediately began scanning the ground all around the hilltop. He moved through the patches of burnt forest, plunged into the woods for a few minutes, and emerged halfway around the hill. He was getting more and more animated in his movements, until he distractedly ran headlong into Old Crow.

"Ah, good morning, Crow. Sleep well?"
"Not at all. I've been talking to Eris and-"
"Do you remember that Jack guy? The one who escaped?"
"Well, uh, yes. Yes I do..."
"Well, have you seen any trace of him? I'm buggered if I can find so much as a bent blade of grass."
"Really? That's strange, but as I was saying, I was just-"
"I mean, I've been tracking my way around these parts for nearly thirty years, and I've never met a man I couldn't track."

Old Crow looked Lamont in the eye. Yes, he had the look of someone who had spent the best years of their life outdoors and in the company of sheep.

"Interesting," said Old Crow. "Let me help you look around. Maybe together we can find som-"

(SCREAMS)

Elizabeth sat straight up, covered in sweat. Her throat was raw from that scream, but quite frankly she was just glad it was intact. She'd just had her still-beating heart ripped from her body by Jack, and was still recovering from the jumbled mass of sensations and emotions. She remembered the sensation of the knife piercing her skin. She could feel the pop. pop, pop of the blade slicing through her ribs. And she could still feel the cold, rough fingers encircling her heart. 

What came next would never, ever be forgotten.

Old Crow and Lamont burst into the room, the looks on their faces revealing that they'd feared the worst. Pierre rolled over, opened his eyes slowly and said "Bonjour, Elizabeth." Elizabeth barely restrained the urge to kick his teeth in. She took a deep breath. She was now fully awake.

"What happened?" Old Crow asked empathetically.
"I dreamt that Jack ripped me open with a knife," replied Elizabeth breathlessly.
"Well, at least he seems to have escaped without a trace!" Lamont added not helpfully.

All heads turned to Lamont. "Yeah, it's kind of weird. No idea which way he went. But I have an idea..."

Everyone but Eris followed Lamont out of the room and into a clearing. Eris was already there, staring halfheartedly at the ground. Elizabeth went up to her. "Sweetie, you ok?" Eris looked down at her skeletal hand. "Naw, girl. I'm pretty fuckin' far from ok." She made a fist and orange light showed through her fingers. Elizabeth took one step back, and gulped.

"So I'm going to cast a spell. It should help me find one of the last thoughts Jack had on this hilltop. Maybe from there we can find out where he's gone to." Lamont stood back and closed his eyes. He muttered some words underneath his breath and started to rub his palms together. He stood silently, eyes closed for a minute.

Suddenly, his eyes shot open. "LOOK!" He pointed off to his left, and the party turned to see a little black roiling cloud of blackness, about the size of a fist, bobbing in the still air where the path entered the woods. Lamont hastened towards it, and as it did, it accelerated down the path and into the shadow of the trees. With a whoop, Lamont took off at a full run, and disappeared into the woods.

Old Crow looked at the others. "I guess we better follow him. No telling what he could get himself into." They all nodded in agreement and took off after him.

They had just entered the woods when Pierre noticed movement on the path. He drew his bow and aimed it at a large, dark mass that was undulating in the middle of the path.

"It... looks like a giant spider," Pierre whispered. The thing was about four feet wide, covered in black hair, and had at least four awkward legs jutting off at weird angles. The thing gibbered. The thing hooted. Jacques shimmied up a tree and out onto a branch above the malevolent horror. Pierre tensed as Jacque jumped on top of it. It screamed. It screamed "JACQUES GODS DAMN IT GET OFF!!!!"

Puzzled (and a little disappointed), Jacques hopped of and turned in awe to see Lamont's head sticking out of the damp, furry mass. Everyone gasped and backed up a step. Lamont struggled a bit inside the thing, but with a wet rip managed to loosen what was recognized as the dead llama skin and extract himself. He was covered in gore.

"What. The. Hell?" asked Pierre.

"Well, I found one of Jack's last thoughts. And it wasn't a good one. He's very angry and very bent on getting back at us."

"What makes you say that?" asked Elizabeth.

"I'll kill them! I'll kill them all! I SHALL HAVE MY REVENGE!" Everyone started at Lamont's very convincing impersonation of a maniacal killer. Mouths dropped open and people stood aghast.

"We better get going. If he's heading to the town of Holden, the less head start he has the better."

So the party packed up their things and headed down the other side of the mountain to the town of Holden. It was a quaint, hutty place of about five hundred people. Maplefellers and Chinans were equally represented. And eventually the party found Themuseleh, the town's kindly wizard. He invited them into his blue hut and sat them down for refreshment and council.

The Battle of Spooky Mountain

Eris found it hard to concentrate on the toad, what with it being fake and all. And the rustling,
rustling,,,

Rustling.

They were on the march.

Thousands of them, all marching as one, thinking as one, creeping and crawling across the ground as one...

Eating as one. 



They were hungry.



Something had changed in her since she plunged her hand, her bony hand, into the soil of Spooky Mountain. She had reached into it and found...

Bones.

Things were different now... distant now... fading away into the night like the screams.


Elizabeth screamed as the arrow pierced her chest. She'd relied on her decolletage for most of her adult life, and it had served her well. It just wasn't arrow-proof. She fell backwards onto the ground in between the massive stones of Spooky Mountain. Silhouetted against the sky she saw the outlines of two Abenaki Boys. They whooped in triumph. But even as Old Crow showed up to drag her to safety, Elizabeth had a flash of insight: those two bastards would soon be dead.

Curious, she thought as Old Crow propped her up against a wall. It's like I can see the sand running out of their lives. Screams and cursing rang out in the night air. The battle was on.

Lamont was a man of strange quirks. Sure, he could make perfect rice every time - but did you also know he also slept with a fake gold doubloon in his right boot? That he silently prayed to the earthworm god? That he didn't believe in the moon?

But by far, Lamont Cranston's biggest quirk was the ability to pull himself together in battle. The road from Port Harbor to the Nine Hundred Islands was littered with the bodies of both men and sheep who had taken his soft, addled demeanor for something other than hardened battle-rage. And now that the Abenaki Boys had offered a statement of intent, he became focused like an axe blade slicing through the air on its way to a mad king's neck.

Lamont heard the screams and flipped into Beast Mode. Looking up at two of them, he used his whip to topple one with an axe on the other. Scrambling to the top of the rock, he and Jacques then used their position to advantage, and rained death and a grade 2 meniscus tear down upon two others. Stab, stab. Slice, slice. He whistled to Jacques who was busy degristling one of the Boy's throats when he heard the buzzing. The dark night got a bit darker. The air grew still.

Pierre would not look back on Spooky Mountain as one of his finer moments. He'd accidentally killed a llama named Zubeneschamali. He'd been freaked out by what turned out to be a fake giant toad. And now he had about a dozen angry Chinans surrounding his position on a strange, dark hilltop. If he made it out of this alive, 
he swore, he was going to overhaul this group's tactical planning. 

Pierre looked up just in time to see the arrow fly. He had been circling around between two of the hill's larger rock formations when he came upon two of the Abenaki boys, expertly placed on the top of a rock wall. One had taken aim and fired, and only by the dint of him being really jumpy to begin with did Pierre manage to duck before being killed.

Close shaves always irritated Pierre.

Without a thought - be it selfless or mindless - Pierre charged down the space between the rocks at the two assailants. Before the second one could fire, he unloaded a full complement of throwing knives at them. In his mind's eye, he saw all four knives hitting home, maiming, dislodging and perhaps even killing the Boys in a hail of tempered steel and spite.

Come to find out, his mind's eye had a severe astigmatism.

Gnawbones was relatively new to the Abenaki Boys. Being the fifth son of his father meant his place in his native tribe was one of marginal humiliation. I life spent scraping hides and tending the elderly didn't suit him - he wanted the thrill of battle and the excitement of being part of something. The Boys, when they came through his region, offered just that. Rape, pillage, and more rape - all in the service of chasing the white man off of the lands of his ancestors. The fact that the Boys were led by an Englishman didn't phase him. Jack T. Ripper hated the English as much as he did, or so he said. Gnawbones was just happy to experience the thrill of battle for a valid cause. 

They were in such a battle now. The Boys had captured the captain of the local garrison, and something had gone wrong with his interrogation. Interlopers had shown up, and now they were being dealt with. The boys had them outnumbered and outpositioned, and Gnawbones was assigned to support Hawkclaw and Ravages Goats in the assault. 

He looked up to where they were now, standing atop a jut of rock, firing arrows down at the enemy. He had two bows and about thirty arrows at the ready, and was poised to run them up the slope of rock the second they needed him. He heard screams ring out from the other side of the rock, and smiled knowing the arrows were finding their mark.

Suddenly, a CLANG! rang out as a metal object fell from the sky onto the rock slope right in front of him. As it BLINGed and KRANGed its way down towards him, another, and then a third object came out of nowhere to clatter and twang their way towards him. 

Less concerned about what they were and more concerned about wether there were more of them, Gnawbones looked up into the night sky and there, tumbling towards him against the glittering firmament was a fourth object. It glittered and gleamed with occasional reflected light. As it got closer, he found himself transfixed by its weird beauty. Silvery, seductive, the thing whirred as it neared, heading straight for his face.

"Oh, it's a KNIF-"