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-"

Preview to the Battle of Spooky Mountain

A man emerged from the gaping hole in the side of the giant toad. He was cursing under and over his breath with a Cockney accent. As he freed himself from the creature, his bowler hat fell from his head. Old Crow moved to pick it up for him, but the man snatched it up quickly before he could touch it.
"Who in the bloody 'ell are you?" he asked, accusatorially. In the moonlight Old Crow could make out a man of below-average height, round features, and a mustache perched perilously on his upper lip. "And what the bloody 'ell are ye doon up 'ere in the middle o' the night?"

Old Crow looked calmly back at the man chained to the rock table, then back at Mr. Bowler.

"We could ask the same of you."

Pierre and Lamont stepped up behind Old Crow in a show of, if not force, vague moral solidarity. Pierre rested his hand on the hilt of his short sword. Lamont picked his teeth with his trident and said "ITS NOT GIANT TOAD SEASON YET WHO ARE YOU TRYING TO FOOL WITH THIS CONTRAPTION?" The man in the bowler winced, and the man on the table woke up and started to moan piteously. Mr. Bowler looked past Lamont at the man and scowled.

"Ow would ye look at that? Now ye've gone an' ruined th' 'ole thing! We'll never get 'im t'talk now." By now two more men had emerged from the toad, carrying the lamps that had lit the creature's eyes. Elizabeth noted that they were both Chinans. She turned to Eris and tried to catch her eye, but Eris looked distant, like she was listening to a faraway tune.

"We're up 'ere on official business! This 'ere scunner's a British officer! We're tryna get a lit'le information out of 'em." As one, the entire party looked from the now deflated toad carcass, to the moaning man chained to the sacrificial table, and then back to the man in the bowler hat.

"Maybe you should start from the beginning," said Old Crow.

"Well," said the man, now distractedly looking about the treeline, "my name is Jack. Jack Tripper. I'm an..." he turned his face up to look at Old Crow, "an entrepreneur."

"Parlez vous Français?" said Pierre. His heart fluttered a bit to hear his native tongue.

"Nein," replied Jack. Pierre's crest fell.

"AN ENTREPRENEUR? SO WHAT ENTERPRISE DO WE HAVE HERE, MAY I ASK?" Lamont was growing skeptical. He was still annoyed by the lack of seasonal verisimilitude with the whole toad thing.

"Well, you see," continued Jack, "me and my men b'long to a cap't'list ventcha round here wot takes a vested innerest in local politics." He took off his bowler and clutched it protectively to his chest. "You see, we get involved when it suits us, as you'd say, economically. And this scunner 'ere," he pointed his hat to the man on the table, "has vital inf'mation on the whereabouts of a cert'n shipment of a cert'n cargo, contained inside a cert'n wagon. And we are desirous of ascertaining its whereabouts."

Lamont looked at Old Crow, who looked at Pierre, who looked at Elizabeth. Triple play.

"WAGON, YOU SAY?"

Jack started at Lamont's voice, winced a little, and continued. "This 'ere bastard is the cap'n of the local garrison over in Elsinore. We were tryin' t'get tit out of 'im when you lot interrupted."

Pierre leaned in over the little man. He bristled a bit to make his presence feel a little more... present.
"And just how were you planning to use the giant frog?" Jack didn't look at all intimidated. In fact, Elizabeth, who had always considered herself a good judge of character, thought this little man had probably never been intimidated in his life.

"Well," Jack started with some hesitance, "we employ... methods." Jack looked over his shoulder conspiratorially before turning back to the party. Elizabeth thought he was scanning the woods. "You see, we give the bastard some of what the locals call Bonker's Tea. Then we start fillin' 'im up with how, if he don't tell us where this wagon is, we're gonna feed him t' the Wampsville Toad." Pierre shuddered at the mention of the tea. He had a feeling he'd had a cup of the very same pot. "Now, what with him bein' British, 'e don' exactly know the stories, the legends of th' thing. But oh boy do we tell 'im. By the time he's heard the one about the "Helpless Triplets", 'e's just near to wiggin' out! That's when we strap him down an' inform 'im of 'is fate."

"That seems unnecessarily cruel," Old Crow said, rubbing his chin. "You assault his body and his mind. Why not pick just one?" Jack popped the bowler back onto his greasy head. "Just in case one of 'em don't work."

Pierre looked back to the Elizabeth and caught her eye. She read his thoughts, then turned her mind to that of Rick. She waited for Pierre to distract him with a question before trying to jump into his mind and find out what he was really about.

"So was if I was to say we knew about this wagon?" Pierre offered. Jack's head snapped around to face him. His mouth turned into a sneer.

"What you mean? You know what about what?" Jack turned to Pierre with eyes wide. His face visibly darkened. Elizabeth probed, trying to get past that hat and into what passed for his psyche.

"Oh, we've seen a wagon..." Pierre trailed off, trying to draw him in so he wouldn't notice Elizabeth sneaking in the back door. "About 15 feet long? Covered? Full of crates?" Jack started to crumple the hat as he held it, his knuckles whitening with mounting fury.

"WHERE IZZIT? WHER'D YOU SEE THIS WAGON? YOU KNOW WHERE IT IS? TELL ME!"

It was at that moment his mind popped open to Elizabeth like a ripe fruit. she slid in slowly, tenderly so as not to arouse suspicion. but what she saw there made her forget all fear of being discovered. The blood. Splattered everywhere, in patterns that would make Rorshach weep. There were bodies, girls mostly, laid open like blooming roses...

Elizabeth snapped back to reality. Jack was up in Pierre's face, threatening him with in a way that showed he always backed up his threats. She waved her hands to catch Pierre's attention, before slipping into his mind to deliver four short words: "Take him down, NOW!"

Pierre acted at once, and hauled off and punched Jack right through the hat he was holding. The blow landed in his throat, and buckled him to the ground. Pierre drew his short sword and quickly knocked him out with the pommel. Elizabeth heard cries come from the dark woods surrounding them. One, two, three Chinans stepped out of the trees and made their way to the scene, bows and swords drawn, until at least a dozen of them drew closer and started to surround them.

"Eris?" Elizabeth whispered. She turned, but Eris was gone. "Damn!"  It was too dark to handle what was looking to escalate into a terrible situation. She thought a second, collected herself, then held up her sheep's head on a stick.

"IGNIS OVIUM!"

Suddenly, the sheep's head ignited with an octarine fire. It's dead, mad eyes lolled at disturbing angles as it lit up the surrounding area. The Chinans froze, looks of horror on their painted faces. A few dropped their weapons and turned tail and ran. The cooler, more level-headed ones held onto their weapons as they fled. While the Abenaki Boys maintained a certain level of loyalty to Jack, that loyalty obviously came to an end as soon as sheep magic got involved.

Lamont looked around at the scene. Flaming sheep, scattered enemies, and Pierre looting an unconscious body...

All great omens for what was about to happen next.

On Top of Spooky Mountain

Pierre hit hard enough it brought both stars and tears to his eyes. He felt like he'd hit rock, fur, then rock again, all in the space of about three seconds. When he rolled to his right, hit yet more rock, then stopped, he felt grateful for about two seconds before he realized he'd probably just killed one of Elizabeth's llamas. He got up as quickly as he could under the circumstances, and tried to assess the situation. He was in a rectangular hole in the ground - deep enough to look like the cellar of a long-gone hut or cabin. In this cellalular depression was the recently-expired remains of a llama. Pierre could hear the trickle of blood from where it was bleeding out, most likely from a poorly-timed blow to its throat from above, most likely a falling body.

This was not going well.

Luckily for him, another scream pierced the night air.

Standing alone, in a dark pit with the corpse of a llama he'd just, through extreme bad luck and a dash of negligence, killed, Pierre let the sound of the scream wash over him and through him and away down the hill. He'd had an inkling of a doubt that it had been a good idea to come up this way alone. Now he knew it for a fact.

Yet, somehow, his only solution was to pick himself up and out of the pit and make his way, slowly but surly. towards the spot where the screams had come from.

"Sacre vert," he muttered to himself, and trudged on up the hill to his doom.

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


Old Crow went through all the local insects he'd come across in his travels throughout the Pumpkin King's lands. There'd been flies and mosquitoes, gnats and nymphs, the occasional bee, wasp and hornet, yes. Fleas, flies, moths. Centipedes, millipedes, and that once, in the caves under Ziggurath, a billipede. He shuddered at the memory.

Then he remembered what he'd just seen on the path. He shuddered some more.

What were a million dung beetles doing on the march? Where were they going? Why? Old Crow didn't like the fact that he had to ask these questions. He was pretty sure he wasn't going to like the answers, either.

The party found the other fork in the path and took it. It did indeed head straight up the hill. They were oddly silent as they made their way through the occasional patches of moonlight that filtered down through the trees. The droning sound of a million dung beetles on the march was a sound that unnerved and unsettled even the heartiest adventurer. The occasional scream piercing the night air only added to the tension.

Old Crow stopped suddenly and held up his hand, signalling the others to do likewise. Up ahead, a low, dark shape blocked the path ahead. It looked roughly llama-sized, and it lay at the edge of the last copse of trees before what appeared to be the hill's summit. The shape moved, undulated in silence. Had the llama found something? Or had something found it? The group tiptoed in tense unison to find out.

Pierre pulled himself out of the ancient basement with a groan. He had a fat lip, a sprained wrist, and very possibly a couple cracked ribs. He'd felt better, but now he found himself glad it hadn't turned out worse. He felt bad for the llama, of course, but as he turned to look down at the poor creature's corpse, he had no qualms whatsoever about being the one to emerge from the dark pit alive. When it came to 'him or me' situations, Pierre was firmly in the 'me' camp. He looked around. The hilltop was visible in the moonlight. All around it, scattered like a dropped bag of dice, large rocks, boulders and slabs of granite lay; as he began to make his way higher up the hill he could see some of the stones had been arranged, placed there with some (he assumed, naturally) infernal purpose. He picked his way carefully around and sometimes over them. Making certain not to fall in any more pits. As he picked his way between to particularly large slabs of rock, another scream pierced the gray nightscape. It sounded only a few yards away. Pierre froze in terror, and tried his hardest to wet himself as silently as possible.

Old Crow approached the dark figure cautiously. It did indeed appear to be a llama, but if it was, it was a horizontal llama - not the vertical kind he'd expected to find up here. He could see its fur moving with a kind of rhythmic undulation, a peristaltic motion heretofore unseen in the species. But as he drew closer, he heard the low, chittering sound of a horde of insects on the move. He motioned for another match, and as Lamont lit it, Lady Eris gave out a shriek of disgust. A black, flowing river of dung beetles was flowing up and out of the underbrush and into the open mouth of the dead llama. Its body quivered and moved unnaturally as the creatures wriggled their way inside the poor thing, moving about in an unnatural mass before exiting the carcass through the servant's entrance in the rear. The river of chitinous fiends then continued uphill, quieter, contented, until they disappeared in a fissure that split a large rock formation in two.

"Nope," whispered Eris.
"Nope, nope," uttered Elizabeth.
"AH, THE LIVELY ECOSYSTEM OF THIS HILL. HOW QUAINT," intoned Lamont.
Old Crow remained silent. There just didn't seem to be much to be said. The four of them moved carefully past the dead llama and broke out of the last of the trees to the top of the hill. Another scream rang out in the night. It sounded about fifty feet away, just over there past the figure crouched behind a rock.

"Pierre?"
(muffled scream)
"Is that you, Crow?"
"Yes! You made it up here unharmed!"
"Well, I wouldn't say that, exactly..."

There was another scream, and then some whimpering. Weapons drawn, the five of them rounded the last boulder between them and the sound. They were rather surprised to find the pale figure of man, stripped to the waist, chained to a large slab of rock that looked like a sacrificial table.

The man on it had obviously been gnawing on his own limbs, trying to escape. There was blood everywhere, and he looked barely alive. Only the slight heaving of his chest gave any clue that he wasn't a corpse. As everyone looked on in horror, the man sat bolt upright, and gestured madly towards the woods off to their right.

"IT COMES!" he screamed, pointing a manacled hand. A great croaking sound came from the dark wood; there was a sound like the cracking of branches, the rustling of leaves... Two trees parted, and emerging from the woods, to everyone's surprise...

A giant toad.

The man on the table screamed in terror before passing out cold. Old Crow eyed the toad with a great deal of suspicion.


It was not giant toad season in these parts.

The Ascent of Spooky Mountain

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 profit. 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 anxious 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 under the light of the full moon. 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 strange smell  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 now-familiar 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 YON 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 cold, 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.

The Death of Llamas turned and started slowly, silently up the hill. Everyone turned mutely towards Elizabeth in expectation of an explanation. None was forthcoming.

"So, Old Crow," she spoke with an air of considerable distraction. "You were saying there was a reasonable path forward?"

"Well, I don't know about reasonable," this old half-breed stroked his chin with a gleam in his eye. "But I do no we got to get a move on while the moon is high." The others agreed reluctantly, the memory of that mysterious scream still at the forefront of their minds.

"I don mind going up after ze llamas," said Pierre in his French-Northgallian accent. "If you vant to take ze others around ze long way, I'll meet you on ze other side." Old Crow nodded, bade him good luck, and led the others on a path around the hill to the north.

Pierre made his way up the hill. It was a good hill, containing occasional cover, a decent incline, and a growing number of rocky outcroppings to make things interesting. He was noting how unusually good the footing was (considering he was climbing uphill in the dark) when he heard another scream. Not the same as the previous scream - shorter, higher-pitched and shrill. But the fact that it seemed to be a completely different scream only served to unnerve him. What ze hell is going on up here? he wondered to himself. And why in ze hell am I up here all alone? He stopped to contemplate this. He's allowed a party of four to take the safe way around the hill, while foolishly coming straight up the side of the hill on his own. Was he mad? What had he been thinking? He had half a mind to turn around and head back down towards where he had last seen the others. But before he could seriously consider that action, he took another one.

He fell into pit.

Old Crow thanked his luck. He and Lamont had made out a little path that seemed to circumnavigate the hill and the four of them were now making good time. In single file they crept, ignoring the occasional scream or shriek from the darkness above them. They moved silently (relatively) and quickly (for this lot) until they came to a fork in the path. From what Lamont could tell, the left turn headed up the hill, while the right hand path seemed to continue more or less around the way they had originally been heading. Old Crow took a poll to see which path everyone preferred to take.'

"The right one," came three replies in unison.

Old Crow took only a couple dozen steps on the right hand path before a strange crunching noise cropped up after each one of his careful footfalls. He called a quick halt, and had Lamont move up from rearguard to strike a match. When he did so, he held the match high to illuminate the path ahead. He almost immediately blew it back out again and whispered with a quiet tenderness that none of the party had ever heard before.

"I think we should backtrack and take. That. Left."

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.