By Lewis Bryson
Four of us went down, but only one hundred and four of us came back. How did that happen, you ask? A good question, and I feel like telling a story . . .
*
We were an optimistic party. The four of us were young, maybe a little lacking in experience, but well armed, intelligent, and overflowing with enthusiasm. There were two Magi, the sorcerer Soregit and the wizard Emanon, and two warriors, Tork and myself, Nissleyn the One-handed.
*
We had been charged with penetrating the Pyromancer’s Guild to bring back artifacts for our benefactor, the great magician and charlatan, Edgh. Intent upon our mission, we found a member of the Guild at a local tavern, in a rather pitiful state. There was a little overeagerness on my part and I hit him on the head and, well, I, uh . . . knocked him out.
*
Gosh, I was really sorry that it had happened, but since it had, everyone figured that we should take advantage of it. So we grabbed his copper ring, had copies made of it, and, armed with the rings and a Polymorph Others spell, we entered the Guildhall.
*
It was easy enough, smooth sailing for quite a while, as we twisted, turned, and slew a few fairly harmless monsters, the usual stuff. The first really tough thing we ran into was a Clay Golem. Thinking quickly, I told Soregit to throw a Darkness, 15ft. radius spell, and with a natural ability of infravision, I waded in with a giant’s club I had picked up somewhere, and belted him in the back of the head, wiping him out. We felt that this was an augur of things to come, and we were very optimistic. Ha!
*
The next door we opened presented us with a pair of eleven- foot-tall, fair-haired giants in mithril mail. A fast Legend Lore spell told us that they were Sidhe, lawful gargantuans, extremely strong, intelligent, and dexterous. We quickly convinced them we wanted, very badly, to be their friends. Luckily, they trusted our then-honest intentions.
*
They joined us, and we went through a few more rooms and corridors, and were going down a flight of stairs, when I suddenly realized that they had usurped my position as leader of the expedition, had been very deprecatory about all of our abilities, and had not yet done a bit of fighting! I contacted Tork with an artifact-related telepathic message, and we jumped them from behind.
*
My first shot with the club split my Sidhe’s head open like a ripe melon, and there was one left. Tork went for him as I hurried to aid him, while Emanon threw Magic Missiles. Tork was doing a pretty good job on the remaining Sidhe, and I had just joined the fray, when the giant speared Tork through the left eye with an immense enchanted sword. I was a bit taken aback, and Tork, well, he was dead. He had, though, damaged the Sidhe to a point where he was almost tottering, and I quickly sent him to discuss life with his ancestors face to face.
*
I mourned the death of Tork, while the Magi looked on rather coolly, not understanding the sorrow of a Warrior. I resolved to have him restored to my side as soon as possible, because he was a brother Warrior, and also because I didn’t relish facing the remaining depths with just myself to battle with the terrors that lay there.
*
Packing his dead body on my back with a quick-release knot on him, we pushed on. The door at the bottom of the stairs opened onto a corridor, and at the end was an unfamiliar shape. A noise from the wizard roused the thing, and suddenly it was flying at us. A winged ape with huge claws, hurtling down the narrow corridor.
*
‘A Clakar!’ screamed the wizard, and cowered beneath his cloak. I nailed the beast with a lightning javelin in midair, but it didn’t quite do the job, only searing a hole in his abdomen. Then he was upon me, doing horrendous damage with one swipe of his claws. Luckily for all of us, I dispatched him with a blow to his already damaged abdomen. The wizard healed my wounds and we moved on.
*
The next room held only an orc and a bowl of liquid. The orc turned and ran out a door in the back of the room. Soregit walked up to the table and inspected the bowl. He saw a ring in the bowl, and grabbed it. He put it on, and began dancing around without realizing that he was shrinking at a tremendous rate. He fell into the bowl, and would have drowned and I not knocked over the bowl and moved him away from the liquid with the point of my dagger.
*
Our spirits were at a new low. Tork was dead, and getting to be a pain in the back. Soregit was two inches tall, and practically useless. We would probably have given up, but the next room presented a puzzle. It was some kind of a device, and I could not discern its operation. The door was open, and maybe we should have closed it to keep out wandering monsters, but we were in a sad state. Anyway, what should wander in but a 12th-circle Cleric of neutrality. With a little monetary temptation, we convinced him to resurrect Tork, but nothing could be done for poor Soregit.
*
Tork and I began to celebrate and, in the illuminated state of mind that the wine brought about, we divined the function of the machine. It moved the entire room to small, independent planes of existence! We finally realized this by observing that after we pressed different buttons, different things were behind those doors! In our condition, we found this highly amusing, much to Emanon’s consternation. We finally decided that we would tackle the Clakar that we had seen, and, pushing the right button, we rushed in and romped on the poor animal.
*
There was a shrouded object in the back of the room and we were suspicious. So with the genius of Dionysius, Tork and I forced Soregit to take a look under the shroud. A good thing we did so, for under there was a Mirror of Opposition! We heard a small shriek, and lifted a small section of the shroud to see two Soregits throwing daggers at each other. Luckily, the duplicate was as lousy a shot as the original, and neither was hurt.
*
Inspired again, we emptied another wine sack, and began creating more and more miniature Magi, or gits, as we soon began calling them. Eventually we had fifty of the opposing gits, and fifty of the old-type gits, and of course, the original Soregit. We separated the plus and minus gits into two wine sacks of squirming sorcerers.
* * *
Now, of course, Tork and I are rich men, the owners of Miniature Mage, Inc. We decided to market the gits, and made our fortunes. We found an alchemist, went into large-scale production of growth potion and the super shrink stuff. Then we got a cleric, threw us a lot of Geas spells, and marketed the result as ‘Gits! pint-size power for the fighting man!! The next time you have a problem that you just can’t handle, you won’t worry, because you have a miniature Mage at your belt!!’
*
Soregit is happy as a little clam lolling around in his miniature apartment with his miniature wine cellar, miniature elf-maidens, etc. The mirror is in full, assembly line-type use down in the factory.
*
And Emanon? He’s still adventuring, poor soul, thinks he’s going to make his fortune that way, I guess. Ha! And yet, sometimes I look across the board room at my old weapons hanging on the wall, and the Sidhe’s dried blood still on the club, and I feel a twinge of the old wanderlust. . .
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