GMAs the fire burned, it brought scenes bathed in wavering yellow light and red-tinged shadows. Zoltan didn't know the name but hummed the tune to the Taming of Stormmaker, and was joined by Jex, as they saw to their arms and armour. A suit of armour, forged in hellfire. A gleaming scimitar that was quick to violence.
The bottle of Green Star whiskey was drained and passed to Weston. On Tindarien's advice, he tied some of the high elf's storm matches around the outside of the bottle.
Seyja meanwhile decanted the Eight-Score rum into a cooking pot on the fire. When it was warm, she lifted the pot off of the fire and stirred in some whale soap until the mixture was frothing. D watched with interest, whilst toying with thin, obsidian blades.
Weston held the glass bottle. D held a funnel they'd made from rolled vellum, inserted into the bottle neck. Finally, Seyja poured and corked. One fire bomb, and with their combined resources, slightly improved over their initial design.
Now Tindarien crouched next to the camp-fire to check on his pan of water. It was simmering but he wasn't poaching eggs. He poured in a vial of aphronitre, stirred then lowered in the Eternal Alchemists' bronze key. Farvi, his masked ferret perched on his shoulder and provided a squeaking critique.
Fizzing and foaming, the aphonitre dissolved the rough minerals that encrusted the key leaving pitted metal. The sorcerer then fished it out, dried and polished it with a rag and held it up to the firelight. Jex squatted beside him and they both examined.
The symbol of the Eternal Alchemists, a steaming figure-eight chalice, was moulded into the bow of the key and very obvious, but now the finer, engraved details were decipherable. There were some dwarven runes, translated roughly as 'what follows follows', a dwarf phrase usually indicating a series of instructions. These took the form of raised sigils, the first of which was clearly recognisable as the crest of the dwarven fortress of Anvil. The others in the series were possibly markers, but the first step was certainly Anvil.
***
So it was, that in the cave from a time beyond time, the party prepared for tomorrow.
They did not know its name, the Beast of Titan's Elbow had for long ages been a folk tale. If it was the Master of Winter, it was one of the Primeval dragons from before the founding of the Empire, when dragonkind went nameless, bearing only a title.
If it was the Master of Winter it had defied the legendary Wizard King and brought calamity to an entire city. A fell deed that left it broken and maimed, and for three thousand years it passed out of history, becoming a resting malice that slept in the Empire's own neglected and forgotten back yard.
The Titan's Elbow became a cursed peak, but it was the creature living under it that claimed champion gladiators, swordmages and knights as its victims.
Tomorrow, you would either become its next victims, or you would finish off the ancient white wyrm for good. Tomorrow would be a day of endings.
[Go to
HHE11: Interlude 2]