Very Unfortunate Biology - Sorrel Noir
Oct 14, 2021 8:46:38 GMT
Queen Merla, the Sun-Blessed, Varga, and 1 more like this
Post by stephena on Oct 14, 2021 8:46:38 GMT
Angels with Dirty Faces
People with happy families don’t become adventurers. A bad childhood is the perfect background for any career with a high body count. You don’t trust anyone. You’re used to getting smacked around. You’re never homesick.
Spend a few years working for the House and a sunlit field dotted with buttercups just looks like a vulnerable tactical position with no decent cover.
But 20 years of small arms training, combat experience on five different planes of existence, a rating with every weapon that hurls a projectile or slices a hole in heavily armoured flesh and still Sorrel had no defence against a poor dumb beast in terrible trouble.
The wannbe prof with the blazing head – calls himself Glint, but the kid has ambition – had put out word he was looking for eyes on the sudden disappearance of one Alan Shearer.
Alan Shearer. Body of a T Rex. Mind of a smallholder. Heart as big as all outdoors. He was large. Really large. Things that size shouldn’t go missing. Glint knew the beast was last seen taunting aggressive necrotic flowers in the Angelbark and was looking to put a team together to find out what happened.
The Angelbark. Sorrel knew the Angelbark. And she knew Alan Shearer. That punk dinosaur was taking it on the lam for her and her team looking to ice the source of the corpse flowers.
Turned out the source had its own ice. Shadowfell ice. The worst kind.
Sorrel’s team made it out in one piece, barely a scratch on her lilywhite. Two days in the jungle, 18 solid hours of combat and a glimpse into the void for 50 gold. She hadn’t worked so hard for so little money since the bungled hit in Avernus. But she owed that T Rex.
And call her a soft-hearted schmuck, but couple of days off the boat in Kantas she’d been taking out velociraptors a few miles from Shearer’s farm just about the time he morphed into the thunder lizard. You don’t get much more romantic than that.
If she was the superstitious kind – and when you’ve survived as many hits as Sorrel you learn to rely on field craft over star signs – she’d tag him as her lucky charm. All the same. The Angelbark. Something was cooking in that tangled mass of vegetation and Sorrel preferred her roots and shoots in a hearty stew.
‘Sides, last time she’d been in the Angelbark was the last time she saw a devil. And whilst she had unfinished business with two major pit fiends and at least one archduke, she wasn’t looking to close the deal any time soon.
But Alan was a weak spot.
And then Toothy came bounding through the door with a crumpled copy of Glint’s appeal, asking Sorrel if she wanted to hunt a dragon with him. The world’s cutest drow barbarian – and she ran those three words through her mind very slowly like she was adding three drops of vermouth to a very dry martini: Cute. Drow. Barbarian…
She’d sworn to keep out of the caring business but when your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses.
The moment she saw Toothy cannoning into view with a gaggle of pet geese, his baggy red cable knit jumper and a wide daffy grin looking like roses, chocolate and Christmas Day she fell for the jerk. In classical tragedy, they fall from great heights. When Sorrel saw Toothy she fell from the curb. But she surrendered. And now, if he was heading into danger, she had to be there. Anyone harmed a hair on this kid’s head, they would be spending the rest of their incredibly short life in agonising pain.
She sighed. She had planned to take the day off and spend some time with a couple of buddies.
They travelled light and they were fun to have around. One travelled in a scabbard and the other in a hip flask. But they’d have to wait.
The Angelbark. Again.
She pulled out a fine grit whetstone, applied a little honing oil and went to work. When her blades gleamed brightly enough you could see an ambush in them, she stopped.
Get the edge any finer, she’d be slicing the air in half and the last time that happened it got ugly very fast. Turns out the atmosphere isn’t just for breathing. It keeps some crawling things out and no-one wants something that slimy to join the party. Keep your weapons sharp but not too sharp.
Besides, you can’t just go round killing people whenever the notion strikes you. It’s not feasible.
Daring Heights Confidential
Losing Toothy was her first mistake.
Making it to the Academy was a piece of cake, if the cake was a badly decorated white wedding triple stack hurled to the ground by a jilted groom and then danced all over by about 400 of those weird models they stick on top. Or at least, just to be clear, that’s what forcing her way through the streets of Daring Heights felt like to Sorrel.
Toothy’s red jumper stood out against the drab throng, and she followed him as he snooker balled from animal to animal, feeding horses, patting dogs, stroking cats and periodically doing his level best to entice a couple of pigeons out of the sky for a natter.
Inside was a different story. The main hallway was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armour rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair.
The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere.
Sorrel thought that if she worked in the Academy, she would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to really be trying.
And when she lowered her eyes back down Toothy was gone.
You can think of a library as a room full of books or you can think of it as hundreds of near identical alleyways all interconnecting with the added bonus that the walls could move if given a hearty shove. Try finding a drow in that, even if they are wearing a red jumper.
Every so often Sorrel heard a Toothy noise – an academic shouting incoherently, a joyous animal sound, something crashing expensively to the floor, the gut warping noise of a planar entity fleeing through a briefly conjured wormhole to avoid losing its tentacles to one of Toothy’s hugs.
Finally, she found him in a waiting room. The walls had been sprayed with tea like a fat man’s blood when his throat’s been slit but he doesn’t yet know he’s going down.
A quick survey of the room showed Ragtag the yuan-ti warlock, Glint and his owl Strick, Kelne the wild-eyed halfling cleric and a beaming Toothy. Given that line up, anyone could have sprayed the tea.
Sorrel leaned up against the wall and waited.
“Spending a lot of time in the Academy these days, Sorrel,” Glint said cheerfully. “We’ll have to start charging tuition fees.”
“When a ranger’s ally against the corpse flowers is threatened, she’s supposed to do something about it,” Sorrel shrugged. “It doesn’t make any difference what happened to them. They were your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it. And it happens we’re in the adventuring business. Well, when one of your number gets threatened, it’s—it’s bad business to let the corpse flowers get away with it. Bad all around, bad for every adventurer everywhere.”
“Corpse flowers can’t be all bad,” Glint pondered. “Nothing is.”
“Well, they come the closest.”
Glint nodded. “You still peddling that faux noir style?”
“A little. Is it working?”
“It’s inconsistent if I’m honest.”
“Honesty from an ambitious academic? That’s a first.”
“I don’t like your manners, Darkfire.”
“I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. I don’t like them myself. I grieve over them on winter evenings.”
“The Big Sleep, right?”
Sorrel nodded sheepishly.
Walk Softly, Stranger
Leading the party to Bloody Creek Sorrel pondered the conversation in the dean’s office.
The dean sounded like a man who’d slept well and didn’t owe too much money. Sorrel was no genius, but she could always tell when a bar fight was about to break out and if they’d been in a tavern she’d have placed money on Jacobson, Carter and Glint taking it outside.
Carter would fight dirty. Jacobson would call the cops so Sorrel’s money was on Glint, who was no good at being noble, but could see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
Someday the others would understand that. But not today.
Turns out the three boffins figured Alan wasn’t dead. This was good news. Dead friends are heavier than broken hearts. All the same, heading out after corpse flowers she’d have preferred to have a little more experience on the team. Corpse flowers are nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men. Their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption.
Then the team had fallen on the Academy’s books like sailors on shore leave heading to the mud wrestling bars. Sorrel flicked through tomes on the Shadowfell. Toothy fell into conversation with Millie the cat. Glint summoned more interns than an angry feudal overlord putting together a raiding party, Ragtag started threatening an academic who turned out to be writing a book on yuan tis and Kelne did her best to get students over to help them.
Sorrel found a map with an odd symbol – a glyph, which rapidly disappeared under Milly and Toothy fighting over… it didn’t matter what.
Eventually they pieced together the bad news – necromancy, Shadowfell, Alan facing down more corpse flowers than Glint had interns - and Sorrel offered to get the party to Bloody Creek and the Saurkraut Inn by midnight. Last place Alan was seen was barely half a day’s travel through thick undead infested jungle from there.
Along the way she fell into step with Glint.
“You figure on negotiating with these flowers, Glint?”
“Maybe it’s OK to fight some things.”
“Hmmm.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means hmmm. Death’s at the bottom of everything, Glint. Leave death to the professionals.”
“My, my, my,” said Glint. “Such a lot of swords around town and so few brains. You're the second gal I've met today that seems to think a blade in the hand means the world by the tail.”
“Who was the first?”
“They got a raw deal.”
“That kind always does.”
The village clambered over the horizon like an overweight puppy. Bloody Creek was the kind of town where they spelled trouble T-R-U-B-I-L, and if you tried to correct them, they’d kill you.
Sorrel found herself face to face with Corporal Lance again, standing guard on the road. She couldn’t figure out if he was keeping people out or keeping them in.
“What brings you back here, gloomstalker?” Lance narrowed his eyes.
“My health. I came to Bloody Creek for the spa waters.”
“We’re in the middle of the Angelbark Forest.”
“I was misinformed.”
The Sauerkraut Tavern was as she remembered it – you cut n paste a million such taverns from the start of any adventure she’d been on. The only thing missing was the wizard looking for teenagers to slay a dragon. They paid cash for a bedroom each. Sorrel hoped the morning would bring better luck.
Fallen Angel
Around dawn they approached the cursed temple. Everything seemed peaceful and bright. T Rex footprints lead off to the south with the odd tendril from corpse flowers draped on trees or rocks along the way. Every now and then they’d find broken trees and the remains of corpse flowers.
Looked like Alan was running a fighting retreat. Alan was a good… guy. She hoped he made it.
As quickly as hopes usually fade, this one collapsed and died. A big slab of stone with more claw marks scratched into it than a henpecked husband loomed out of the forest. Sorrel heard a low rumble build and fade. After that long night hunting corpse flowers she knew a snoring T Rex when she heard one. She’d just never heard one sound like this.
Kelne started with the fast talk to whatever god she prayed to, and Sorrel felt that old stealthy magic that Kelne did so well rise up in her toes. They all crept forward in silence, peeking over the outcrop like naughty kids scrumping apples. Whatever evil fruit these plants were throwing off, however, no-one seemed inclined to stick ‘em in their pockets.
Alan lay sprawled on the floor, apparently asleep. But if that was sleeping it was the big sleep, not bothered by wind or rain or how he fell, just stretched out in oblivion and two steps away from the last sleep of all.
There were corpse flowers all over him, their tendrils digging into his flesh, burrowing like worms into the soft flesh of the grave, rooting through his vital organs, squirming into his spine and brain like the tentacles of misshapen grubs feasting endlessly with a hunger than could never be assuaged.
Sorrel ran the numbers. Five corpse flowers. Four comrades. 30 arrows. Two short swords, three daggers and a rapier. She liked those maths.
She started shooting.
Farewell, My Lovely
Ragtag started unpacking the box of tricks he had stashed away with the secretive care of a rum runner on the lam from the feds. Clanking away like a doll golem foundry in toy shipyard on the lower east side it assembled itself into a fast moving mechanical familiar and headed into the sky.
By the time it was moving Sorrel’s third arrow had pierced the corpse flower on Alan’s skull. They were three good shots, one after the other, feet planted, bow string humming and Sorrel had been practicing.
The corpse flower didn’t move more than an inch. It didn’t try to dodge, it took every arrow, shook itself lightly, Alan made a low sound in his throat and the T Rex’s eye shot open with the same mechanical speed as Ragtag’s device. The eye was red like the spilled guts of a warrior dying at sunset in a rose garden.
Sorrel had seen red eyes before, but they usually followed a better time than Shearer had been having.
The beast shot to its feet, raging, both eyes wide and angry. Sorrel knew Alan by now and this wasn’t the… guy/T Rex she knew. Whatever it was it stormed towards the party like it wanted a serious conversation about their attitude to its new friends.
Toothy frowned. He wasn’t used to animals getting upset. He dropped his hands to his glaive and hauled it towards the flower wrapped around Alan’s arms with a lazy style that the less well-informed might not take too seriously. The less well informed would learn. They’d learn too late, but knowledge is hard won on a Kantas battlefield. Chunks of corpse flower went flying and Alan’s head snapped down towards the drow’s red jumper. Sorrel cursed softly.
Kelne did some quick thinking and reached into the spiritual plane for a few friends called Time, To and Die. They came dancing out all pleased to see her, their faces positively radiant, and bounced over to the corpse flowers for a quiet word. The flowers didn’t look happy to see them. Kinda rude. Spirits just want to make friends. Probably.
Sorrel had half an eye on Toothy, making sure the kid stayed safe. Big mistake. Her first arrow sliced through the flower with the precision of a sous-chef starting a morning shift but second hit Alan in the eye. She was never much of a fan of red but this was unprofessional.
The corpse flowers clearly agreed and were in no mood for conversations. Tendrils wrapped around her, digging deep into her flesh and sucking out some crucial part of her. She staggered, fell back and smacked into the floor with a crash that must have been heard in Fort Ettin.
What hurt most was Alan swooping in to help the flowers out. Fortunately, the big guy missed. Two inches to the left and Sorrel would be meeting the goddess way ahead of schedule.
Toothy seemed to take offence at this. There’s vicious and then there’s Toothy when he’s angry. Side of the lad Sorrel hadn’t seen before. She was glad she wasn’t a corpse flower. Or anything that got on that side of Toothy.
And suddenly Kelne keeled over like a teenager in a fighting pit after a hard night at the Three Dragons. Sorrel had seen that fall before when Kavel got too close to the flowers. They stunk. And for once that didn’t mean they were acting suspicious.
Although sucking the life blood out of a T Rex ain’t exactly community service.
Glint stepped up with a little tomfoolery, and suddenly there was another Kelne, looking hale and hearty like a festive morning. If the corpse flower had a face it’d look baffled.
Or at least, it would start looking baffled in the few seconds it had left before Ragtag’s quick one-two of eldritch blast and well-trained imp tore it to pieces. If Sorrel could move her face out of the howl of pain she’d be smiling right now. The numbers were getting better by the minute.
And then Alan’s jaws closed around Toothy.
The kid kept fighting, swinging his glaive into the corpse flower on the T Rex’s arm.
But Alan had Toothy.
Sorrel felt the rage starting to rise. She couldn’t feel the wounds all over her body. All she could see was the T Rex jaws and her friend. Who was under her protection. She moved almost as fast as one of her arrows.
Blade Runner
Sorrel’s new boots gripped Alan’s scales with ease and she powered up his back like she was leaping a staircase. Somewhere along the line she must have dropped her bow and drawn her sword but she could swear she had no idea when. The blade flashed in the sun and Sorrel’s scream ground down the ears like death on a bad day as she slashed the corpse flower on Alan’s spine into tiny fragments.
It's tendrils caught her as it died, and fresh blood flowed. She staggered and fell from Alan’s back, just waiting for the blow of a tail or a foot that would finish her off.
But they never came. Losing the flower on his skull and spine seemed like a tonic for the T Rex. His eyes cleared like sunrise, his roar hit full throttle, he dropped Toothy, turned and tore the last flowers from his tail and arm.
Kelne was on her feet and pumping healing into the wounded beast.
Sorrel wasn’t the whining kind – Shearer needed blessing more than she did and that fancy Feywild choker was good for ten goodberries. After she’d stuffed them down she felt tears in her eyes – Toothy nearly bought it and Alan… that mutt had been part of her life since she stepped off the boat.
Suddenly Toothy was lifting her up, giving her a gentle hug and carrying her towards Alan. She flung her arms around the T Rex’s massive thighs and told him not to die. She wasn’t going to let him die. Toothy lifted her higher and Alan’s arms closed around her. There were a few minutes of silent connection that filled her soul with a kind of peace.
“Thank you, brother,” she whispered.
Glint hauled out the map and pointed to the glyph. Alan offered his back. They thundered through the forest and came to the base of a rocky outcrop with a pool of water. There was a small flickering light at the top. They climbed up and found a small hut laid out by a passing ranger or hunter with a bed, some firewood, a powerful magic axe on the wall, a strange orb that made a loud gong sound and a tube of mucus. Standard fare.
Glint wasn’t paying attention – he was quizzing Alan on the transformation. Turned out the herder had been passing through the plane shift and found a dying T Rex in mortal agony. He had a kindly heart and, being a farmer, spared the beast further pain by putting it out of its misery. Thing is, that plane had a strange magic – you quite literally were what you killed. Before you could read a dissertation Alan was a T rex and found he quite liked the look.
As they left Glint at the academy, the fiery redhead seemed certain they’d make adjunct professor for this scientific breakthrough.
Sorrel shook Glint’s hand and winced. Goodberries hadn’t closed every wound. Still, Toothy was safe, Alan wasn’t undead, Kelne was in fine spirits, Ragtag’s familiars were on form and Glint was a prof.
Sorrel limped home slowly.
The Big Sleep
Sorrel looked at her room. She was a lone wolf. Unmarried. Not rich. She liked strong drink, women, fighting, chess and a few other things. City officials didn’t like her too well, but she knew a couple. Both parents alive last time she checked, which was no time recently. No brothers. No sisters. When she got knocked off in a dark alley sometime, if it happens, nobody will feel like the bottom dropped out of his or her life.
She walked to the window and opened the curtains wide. The night air came drifting in with a kind of stale sweetness that still remembered the streets of the city. She reached for a bottle, poured a glass and drank it slowly. Footsteps clattered off into the night.
She went back to the bed, sat down on it and tried to catch up on her foot dangling. She was thinking about going out for dinner and that life was pretty flat and that it would probably be just as flat if she took another drink and that taking a drink all alone wouldn’t be any fun anyway.
People with happy families don’t become adventurers.
People with happy families don’t become adventurers. A bad childhood is the perfect background for any career with a high body count. You don’t trust anyone. You’re used to getting smacked around. You’re never homesick.
Spend a few years working for the House and a sunlit field dotted with buttercups just looks like a vulnerable tactical position with no decent cover.
But 20 years of small arms training, combat experience on five different planes of existence, a rating with every weapon that hurls a projectile or slices a hole in heavily armoured flesh and still Sorrel had no defence against a poor dumb beast in terrible trouble.
The wannbe prof with the blazing head – calls himself Glint, but the kid has ambition – had put out word he was looking for eyes on the sudden disappearance of one Alan Shearer.
Alan Shearer. Body of a T Rex. Mind of a smallholder. Heart as big as all outdoors. He was large. Really large. Things that size shouldn’t go missing. Glint knew the beast was last seen taunting aggressive necrotic flowers in the Angelbark and was looking to put a team together to find out what happened.
The Angelbark. Sorrel knew the Angelbark. And she knew Alan Shearer. That punk dinosaur was taking it on the lam for her and her team looking to ice the source of the corpse flowers.
Turned out the source had its own ice. Shadowfell ice. The worst kind.
Sorrel’s team made it out in one piece, barely a scratch on her lilywhite. Two days in the jungle, 18 solid hours of combat and a glimpse into the void for 50 gold. She hadn’t worked so hard for so little money since the bungled hit in Avernus. But she owed that T Rex.
And call her a soft-hearted schmuck, but couple of days off the boat in Kantas she’d been taking out velociraptors a few miles from Shearer’s farm just about the time he morphed into the thunder lizard. You don’t get much more romantic than that.
If she was the superstitious kind – and when you’ve survived as many hits as Sorrel you learn to rely on field craft over star signs – she’d tag him as her lucky charm. All the same. The Angelbark. Something was cooking in that tangled mass of vegetation and Sorrel preferred her roots and shoots in a hearty stew.
‘Sides, last time she’d been in the Angelbark was the last time she saw a devil. And whilst she had unfinished business with two major pit fiends and at least one archduke, she wasn’t looking to close the deal any time soon.
But Alan was a weak spot.
And then Toothy came bounding through the door with a crumpled copy of Glint’s appeal, asking Sorrel if she wanted to hunt a dragon with him. The world’s cutest drow barbarian – and she ran those three words through her mind very slowly like she was adding three drops of vermouth to a very dry martini: Cute. Drow. Barbarian…
She’d sworn to keep out of the caring business but when your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses.
The moment she saw Toothy cannoning into view with a gaggle of pet geese, his baggy red cable knit jumper and a wide daffy grin looking like roses, chocolate and Christmas Day she fell for the jerk. In classical tragedy, they fall from great heights. When Sorrel saw Toothy she fell from the curb. But she surrendered. And now, if he was heading into danger, she had to be there. Anyone harmed a hair on this kid’s head, they would be spending the rest of their incredibly short life in agonising pain.
She sighed. She had planned to take the day off and spend some time with a couple of buddies.
They travelled light and they were fun to have around. One travelled in a scabbard and the other in a hip flask. But they’d have to wait.
The Angelbark. Again.
She pulled out a fine grit whetstone, applied a little honing oil and went to work. When her blades gleamed brightly enough you could see an ambush in them, she stopped.
Get the edge any finer, she’d be slicing the air in half and the last time that happened it got ugly very fast. Turns out the atmosphere isn’t just for breathing. It keeps some crawling things out and no-one wants something that slimy to join the party. Keep your weapons sharp but not too sharp.
Besides, you can’t just go round killing people whenever the notion strikes you. It’s not feasible.
Daring Heights Confidential
Losing Toothy was her first mistake.
Making it to the Academy was a piece of cake, if the cake was a badly decorated white wedding triple stack hurled to the ground by a jilted groom and then danced all over by about 400 of those weird models they stick on top. Or at least, just to be clear, that’s what forcing her way through the streets of Daring Heights felt like to Sorrel.
Toothy’s red jumper stood out against the drab throng, and she followed him as he snooker balled from animal to animal, feeding horses, patting dogs, stroking cats and periodically doing his level best to entice a couple of pigeons out of the sky for a natter.
Inside was a different story. The main hallway was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armour rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair.
The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere.
Sorrel thought that if she worked in the Academy, she would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to really be trying.
And when she lowered her eyes back down Toothy was gone.
You can think of a library as a room full of books or you can think of it as hundreds of near identical alleyways all interconnecting with the added bonus that the walls could move if given a hearty shove. Try finding a drow in that, even if they are wearing a red jumper.
Every so often Sorrel heard a Toothy noise – an academic shouting incoherently, a joyous animal sound, something crashing expensively to the floor, the gut warping noise of a planar entity fleeing through a briefly conjured wormhole to avoid losing its tentacles to one of Toothy’s hugs.
Finally, she found him in a waiting room. The walls had been sprayed with tea like a fat man’s blood when his throat’s been slit but he doesn’t yet know he’s going down.
A quick survey of the room showed Ragtag the yuan-ti warlock, Glint and his owl Strick, Kelne the wild-eyed halfling cleric and a beaming Toothy. Given that line up, anyone could have sprayed the tea.
Sorrel leaned up against the wall and waited.
“Spending a lot of time in the Academy these days, Sorrel,” Glint said cheerfully. “We’ll have to start charging tuition fees.”
“When a ranger’s ally against the corpse flowers is threatened, she’s supposed to do something about it,” Sorrel shrugged. “It doesn’t make any difference what happened to them. They were your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it. And it happens we’re in the adventuring business. Well, when one of your number gets threatened, it’s—it’s bad business to let the corpse flowers get away with it. Bad all around, bad for every adventurer everywhere.”
“Corpse flowers can’t be all bad,” Glint pondered. “Nothing is.”
“Well, they come the closest.”
Glint nodded. “You still peddling that faux noir style?”
“A little. Is it working?”
“It’s inconsistent if I’m honest.”
“Honesty from an ambitious academic? That’s a first.”
“I don’t like your manners, Darkfire.”
“I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. I don’t like them myself. I grieve over them on winter evenings.”
“The Big Sleep, right?”
Sorrel nodded sheepishly.
Walk Softly, Stranger
Leading the party to Bloody Creek Sorrel pondered the conversation in the dean’s office.
The dean sounded like a man who’d slept well and didn’t owe too much money. Sorrel was no genius, but she could always tell when a bar fight was about to break out and if they’d been in a tavern she’d have placed money on Jacobson, Carter and Glint taking it outside.
Carter would fight dirty. Jacobson would call the cops so Sorrel’s money was on Glint, who was no good at being noble, but could see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
Someday the others would understand that. But not today.
Turns out the three boffins figured Alan wasn’t dead. This was good news. Dead friends are heavier than broken hearts. All the same, heading out after corpse flowers she’d have preferred to have a little more experience on the team. Corpse flowers are nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men. Their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption.
Then the team had fallen on the Academy’s books like sailors on shore leave heading to the mud wrestling bars. Sorrel flicked through tomes on the Shadowfell. Toothy fell into conversation with Millie the cat. Glint summoned more interns than an angry feudal overlord putting together a raiding party, Ragtag started threatening an academic who turned out to be writing a book on yuan tis and Kelne did her best to get students over to help them.
Sorrel found a map with an odd symbol – a glyph, which rapidly disappeared under Milly and Toothy fighting over… it didn’t matter what.
Eventually they pieced together the bad news – necromancy, Shadowfell, Alan facing down more corpse flowers than Glint had interns - and Sorrel offered to get the party to Bloody Creek and the Saurkraut Inn by midnight. Last place Alan was seen was barely half a day’s travel through thick undead infested jungle from there.
Along the way she fell into step with Glint.
“You figure on negotiating with these flowers, Glint?”
“Maybe it’s OK to fight some things.”
“Hmmm.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means hmmm. Death’s at the bottom of everything, Glint. Leave death to the professionals.”
“My, my, my,” said Glint. “Such a lot of swords around town and so few brains. You're the second gal I've met today that seems to think a blade in the hand means the world by the tail.”
“Who was the first?”
“They got a raw deal.”
“That kind always does.”
The village clambered over the horizon like an overweight puppy. Bloody Creek was the kind of town where they spelled trouble T-R-U-B-I-L, and if you tried to correct them, they’d kill you.
Sorrel found herself face to face with Corporal Lance again, standing guard on the road. She couldn’t figure out if he was keeping people out or keeping them in.
“What brings you back here, gloomstalker?” Lance narrowed his eyes.
“My health. I came to Bloody Creek for the spa waters.”
“We’re in the middle of the Angelbark Forest.”
“I was misinformed.”
The Sauerkraut Tavern was as she remembered it – you cut n paste a million such taverns from the start of any adventure she’d been on. The only thing missing was the wizard looking for teenagers to slay a dragon. They paid cash for a bedroom each. Sorrel hoped the morning would bring better luck.
Fallen Angel
Around dawn they approached the cursed temple. Everything seemed peaceful and bright. T Rex footprints lead off to the south with the odd tendril from corpse flowers draped on trees or rocks along the way. Every now and then they’d find broken trees and the remains of corpse flowers.
Looked like Alan was running a fighting retreat. Alan was a good… guy. She hoped he made it.
As quickly as hopes usually fade, this one collapsed and died. A big slab of stone with more claw marks scratched into it than a henpecked husband loomed out of the forest. Sorrel heard a low rumble build and fade. After that long night hunting corpse flowers she knew a snoring T Rex when she heard one. She’d just never heard one sound like this.
Kelne started with the fast talk to whatever god she prayed to, and Sorrel felt that old stealthy magic that Kelne did so well rise up in her toes. They all crept forward in silence, peeking over the outcrop like naughty kids scrumping apples. Whatever evil fruit these plants were throwing off, however, no-one seemed inclined to stick ‘em in their pockets.
Alan lay sprawled on the floor, apparently asleep. But if that was sleeping it was the big sleep, not bothered by wind or rain or how he fell, just stretched out in oblivion and two steps away from the last sleep of all.
There were corpse flowers all over him, their tendrils digging into his flesh, burrowing like worms into the soft flesh of the grave, rooting through his vital organs, squirming into his spine and brain like the tentacles of misshapen grubs feasting endlessly with a hunger than could never be assuaged.
Sorrel ran the numbers. Five corpse flowers. Four comrades. 30 arrows. Two short swords, three daggers and a rapier. She liked those maths.
She started shooting.
Farewell, My Lovely
Ragtag started unpacking the box of tricks he had stashed away with the secretive care of a rum runner on the lam from the feds. Clanking away like a doll golem foundry in toy shipyard on the lower east side it assembled itself into a fast moving mechanical familiar and headed into the sky.
By the time it was moving Sorrel’s third arrow had pierced the corpse flower on Alan’s skull. They were three good shots, one after the other, feet planted, bow string humming and Sorrel had been practicing.
The corpse flower didn’t move more than an inch. It didn’t try to dodge, it took every arrow, shook itself lightly, Alan made a low sound in his throat and the T Rex’s eye shot open with the same mechanical speed as Ragtag’s device. The eye was red like the spilled guts of a warrior dying at sunset in a rose garden.
Sorrel had seen red eyes before, but they usually followed a better time than Shearer had been having.
The beast shot to its feet, raging, both eyes wide and angry. Sorrel knew Alan by now and this wasn’t the… guy/T Rex she knew. Whatever it was it stormed towards the party like it wanted a serious conversation about their attitude to its new friends.
Toothy frowned. He wasn’t used to animals getting upset. He dropped his hands to his glaive and hauled it towards the flower wrapped around Alan’s arms with a lazy style that the less well-informed might not take too seriously. The less well informed would learn. They’d learn too late, but knowledge is hard won on a Kantas battlefield. Chunks of corpse flower went flying and Alan’s head snapped down towards the drow’s red jumper. Sorrel cursed softly.
Kelne did some quick thinking and reached into the spiritual plane for a few friends called Time, To and Die. They came dancing out all pleased to see her, their faces positively radiant, and bounced over to the corpse flowers for a quiet word. The flowers didn’t look happy to see them. Kinda rude. Spirits just want to make friends. Probably.
Sorrel had half an eye on Toothy, making sure the kid stayed safe. Big mistake. Her first arrow sliced through the flower with the precision of a sous-chef starting a morning shift but second hit Alan in the eye. She was never much of a fan of red but this was unprofessional.
The corpse flowers clearly agreed and were in no mood for conversations. Tendrils wrapped around her, digging deep into her flesh and sucking out some crucial part of her. She staggered, fell back and smacked into the floor with a crash that must have been heard in Fort Ettin.
What hurt most was Alan swooping in to help the flowers out. Fortunately, the big guy missed. Two inches to the left and Sorrel would be meeting the goddess way ahead of schedule.
Toothy seemed to take offence at this. There’s vicious and then there’s Toothy when he’s angry. Side of the lad Sorrel hadn’t seen before. She was glad she wasn’t a corpse flower. Or anything that got on that side of Toothy.
And suddenly Kelne keeled over like a teenager in a fighting pit after a hard night at the Three Dragons. Sorrel had seen that fall before when Kavel got too close to the flowers. They stunk. And for once that didn’t mean they were acting suspicious.
Although sucking the life blood out of a T Rex ain’t exactly community service.
Glint stepped up with a little tomfoolery, and suddenly there was another Kelne, looking hale and hearty like a festive morning. If the corpse flower had a face it’d look baffled.
Or at least, it would start looking baffled in the few seconds it had left before Ragtag’s quick one-two of eldritch blast and well-trained imp tore it to pieces. If Sorrel could move her face out of the howl of pain she’d be smiling right now. The numbers were getting better by the minute.
And then Alan’s jaws closed around Toothy.
The kid kept fighting, swinging his glaive into the corpse flower on the T Rex’s arm.
But Alan had Toothy.
Sorrel felt the rage starting to rise. She couldn’t feel the wounds all over her body. All she could see was the T Rex jaws and her friend. Who was under her protection. She moved almost as fast as one of her arrows.
Blade Runner
Sorrel’s new boots gripped Alan’s scales with ease and she powered up his back like she was leaping a staircase. Somewhere along the line she must have dropped her bow and drawn her sword but she could swear she had no idea when. The blade flashed in the sun and Sorrel’s scream ground down the ears like death on a bad day as she slashed the corpse flower on Alan’s spine into tiny fragments.
It's tendrils caught her as it died, and fresh blood flowed. She staggered and fell from Alan’s back, just waiting for the blow of a tail or a foot that would finish her off.
But they never came. Losing the flower on his skull and spine seemed like a tonic for the T Rex. His eyes cleared like sunrise, his roar hit full throttle, he dropped Toothy, turned and tore the last flowers from his tail and arm.
Kelne was on her feet and pumping healing into the wounded beast.
Sorrel wasn’t the whining kind – Shearer needed blessing more than she did and that fancy Feywild choker was good for ten goodberries. After she’d stuffed them down she felt tears in her eyes – Toothy nearly bought it and Alan… that mutt had been part of her life since she stepped off the boat.
Suddenly Toothy was lifting her up, giving her a gentle hug and carrying her towards Alan. She flung her arms around the T Rex’s massive thighs and told him not to die. She wasn’t going to let him die. Toothy lifted her higher and Alan’s arms closed around her. There were a few minutes of silent connection that filled her soul with a kind of peace.
“Thank you, brother,” she whispered.
Glint hauled out the map and pointed to the glyph. Alan offered his back. They thundered through the forest and came to the base of a rocky outcrop with a pool of water. There was a small flickering light at the top. They climbed up and found a small hut laid out by a passing ranger or hunter with a bed, some firewood, a powerful magic axe on the wall, a strange orb that made a loud gong sound and a tube of mucus. Standard fare.
Glint wasn’t paying attention – he was quizzing Alan on the transformation. Turned out the herder had been passing through the plane shift and found a dying T Rex in mortal agony. He had a kindly heart and, being a farmer, spared the beast further pain by putting it out of its misery. Thing is, that plane had a strange magic – you quite literally were what you killed. Before you could read a dissertation Alan was a T rex and found he quite liked the look.
As they left Glint at the academy, the fiery redhead seemed certain they’d make adjunct professor for this scientific breakthrough.
Sorrel shook Glint’s hand and winced. Goodberries hadn’t closed every wound. Still, Toothy was safe, Alan wasn’t undead, Kelne was in fine spirits, Ragtag’s familiars were on form and Glint was a prof.
Sorrel limped home slowly.
The Big Sleep
Sorrel looked at her room. She was a lone wolf. Unmarried. Not rich. She liked strong drink, women, fighting, chess and a few other things. City officials didn’t like her too well, but she knew a couple. Both parents alive last time she checked, which was no time recently. No brothers. No sisters. When she got knocked off in a dark alley sometime, if it happens, nobody will feel like the bottom dropped out of his or her life.
She walked to the window and opened the curtains wide. The night air came drifting in with a kind of stale sweetness that still remembered the streets of the city. She reached for a bottle, poured a glass and drank it slowly. Footsteps clattered off into the night.
She went back to the bed, sat down on it and tried to catch up on her foot dangling. She was thinking about going out for dinner and that life was pretty flat and that it would probably be just as flat if she took another drink and that taking a drink all alone wouldn’t be any fun anyway.
People with happy families don’t become adventurers.
