Re: Spawning of Bob - The Legions of Los'tmabo'tl - Ch11 vs
12. The Citadel
The solar engine on the bastiladon's back was a tiny island light in an ocean of blackness. As the days in the endless tunnel stretched on to weeks, the solar engine gradually dimmed and the unusual vitality which energized the party also faded. They became listless and docile. Even Bessie's single minded plod slowed. The rough rocky floor of the tunnel had crumbled to sand which made the going more effortful. When the last glow died, Rychek feared that she would stop entirely and that this would be their tomb, but they were not plunged into total darkness. As their eyes adjusted to the dark they could see that the walls and roof of the tunnel had receded to form a vast chamber. The ceiling was dotted with tiny points of light which glittered as hard and as cold as diamonds. Bessie trudged on towards a distant glow which was intensifying in the distance. The glow overpowered the light of the diamonds and grew in power until, suddenly a fiery orb slid above the horizon. All about them the ruddy glow revealed an endless sea of billowing sand dunes.
"This is a funny swamp," murmured Mahtis.
(image)
The rays of the early morning sun were captured by the parabolic mirrors atop Chotec's engine to be directed into the cube at the heart of the apparatus. The front facet glowed anew. In Lustria, the prism had glowed with a subtle greenish cast which echoed the light of the sun filtered through a dense canopy of jungle. Here, in the deserts of Araby, the solar facet adopted a harsh, yellow-white hue.
The energizing rays also thawed the numb hearts of the lizardmen. Soon they were prosecuting their quest with their usual vigour.
"Our best infantry hammer unit is Saurus Warriors with hand weapons and shields."
"No. It's Temple Guard."
Rychek sat perched on Bessie's shoulder in resigned annoyance.
"Saurus Warriors!"
"Temple Guard!"
"Saurus Warriors!"
"Temple Guard!"
Clonk! Rychek spun around in alarm to investigate the unusual sound. He saw Mahtis holding two dazed saurus by the backs of their necks. "Skink Cohorts with Kroxigor." The scaly giant shook the pair so their heads lolled in a parody of agreement, then pushed them off the sides of the platform. The sauri landed in the sand like two large sacks of tubers.
When the pair returned to their dubious senses they found that Bessie had continued her march without them. There was no fear of getting lost because her footprints in the soft sand clearly marked her path over the next dune, and the one after that.
The harsh sun beat down on the despondent pair as they trudged in pursuit.
"It's too hot," Joe observed.
"You are a big whiner. My feet hurt," Bob replied without looking up.
"And you are a big sissy."
"Big whiner," Bob was having trouble mustering his usual enthusiasm.
"Big sissy," Joe was no better off.
"Big whiner."
"Big Chicken!"
Bob halted in his tracks, "Who are you calling a big chicken!?" he demanded with claws on his hips. As Joe ran away as fast as he could go, Bob felt a blissful respite from the sun’s glare beneath a deep shadow which was suddenly cast over him.
http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/6145/bigchicken.jpg
"Oh, Mahrlecht," Bob swore as he looked up into the undead eyes of a carrion vulture of stupendous size. The fowl creature scooped him up in a rotting claw and launched itself into the air with two beats of its decomposing wings. Joe was snatched from the brow of the next rise and then the vulture rose on an invisible column of air until the enormous dunes below seemed no larger than ripples on a pond. Joe fancied he could see a trail of marks in the sand leading to a black speck which was toiling through the desert. The bird did not pause as it soared over the minute bastiladon and sped further eastward.
After some time the carrion vulture tucked in its wings and stooped towards a toy castle. The fort looked like it had been designed by an emotionally challenged child. Its massive walls were constructed of dreary basalt slabs. The disturbingly phallic towers scattered along the outer curtain wall were surmounted by crowns of spiky crenellated battlements. The inner keep maintained a hostile vigil through mullioned windows reminiscent glowering eye sockets. Every possible surface was decorated with skull motifs. As their captor swooped lower, the sauri could see that the fortress was not a toy, but indeed a work of such scale and arrogance that only a madman could have commissioned it. An emotionally challenged madman.
Their fowl conveyance deposited them without harm on the flagstones before the yawning portcullis of the inner keep. As Bob and Joe gawped in disbelief at the tasteless display of architectural brutality they were approached by an ancient dwarf. The dwarf was lavishly dressed from his ornate helm down to his pointy velvet slippers. Jeweled rings decorated every finger. His magnificent snowy white beard and hair were gathered by bands of burnished gold and tumbled to trail along the floor. His eyebrows and beard obscured most of his features but his most striking attribute were his hopeless, despairing eyes.
The dwarf regarded the guests in silence for a moment. "May the Lord of the Citadel have mercy on you. Please follow." The dwarf turned to pass through the arch and revealed that his extravagant garb was but a facade. His bare back and posterior were exposed to the elements. Bob and Joe, who possessed not one stitch of clothing between them shrugged and followed their guide.
The trio crossed an inner court and ascended a seemingly endless stair. Although they saw no other inhabitants, there was a pervading sense of alliances betrayed and hopes dashed. By the time Bob mounted the last step he could believe that no good and decency remained in the universe.
An icy voice spoke. "You may go." These words were directed to the dwarf who performed a curious bow. He turned to leave before bowing, revealing a view barely more palatable than that of Morrslieb, the Chaos Moon itself.
Bob and Joe examined their surroundings. They were in a large chamber atop the keep. Light was admitted through four open bay windows which opened to each cardinal direction and led out to a broad terrace surrounded by dizzying voids. The inner walls of the room were lined with shelves festooned with hundreds of boxes displaying brightly coloured and alluring images.
The dominating feature of the room was a table which was modeled to resemble a variety of terrain features from the real world, except that they were wrong. Tiny trees writhed in anger, in places the surface of the ground gave way to reveal rockeries of skulls, and steep model hills reared above the plain, yet they resembled open terrain and offered no protection from line of sight.
Along one edge of the table were a collection of vials of brightly coloured potions. Beside them were carelessly scattered cruelly bristled brushes, no doubt used for torture, but on a miniature scale. The dismembered and decoloured representations of tiny beings were most unsettling. Each had a semblance of realism, but the proportions were wrong. Some tiny warriors were burdened by weapons too large for their frames. Others had armour which would clearly prevent effective movement. Each one of the incomplete warriors had an expression of disbelief on its tiny face. "How the **** did I end up in this situation?" seemed to be the consensus.
"Welcome, Bob" their host stepped out of the shadows. "I am the Great Pharaoh, Phatmothoses. I rule the Citadel. Each terrible concept is mine.” The speaker gestured towards the tiny figures. “I see that you have met my little friends." He was a skeleton. Although he was well ornamented with Nehekharan headress, jewellery and cloak, it was clear that he had very little substance at all.
Bob and Joe cast about looking for the "friends' which the pharaoh had referred too. Eventually Bob's eyes rested on the miniature warriors at the end of the table. "Oh, I see!" a gleam of understanding flickered on his face, "Your little "friends." Where I come from, there is this guy that thinks his little "friends" are real too! You see, Qupakoco comes from a remote area of Lustria, and it gets very cold and dark and lonely and...."
"Silence!" The skeleton stamped his foot. "They are real! I have devoted a lonely eternity to ruling them! Why can no one see that they are real? Why doesn't my wife understand me? She has banished me to the attic because she won't let me play with them in the house, but they are real! Real, I tell you!"
Bob briefly contemplated a diplomatic way of telling the mighty Lord of the Citadel to get a life, when Joe beckoned him over. He had opened one of the boxes from a shelf marked “Lizardmen”. Inside, three extremely ugly flying reptiles were harrying a large toad for no apparent reason. Some powerful magic spell had reduced them to miniature size. "They are real," Joe mouthed.
Phatmothoses had regained his composure. "I have collected each of them from the corners of this world, and from fevered imagination. I am, in fact, the Citadel's Head Manager of the Terrible Concepts Department!"
"Well, that explains a lot," Joe mouthed silently.
"Silence! Well, I mean…. Raaarrgh!" the skeleton thrust with his snake tipped sceptre and Joe was transformed into the form of a large frog roughly the size of a human head.
"Noooooo! What have you done? Can he still talk?" Bob protested.
"I can still talk! Ribbit! That's lucky!"
"Noooooo!" Bob clenched his fists in frustration, "Why can he still talk?"
"I am the Lord of Citadel. I can do what I like! Look at this. For no particular reason I have made a magic flying carpet, which doubles as a cloak of invisibility. And it also grants immunity from any attack other than Frenzied Killing Blows!" The skeleton was rummaging in a box marked "Arcane Items" and pulled out a tiny rolled up rug.
"But that doesn't make any sense! Ribbit!"
"It doesn't matter that it makes no sense. All that matters is that fools like you will pay. I offer many powerful items and units to bolster your army, but every general will pay dearly. I have collected and placed in these boxes every creature capable of conquest in battle from this world. I have also collected Beastmen, Wood Elves, and Troglodons. I decide what rules they fight by. I decide how much they cost. I make them randomly unusable to frustrate the generals I have enslaved."
"Surely the generals could create their own units and rules."
"No! I hold the intellectual property rights for all these creatures and any like them. Any who intrude on my domain will receive cursed letters of summoning. They will be dragged against their will to a chamber of anguishing scrutiny. Those who are not imprisoned in the realm of Chaos, or forfeit their material wealth, will have their spirits broken and their hopes dashed!"
"Truly, Lord of Citadel, you have no soul! Ribbit."
"Why have you brought us here? If it was just to turn Joe into an amphibian, then obviously I am grateful, but..."
"I brought you here because you, Bob, are too awesome. If you were small and irrelevant, I might have ignored you, but you have special attributes. You have Special Rules which are a threat to my reality."
"What do you mean? Swish! Crunch, crunch, crunch." Joe had caught a desert beetle with his sticky tongue.
"He," Phatmothoses stabbed at Bob's chest, "has two incompatible Special Rules. He has the Rule of "Luck" and the Rule of "Destiny". They are opposite, and they have no right to exist together without my blessing. It is the prerogative of the Manager of Citadel’s Terrible Concepts Department to make inexplicable, illogical or contradictory Special Rules. It is what is expected of me. I will play test his generalship and mastery of the Law of Six. If this Bob is over powered, I will emasculate him and make him suck for all eternity."
"Ha! Croak! You can't change people. In particular, you can't change Bob. I have devoted my life to that cause. He is just wrong. Accept it."
"Can I not change people? Have you not met my White Dwarf? He once had pride and dignity. He was capable of discriminating thought. Now he parrots whatever words I, the Lord of Citadel, place in his mouth. In every marketplace he extols the lie that the Citadel is the fount of all wisdom and is reasonably priced."
Phatmothoses leered and pointed his sceptre at Joe's froggy form. The amphibian shrank until he was no more than a half inch tall. The lord stooped to pick him up and placed him carefully on the central table twelve inches from one edge. "Here is your champion, General. Have you brought your mystic cubes?"
(Image)
“Do you wish to use some Citadel Mystic Cubes? They come in four dreary colours and have soulless dots on each of their impractically small sides. They can be yours, for thirteen slaves.”
“What do you mean, Slaves?” Bob enquired.
“Slaves. It is how the citadel takes payment. Each “slave” (abbreviated SS) represents your soul being bonded to the Citadel for one year of tormented servitude. A unit which has a value of one hundred SS will cost you a century of bondage to the Citadel.”
“The elite of Lustria have their own mystic cubes!” Bob reached under the shell on his head and withdrew an apple core, a yo-yo, and a pair of shimmering cubes. Before he could place these on the table, Phatmothoses snatched them away and examined them.
The Lustrian mystic cubes were clearly priceless works of art. Somehow the two prisms caught the light and reflected no less than eighty-three distinct and beautiful colour options. Each of the facets was detailed with vivid representations of mighty beasts which were inlaid with pure gold. In the hand, the cubes had a reassuring weight about them which would give their caster confidence in their ability to manipulate The Law of Six.
Phatmothoses cast them on the war table several times to convince himself that they were not loaded in any way.
“Do you like them? They could only enhance your playing experience. Perhaps you could give some as gifts for a special someone. If you follow this link to the geomantic web you may still have time to place your order. http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/dice-order-2013-closed.12750/ The more you order, the cheaper they become for everyone!”
Phatmothoses glared hatefully at Bob and returned the cubes. “I will defeat you in battle and then I will own you. I will destroy your special rules and you will know the meaning of nerf! Your awesomeness, your jauntily worn eggshell and your cunningly wrought dice will be the property of the Citadel forever!”
With exaggerated care, the undead general opened a foam lined black casket and removed a figure. It was a fist sized leonine beast carved from obsidian and bedecked with gold and enamel. From its shoulder blades sprouted wings and another pair of arms which terminated in enormous glittering blades. The creature’s stinging tail arched up and forwards to poise above its head. As Phatmothoses placed the arcane construct on the table, its tail fell off. The lord snarled and reattached it with a blob of adhesive putty which he kept in the casket for just this eventuality.
Twenty four inches away, Joe blinked in consternation. He considered sweating, but wasn’t sure that amphibians could do so.
“This is the Vengeance of Gaimsworkcheops,” Phatmothoses indicated the animated construct. “Special Rules: Flight, Terror, Always Strikes First, Killing Blow, Breath Weapon (Str 4).”
“Don’t worry Joe, he doesn’t sound too bad.”
“He is also a Level 4 wizard with Lore Mastery (Death). Let us begin.”
“Oh crud. Wait, doesn’t Joe have Special Rules too?”
“What do you suppose his rules to be?”
Bob looked at his shrunken, transformed spawnkin and considered what made Joe unique among the forces of Lustria. “Special Rule: Chicken-stride. When fleeing, three mystic cubes are cast, with the lowest being discarded. This represents the blessing of Los’tmabo’tl.”
Joe boggled at him. “Something a bit more heroic perhaps, Ribbit?” he piped in a tiny voice.
“No.” Phatmothoses interjected, “ Only I can make inexplicable, illogical or contradictory Special Rules. If you give another rule, it must be in keeping with the true nature of your champion.”
Bob paused for a moment. “Okay. Special Rule: Susceptible to Pain. In any round of combat, the first unsaved wound Joe suffers causes him to emit a stricken, keening wail. This acts as a 6+ ward save because the attacker is startled by the irritating noise and fluffs his attack.”
The Lord of Citadel nodded his aquiescence. “We roll for the first turn.”
Phatmothoses’ drab dice clattered to the table, revealing six boring hollow pits. “Ha!”
Bob unleashed one of his own. The Mystic cube flashed like fire and finished its tumble showing the image of a six pointed, leering reptilian mask. “I deployed first. First turn, Lizardmen.” He leant over the table and commanded his avatar, “Joe. Run!”
Joe did not hesitate. He turned and moved his maximum allowance of four inches.
“My turn.” The Citadel lord gestured and the Vengeance of Gaimsworkcheops launched for a twenty inch flying march. Only eight inches separated the two miniatures. “Breath Weapon, strength 4”
The animated construct released a cloud of corrosive vapour which obscured the tiny frog. Bob quickly rolled one cube chanting, “Strength 4, toughness 2! Ones to save!” At the instant the cube stopped to reveal a single glaring reptilian eye, the cloud dissipated to reveal Joe gulping miniature frog sized lungfulls of air. “That was lucky, Ribbit!” he piped.
“No! There is no luck. There is only cold blooded probability. You had one chance in six to take first turn, and one chance in six to keep your one wound. So far, one chance in thirty six. The Law of Six will balance. It always does.”
“Lizardmen, Turn Two. Joe. Run some more.” Bob felt the strategy had been effective so far. Joe hopped four more inches toward the table edge.
“There is no safety there.” The lord gestured with his scepter and the edges of the table burst into towering miniature flames. I declare a charge.”
Bob weighed his chances. To flee would almost certainly plunge Joe into the flames. “Joe! Hold!”
“He must master his terror first. On Leadership….5”
Bob paused, “I usually use 3 cubes for this…”
“No you have two Special Rules only. Your champion cannot be cold blooded. Only I can change the rules during a game.”
Bob sighed and cast the exquisite pair of cubes. They revealed a spiked lizard surmounted by three heavenly bodies, and a flying reptile with a pair of unfeasibly large testicles.
“Croak, how lucky was that?”
Phatmothoses cursed. “Thus far there was but one chance in one hundred and twenty-six. But the illusions you call “luck” and “life” will end now.”
Only twelve inches separated the figures. The Citadel flying charge could not fail. Vengeance of Gaimsworkcheops swooped to crash to the table top in contact with the hapless lizardfrog. Its tail fell off again.
“Six Killing Blow Attacks, Strength six!” The skeleton scattered a handful of crude dice on the table. They revealed the judgement of the Law of Six. Among the ones and twos there glowered a cube which showed ugly pits in two rows of three. The obsidian murderer raised one bladed arm and swept it down to cleave the tiny frog. “Killing Blow! No armour saves! I have defeated your champion!”
There was a sound. A stricken, keening wail which rose in intensity to an ear shattering crescendo. The sound had words. The sound had meaning.
"Waaa aaaa aaaaah! Where is my tail? My tail! Waaaaah!"
The startled Vengeance of Gaimsworkcheops recoiled in surprise. This twitched his mighty blade off course. Unseen by Phatmothoses, Bob had rolled a cube which revealed a grinning death mask. “Frogs don’t have tails. Shut up, Joe.” Bob savoured the words. “Shut up, Joe.”
Joe peered behind himself. “That was so lucky!”
“There is no luck! You lose combat by one, Lizardman! Break Test on modified leadership of four!”
Bob accidently picked up two citadel dice, which treacherously rolled a total of seven. “I will never use these uninteresting and cursed dice again!” he vowed. “All Lizardmen should follow my example!”
Joe was poised four inches from the flames. Bob retrieved the superior dice of the old ones. “Chicken Stride requires the highest of three cubes,” said Bob. He noticed the box marked “Arcane Items” from which the Citadel lord had produced the flying carpet / invisibility cloak. Bob spied a mystic cube and fished it out. The small, black cube contained millions of tiny pin-pricks of blinking light, each circling a sphere of pure darkness.
“Not that one! Please… You can reroll one of your so-much-better-than-Citadel dice if you wish.”
Bob shrugged and gently placed the tiny cube on the table. He tossed his brace of so-much-better-than-citadel mystic cubes, rolling the terradon icon and a reptilian eye. He retrieved the eye and rolled again. Another eye. Joe, leapt three inches and stopped. One inch remained between he and the flames.
“Pursue, my Vengeance!” The skeleton hurled three swift striding cubes at the table. Three single dimples peeked back at him.
“Ribbit. That was really lucky” Joes eyes could not possible bulge any further without springing from their sockets.
“There! Is! No! Luck! You have just had your one chance in….” Phatmothoses paused to calculate, “…in….eighty-four million. However, you still flee. Rally if you can! Those flames look hot…..”
The opulent mystic cubes tumbled again. An unblinking pair of snake eyes glowered at the Lord of Citadel. He spluttered, “You have rallied, but you can perform no other actions. Citadel Turn Three. No Movement. Magic Phase!” He cast a pair of tawdry dice which rolled up a six and a one. Without pause he snatched six more inferior cubes and hurled them at the table shouting, “Purple Sun of Xereus!” Amongst the dross was a pair of malevolent, but uninspiring, sixes. “Irresistable Force!” he crowed. He cast another cube which was embossed with a terribly dull arrow which pointed off the table edge, and then another regular, tedious cube.
This last showed a single depression. Depression was the emotion that Bob felt when he looked at the vile cube. “How could anyone use such a banal (yes, banal thank you IronJaw) piece of stegadon excrement? Surely “lustria-online.com custom lizardmen dice” are superior in every way. And they are surprisingly affordable, considering the seven months of collaborative work that went into their design. To think, in only one week, the opportunity to become the proud owner of these priceless artifacts will disappear.”
A colossal orb of purple edged darkness materialized on the battlefield. Joe’s froggy form was consumed.
“Test on initiative one!” Phatmothoses nudged a mystic cube towards the saurus general.
Bob picked up the lovely cube and stroked it against his scaly cheek. “Hmmmm. These things even feel good. I should get some more. A whole lot more! I hope everyone else will do the same. Anyone who misses out will suffer an eternity of regret! No really. Eternity is a very, very, very long time. I wouldn’t want that on my conscience. If I knew someone who played Lizardmen, I would instantly contact them with the otherwise annoying Book of Face to make sure they didn’t miss out. This thing feels really good on my scaly cheek. Oooh. If I were capable of arousal, I’m pretty sure this would do it. Damn you Cold Blood! Damn you no genitals!” Bob flung the cube onto the table and slumped back in orgasmic relief. “God, I need a cigarette….” he sighed.
A snake eye. Phatmothoses’ smouldering eyes almost popped out of their sockets. His next utterance was unspellable, and darn near unpronounceable. “Fine!” he grated. “Your turn four!”
“Croak. Resolve the miscast.” A tiny voice reminded.
“What?”
“Two sixes. Miscast. Roll on the table. Ribbit.”
With another unpronounceable curse, Phatmothoses flung out two more common dice, such as those found in a child’s game. (Not a serious, credible, grown up game like Warhammer Fantasy Battle. No sir). They totaled three. The resulting five inch wide dimensional cascade stripped a wound from the Vengeance of Gaimsworkcheops. Joe continued to gulp and blink. He escaped unscathed.
One more die tumbled from the Lord of Citadel’s bony fingers. Two. With a yelp of fear, Phatmofoses’ animated construct prepared himself to be plunged into the Realm of Chaos.
“Lizardmen. Crushing Defeat. Turn Three. That was lucky! Ribbit”
Phatmofoses raised his head. His every insubstantial fibre radiated hatred. “One chance in three trillion, nine hundred and nineteen billion, one hundred and four million. Give or take. However, you forget. I make the rules. He plucked a tiny rod out of the box marked Arcane Items. “Earthing Rod. Reroll any results on the miscast table. Ha!”
He threw two more of the treacherous Citadel dice. Three dimples. He howled as he flung one more against the furthest wall of the chamber. The pathetic cube ricocheted to rest at his feet. One dimple.
The Vengeance of Gaimsworkcheops vanished from existence with a whimper. Somewhere else entirely, the great Queen named Randomness, sipped from a fine china teacup and smiled sweetly at her husband. King Balance glowered red-faced back at her. He was bound and gagged and stuffed in the corner of the chamber that they would share for all eternity.
Phatmothoses screeched in incoherent rage. With a strength that did not seem possible, he grabbed the edge of the gaming table and flipped it over. Joe's tiny froggy form was flung to the floor. Dice, incomplete models, and other bric-a-brac scattered throughout the chamber. Bob himself was knocked sprawling by the Lord of Citadel’s tantrum.
Joe hopped as quickly as his tiny legs would carry him to cower under the shelves which lined the walls as Bob gathered himself, ready to stand. Bob felt a cold, sharp edge under his scaly hand. He investigated. It was a cube. A small, black cube which contained millions of tiny pin-pricks of blinking light, each circling a sphere of pure darkness. A Cube of Darkness.
Phatmothoses saw what he held. “Noooooooooo!”
Without hesitation, Bob cast the Cube of Darkness into the centre of the room. It burst open like a black flower. Every shred of magic power within the citadel was consumed by the tiny black sphere which hovered, for an instant, before returning to the null dimension which was its home. The chamber erupted in chaos. Not Chaos. This was the regular kind of chaos. This was the kind of chaos which ensues when every kind of warrior, beast and monster, of every allegiance, is simultaneously released from a spell of miniaturisation, within the confines of a relatively small building.
Troops of halberdiers, and packs of wolves vied for dominance. Spiders, trolls and dragons chattered, bellowed and roared their annoyance. Even great reptilian beasts of the jungle burst out of the boxes which had imprisoned them, and thundered from the room, smashing their own doorways because the original ones were too small to admit them.
Bob cowered under the remains of the severely overpriced Realm of Battle table. “I could make my own gaming table at one quarter the price!” he mused. An ironlike claw grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him to his feet.
“I salute you, General. I am T`hinker`er.” The claw belonged to a doughty looking Saurus Scar Veteran. Bob had never been treated with this much (any) respect by such an exalted hero. “Take Joe with you, and escape. I have a score to settle with this so-called Lord of Citadel.” T`hinker`er held up a vicious implement.
“Is that a putty knife?” Bob gasped.
T`hinker`er grinned evilly and advanced towards Phatmothoses, who was struggling to rise from beneath a rabble of Halflings.
Bob spied a large amphibian which was cowering beneath some shelves. He grabbed it and fled to the balcony. Behind him he could overhear T`hinker`er, in a low and menacing voice, say "...and now Lord of Citadel, for the last time, I'm going to demonstrate the difference between a conversion and an original sculpture, even if it kills you!"
On the edge of the balcony, Bob tucked Joe under one arm and vaulted onto the back of a terradon which had just taken flight. The reptile faltered for a moment, let out a high pitched squawk, and furiously beat its leathery wings to leave the Citadel far behind him.
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Bob clasped the bumpy amphibian to his chest. “Joe!” he wailed, “Why didn’t you turn back into yourself? Why aren’t you talking to me?”
The sound of rushing wind as the terradon sped north east filled Bob’s ears, but he fancied there was another sound. A stricken, keening wail. The sound was coming from the terradon.
Bob peeked beneath the wing of the distressed terradon to investigate what was causing this upset. He saw Joe hanging by his claws to the scrotum of the flying reptile.
“What the….?” Bob looked carefully at the warty amphibian that he had been cradling in his arms. The blot toad, which he had rescued by accident, scowled back at him with open hostility.
The terradon had suffered enough for one lifetime and plunged toward a leafy oasis where he attempted to brush his unwelcome payload off on the crown of a date palm. Bob, and his new companion soon followed as the flying reptile shrugged them off its back.
(image)
“That was lucky!” an impressive Kroxigor observed. Bob and the blot toad had fallen from a great height to splash into the centre of the desert oasis where Mahtis, Rychek and Bessie had paused in their journey. When Bob surfaced from the cooling waters he had a bumpy amphibian perched on his eggshell.
“Where is Joe?” asked Bob.
There was another sound. A stricken, keening wail. The sound had words. The sound had meaning. “Waaa aaaa aaaaah! Get off me! Get off me!” it seemed to say.
Rychek, Mahtis and Bob peered upwards. In the fronds of a tall, spiky palm tree, they could spy a distressed saurus warrior. On his head was a collection of sticks which formed a nest. On the nest was a large bird with long curved beak. The saurus warrior and the ibis competed for the title of “most surprised”. Joe flapped his arms ineffectually and toppled from the tree and landed heavily on a nonchalant bastilodon. Bessie continued to munch on the delectable thorn bushes that grew around the waterhole.
“That was lucky,” observed Rychek. “Unless you count Joe. What happened to you guys?”
Joe and the ibis recovered their composure. “There was this evil ruler, who wanted to nerf Bob!”
Rychek shuddered. If Bob were nerfed, what joy would remain in the universe? There would be no point to existence.
Then the light around them seemed to dim, just for a second.
“You have something that belongs to me.” Silhouetted against the setting sun was a badly beaten skeleton. He looked as if he had just gone two days against a saurus scar veteran and lost. As he spoke, the sunlight flickered and dimmed again.
“Get behind us, Bob. It’s you he’s after” Rychek and Mahtis stood shoulder to shoulder in front of their friend.
“Do not play childish games. I will take what is mine!” The menacing skeleton was riding on a flying carpet of Arabyan design. Around him was a faint glow which screamed, “Magical protection from mundane attacks!” Another shadow streaked across the sinking sun.
Joe stepped forward. “Great Phatmothoses, Lord of Citadel. You win. Bob, come forward.”
“You can’t surrender Bob to him!” Rychek protested.
“Trust me,” Joe mouthed silently.
Mahtis and Rychek grudgingly parted. Bob stepped forward, with the toad still perched on his shell.
“Here. Take him. He was a terrible concept, anyway.” Joe snatched the startled blot toad from atop Bob’s head and flung him to the Lord of Citadel.
Phatmothoses looked at the slimy amphibian cradled in his arms. “No, I didn’t mean……”
He was interrupted by a chorus of enraged screeches. A ripperdactyl swooped out of the glare of the setting sun and raked its claws across the Citadel Lord’s thin shoulders, bowling him from his flying carpet. As more rippers slashed him, Phatmothoses curled into a ball, with the blot toad still clutched to his breast. These frenzied killers were the very same that had been magically imprisoned within the Citadel.
The four lizardmen climbed onto Bessie’s howdah and steered her gently away from the whirlwind of dust, leathery wings and frenzied under bites.
As they slipped into the gathering night, Mahtis turned to watch the downfall of the Lord of Citadel.
“That was unlucky,” he remarked.
Next Chapter: Da Bloo Shaman
Edit: 12/9/13. Minor content change in the first part of the chapter. Gratuitous reference to T`hinker`er in the second half. Buy more dice! Buy more dice! Buy more dice! Buy more dice! Buy more dice!
http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/dice-order-2013-closed.12750/
Edit: Spelling correction of "The Bloo Shaman". Rookie error.
Edit: 12/9/13. Proofread and minor improvements. Included the word "scrotum" and more T`hinker`er.
Edit: 13/9/13 Minor corrections, Smurfs removed for later use.
