by Billy Wong
"So Rose," Loreen asked, "what took you? Who was that faux prince?"
She answered simply, "A man who wouldn't turn back."
They descended to the dungeon and freed those Kayland soldiers they found, doing what they could for the wounded with their scant medical supplies. Observing how badly Rose was limping, Finn looked worriedly at her and asked, "Are you hurt bad?"
She forced herself to straighten up a tad, wincing with the motion. "It's not that bad, really—just that I got stabbed in the groin."
"Oh... that's got to hurt. Need me to carry you?"
"No way. I can take it." She walked on, blood oozing down her legs to the ground.
As they went from cell to cell, Derrick caught a pitiful sight. General Lipner lay shivering in his own filth, and Derrick hesitated to call to him. "General? Are you hurt?"
The man looked up slowly, as if unable to believe whose voice he heard. "Derrick? What are you doing? Get out of here before Wilner catches you!"
"Don't worry sir, he's dead. Now, how are you?"
The general reached out towards the bars, a plea in his eyes. "I've taken some wounds, but I'll be better once I leave this stinking place. Let me out!" Derrick unlocked the door, but Lipner did not move. Puzzled, Derrick took his arm and attempted to help him up, only to have him clutch his belly and scream in pain.
A closer look revealed a similar wound to that his dying cellmate had borne, and Derrick shuddered. The mortally wounded general looked up. "I don't want to die." He grasped Derrick's ankles as if to beg, and he looked helplessly at Rose. She examined Lipner, and to the scholar's surprise hope bloomed in her eyes.
"There is a way we might be able to save him," she said. "But we'll have to dive into the moat for it. Is it safe in there?"
Hearing her unnerved tone, Loreen smiled. "Don't worry, there aren't any crocodiles or poison down there. Just some old bodies, that's all. Want me to go instead? You're pretty beat up."
Rose chuckled as she looked at her friend's torn, blood-soaked clothes. "Me? Look at yourself. At least I have the use of both arms, while you can hardly use your one. Don't worry, I'll be okay. Come with me, Finn."
They disappeared up the stairs, and Derrick reassured Lipner as they waited. It took only minutes before the pair got back, Rose with a strange amulet in her hand. Neither of the lovers was wet. "Wilner's healing device," she explained. "We found it where you fought him—apparently, it fell off during the battle. Here, try it on."
Derrick put the thing around Lipner's neck and waited. Nothing happened. "I think it takes a long time to work, but it did save Wilner from your sword in his gut. Let's just get him out of here and see what happens."
The general groaned. "I don't think I'm in any condition to travel, do you?"
Finn bent and scooped him up in his arms, where he curled up in agony. "Sorry, but we're not going to stay in the heart of enemy territory waiting for you to heal up. Where are the escape tunnels, Loreen?"
She frowned. "I'm sure Wilner has men stationed-"
"Waiting for us to come in, right?" Rose finished for her. "We can handle it. Let's go." As she predicted, they surprised the crossbowmen waiting for them to enter the castle, and after killing them escaped down the long tunnels. Soon they emerged outside, and their trip to Armand was over.
#
A few days later, the lovers and Derrick were back in Kayland. Loreen had already left them to return to her brothers, but promised Rose she would contact her soon. Lipner was no longer in grave danger, and as they prepared to drop him off in town, Rose took the amulet back from the unwilling general. "This thing is going to the hospital in Hullel, like it or not, though I'm tempted to keep it myself. As for you, you can be glad for your life and a, well, somewhat successful campaign."
Lipner muttered something about stealing his credit, and Finn scowled angrily at the man. "Yeah, cause I'm sure you could have beaten Wilner without our help, dead in a filthy prison cell. At least Coblan is yours for the taking now, if you can get yourself a new army. You got something else to say?"
Lipner looked at them, and a hint of shame showed on his face. "Thank... you," he said, and headed for town.
Rose smiled at her friends. "It's a start."
"General, wait!" Finn shouted. "When we fought Prince Wilner, he said something about buying a Sevrian invasion of Kayland through his conquest of the Brushknoll. Do you have any idea what he meant?"
The general shook his head. "No, but it's a good thing you told me. I'll have to put the question to our allies there, of course."
Rose gazed south. "Sevria, hmm? It seems so far away, but I'm glad we were able to stop Wilner. He can't take the Brushknoll dead, after all. Looks like we lucked out this time, preventing a future problem by solving our immediate one."
Derrick took on an ominous expression. "I'm not so sure. The powers that be in Sevria can't be that opposed to invading us, to consider such a major use of resources in return for the conquest of a place like the Brushknoll. I just wonder what it is here that they wanted."
Finn shrugged. "It's something they won't have, now that we're going to find it. I'm sure we'll be exploring this province next—whatever is here, it's big. Are you coming back with us?"
He smiled but shook his head. "I'm going to give you two some time to sort things out. But I'll be happy to join your next adventure, if you answer a little question. You still going to try and make Rose settle down? I can't excuse my stays with you as field work unless you're doing something, and it's a lot more fun with both of you around."
"Ah, fine, I'll try not to be too pushy with her—but no promises!" At that, Rose play-punched him repeatedly and burst into laughter. It took Derrick only a moment to join in, and he knew he would be glad to travel with them again.
#
Finn rested beside Rose in their house in Hullel, wrapping her thick body in his loving arms. She'd fallen asleep immediately when they arrived, and he followed soon after. Now he had awakened first, and took in her peaceful face with pleasure. His eyes drifted to the knitting wounds all over her body, and he blinked back tears as he remembered all the times he'd thought he would never get to see her like this again. Then the happiness of the moment took hold again, and he allowed himself to weep out of joy. He thought his tears were silent, but Rose's eyes opened.
Frowning worriedly, she asked in a whisper, "Finn, what's wrong?"
Instead of words, Finn answered her with a kiss that seemed to last forever, their essences touching through their wrestling tongues. Finally he released her, and looked with bliss into her eyes. "Nothing's wrong. Nothing at all."
Rose returned his joyous look and flaunted a radiant smile. "So, how was the time we were apart? I never did ask you."
Finn kissed her again, more fiercely this time. "You need to ask? It was awful. All the great things I did seemed so hollow without you to share them with. I never want to feel that way again, even if I bet my solo deeds were greater than yours."
Giving his hairy chest a playful scratch, she replied, "Then let's not. Let's never flee from each other in haste, but cling together through good times and bad, putting our faith in the bond between our souls."
He grabbed her around the neck and flipped himself atop her, growling menacingly. "No witch talk in here, fiend! Prepare to meet your doom, as I wrest the life from thee with my bare hands!" Rose put on a look of mock terror for a moment before bursting into uproarious laughter, and the two warriors grappled among the soft linens, all angry thoughts forgotten between them.
Act 3
Chapter 10
"Disgusting!" Rose whined, brushing slime that had fallen from the ceiling of the dank tunnel off her shoulder. "We've wandering around for hours and found nothing interesting. Should we really waste any more time down here?"
Derrick gave her a hand, wiping a bit of goo off her dark mane. He sighed as he found the stuff to stick quite persistently to his fingers. "Well, it beats the hell out of fighting Sevrians for th
e Brushknoll." Rose gave a slight nod of agreement, though Finn did not react.
Shortly after Prince Wilner's defeat, the vast southern republic of Sevria, consisting of over a hundred islands of various sizes, had sent a sizable army to take over Coblan. Having sent a small occupying force unprepared (again) to fight a serious war, Kayland's forces had quickly been driven out of the newly reconquered province, and the Sevrians now sought, like Wilner before, to take the Brushknoll.
That they had sent an army two thousand miles north to take the barren province made many people scratch their heads. But though their purpose remained a secret, the fact of their presence made it clear that whatever the Sevrians wanted from the Brushknoll, they wanted it bad. Quite likely, they sought the same thing Wilner had. This time, however, Derrick had opted to stay away from the conflict, and for now Rose and Finn stayed with him. Often, they wondered how things were going on the northern front, but did not involve themselves further than that.
They had recently found out about an ancient ruin beneath the Dunwal cemetary, and their exploration led them to a set of catacombs under the city. To their disappointment, so far they'd seen nothing but entombed skeletons and strange slime on the walls. Though some of the skeletons wore valuable jewelry, Rose didn't want to disturb the rest of the dead unless absolutely necessary. And anyway, they weren't here for jewels.
Several corpses had gone missing from their newly sunken graves in the past few weeks, and all indications pointed to them having gone down rather than up. It'd been a good excuse to explore these Brushknoll ruins, where they hoped to find clues as to what hidden treasure could motivate two nations to try and take the province within less than a year. Now, as the warriors continued their slog through endless hallways coated on every side with slime, the first living sound they'd heard besides their own in hours brought them to full attention. A high-pitched inhuman wailing filled the air.
The creature that emerged around a bend in the tunnel before them made all three draw weapons, though only Derrick stepped back. While he was no slouch with a sword, he had little experience dealing with such beasts and thought he might just be a distraction to his friends. Filling the hallway with the bulk of a wagon, what looked like a slime-coated cross between a slug and a shark slid towards them with the frightening speed of a water drop running down a smooth surface.
Finn met the strange charge, smashing his mace down between the thing's eyestalks. The blow did naught save put a small dent in the rubbery flesh, which began to disappear even as the slug-shark snapped at him and made him jump back. He bumped into Rose, and off balance barely warded off the great maw's rows and rows of dagger-sized teeth with his shield. The creature caught hold of the shield, forcing Finn to release it or have his arm pulled in with it. He stared as the beast bit down on the strong steel and began to crumple it like a sheet of paper.
"Finn! Hit the side of its head!" Rose's voice spurred him to action, and he gripped his long mace two-handed and whipped it around hard, connecting with the slug-shark below an eyestalk. But though the powerful blow turned the creature's head to the side, it did not seem badly hurt, and Finn drew back the mace for another swing.
Rose darted in and drove her sword up to the hilt into what passed for the monster's neck, exposed when its head turned. She pulled the blade upward through the slug-shark, nearly ripping it in half. The dead monster all but melted, its insides pouring out as if it had been a bag of liquid. For a moment Rose looked queasily at the sticky mess all over her body, then turned to Finn.
She pulled a beautiful axe halfway off her back and mused, "If by any chance we meet another one of those, perhaps you could try using this little fellow's twin?"
Finn smiled bashfully, realizing his failure to remember his own axe. The two had split Prince Wilner's axes between them, each keeping one to represent a victory over the famed warrior. "Oh well, we still handled it okay. That wasn't tough at all."
Rose shook her head without looking at him, already beginning to dissect the slain monster. "Not this time maybe, but we've got to stay on our game. You never know how much deadlier the next obstacle might be than the last. Derrick, put that sword away and ready your crossbow. You're not ready to go toe to toe with these kinds of beasts."
Then her voice grew excited. "Hey, I've found something. It's not a corpse, but I think we have our bodysnatcher. Look at this stuff!" The men walked through the goo spreading around the slug to see what she was talking about. With one hand, she shifted through an assortment of coins and jewelry, including a red gem the size of a baby's fist with a black discoloration inside which gave it the appearance of an eye. She rooted about in her pack for her magesight with the other.
Upon looking through it, she frowned. "Yep, definitely magical, that big one. Not sure what it is, but it's glowing strongly. Hope it's not cursed." The trio passed the magic-revealing lens around, examining one another. "Well, we don't seem to have been magically tainted. Any ideas, Derrick?"
Derrick took the oval-shaped ruby, as it seemed to be, and looked at it from all directions. As he turned it around, the discolored spot seemed to move, so that it remained closest to whichever surface of the gem faced west. "I've no idea where it's from, but it seems like some kind of compass. Its dark spot points straight to the west. Anyway, it doesn't seem dangerous, so let's just get back to it later. There's probably still plenty of ruin to explore."
But they didn't find anything else of note, and decided their slimy friend must have been the corpse-thief they sought. Emerging in the graveyard, Rose grinned as she shook great globs of slime off herself. "If anybody saw us like this, they'd probably run in terror of undeath!"
Finn wiped her face with a slimy hand, doing little to cleanse it. Undaunted, he kissed her. "Nah, you're too pretty to be a ghoul."
"Well, for once I don't have the wounds for it. Anyway, where to now?"
"What's to the west of here? I'm curious what the gem points to."
Rose went down the list. "Well, closest is the Lucin River, then a stretch of plains, the port of Efierd, and then the ocean... I don't know what'd be in any of those places for a magic compass to be pointing there, but it's definitely got potential. If we're going to try and find out, we'll have to go to each place one by one. Would you guys mind?"
Derrick smiled. "Did you really have to ask? This is our biggest lead thus far. Besides, I certainly can't leave you to search by yourself. It's dangerous around these parts, and a lady like you surely needs protection."
They shared a laugh, and Finn added squeezing her thick shoulder, "Where you are, I am."
"But Rose," Derrick said, "we needn't search each place. Remember, the gem points towards whatever it's attuned to, so we just need to go until it stops pointing directly west, and we'll know we're in the vicinity of it. Right?"
She nodded. "That's true. Makes things a little easier, too."
#
They traveled across the Brushknoll, and the gem showed no sign of changing its orientation as the group neared the port of Efierd. One afternoon, Finn mused, "Hope we're not going to be probing the ocean for whatever damn thing we're looking for."
Derrick looked at him. "What, you're scared of the ocean? Happy to learn something new about you."
Rose slapped him playfully on the back, making him stumble. "That was for Finn so he wouldn't do it himself; I don't want you to fall again." Derrick flushed, recalling when the giant had accidentally knocked him flat on his face in the grass before.
"No, he isn't afraid of the ocean," she continued. "We've swum between islands together, so I'd know! But I agree that a search at sea wouldn't be a good time. I'm not saying I'd give up. What we're looking for might be on some island to the west of here, and the closest one is..." She stopped, drawing a blank at the moment.
"Mulhiri," Derrick contributed, "colony of Sevria." The island port served as a center for Sevrian international trade, as well as a base for the Sevrian military from which to conduct its northern opera
tions. "The place the army in Coblan passed through."
His companions didn't seem bothered. "We're just travelers who haven't done anything against them," Finn said. "Why would they bother us? Probably more trouble than they'd want."
Derrick smiled. Rose and Finn were no easy pickings—hell, they just might leave the city in shambles if push came to shove.
Upon reaching Efierd, the companions could see right away the tension which pervaded the city. A lot fewer people walked the streets than expected, though more guards, and most of the civilians seemed in a hurry to get where they were going and did not linger outside for long. Hardly the picture of a bustling port town.
Derrick had a pretty good idea what was happening, but hoped the others might have heard some specific news. "What's going on?"
"It looks like they're bracing for an imminent war," Finn said, "and it's pretty obvious with who. Sevria's army did sail by here just recently."
A visit to a portside tavern revealed that Sevrian warships had been spotted only a few miles off the coast around the same time several Kayland cargo ships disappeared off the face of the earth. Fears that they would attack by sea had quickly grown widespread. Efierd was technically part of the Brushknoll after all, if usually more prosperous than the rest.
The mariners who normally used the port had grown wary of sailing from here, which presented a problem to Rose and friends. They needed someone willing to take them to Mulhiri, as dangerous as it could be. Finn and Rose went to search for such brave souls, leaving Derrick to wait and learn more news in the busy tavern—busier, he imagined, for the lack of work.
A tanned, nearly toothless man of middle years sat next to him, and Derrick wondered if he was a sailor. Grinning a bit frighteningly, he asked, "Hey, your big friend, is he that Finn who killed Prince Wilner?"
Derrick sighed. Since he finished off the ruler of Coblan, Finn had gained quite a bit of fame, and his already considerable bravado experienced a major growth spurt. He'd become fonder than ever of recounting his adventures for tavernfuls of drunken ruffians, and generally embellishing his stories to give himself the lion's share of the credit. Rose, bless her heart, hadn't minded a bit, and seemed to genuinely delight in her love's warped interpretations of the past. Derrick thought she was probably glad for the attention shift away from her—less drunks picking fights with her and all.
