by Kris Schnee
"Very well. As for combining our forts, I'm wary of accepting our doppelgangers, but your experiment in bringing some of them here suggests that they won't stab us in our sleep." Thorn studied his map. "We should remain separate, because of this dragon. If we must fight the thing, it may well attack the north settlement, and then we could all die unless this fort remains as a backup. I propose sending supplies and some fighters north with you but keeping the two groups separate in case of disaster."
* * *
Miles then tried bringing up the Wind Shrine to the south settlement's people, but they shuffled their feet nervously and asked, "What does the captain say?" Miles still wasn't really in charge here, or the tales brought back by the north group had dissuaded this crew. He couldn't blame them, and he had plenty of people willing and able to help with the quest regardless.
So, he led a party to the magic canyon that a few southerners had found shortly after this game began. There was an attack by some sort of lizard badger creatures, but they fended it off and returned with a copy of the spell from the northern magic hill.
The next step was to start coordinating plans and resources between the towns. After he made a round trip across the hills carrying crops and metal and news, people started to call him the Flying Shuttle. Then he provided air cover to a group of lizard-riders heading north to ready a squad of cavalry there.
"How did you get these creatures, anyway?" asked Miles. They were taking a detour between the obvious ambush canyon and the Star village.
One of the men grinned. "There was a Ride skill on the list, and a few of us took it, figuring there would be something to ride if we looked for it."
"Yes, but weren't you people cooped up in the fort?"
"Not completely, just in the area around it. So we found a place where these things were grazing, and experimented with them. What, did you think Captain Thorn had us completely imprisoned behind our walls?"
"I suppose not. But we do need to engage with the aliens, and not just wait for them to play by our rules."
The rider patted his mount's side; the beast snorted. "That's what we're doing now." He smiled and added, "You know, after this quest business is over I wouldn't mind staying a while longer, if we can tone down the monster attacks. I dreamed about riding horses, but there aren't a lot of opportunities for that when you grow up on a space station."
* * *
Now, Fort Necessity in the north had some trained riders, including a few people who'd rearranged their official skills and gotten some training. They also had their growing supply of iron equipment, the full range of available food, kobold mercenaries, strong defenses, access to the world's "normal" magic, and Miles' unique magical support. Hartstown, in the south, had traded with them and compared notes, also sending some volunteers for dragon-hunting.
It was nearly time.
"Have you ever actually seen the dragon as more than a passing shadow?" asked Arden, one of Thorn's loyalist guards. This was his northern incarnation; his duplicate was about the same in the south.
Miles was busy making coats. "I haven't."
"Then are you sure we're not chasing ghosts?"
Miles shrugged. "Besides the Whitescale kobolds' attacks and the red ones' hatred of them, we have what assurance the GMs provide that this enemy does exist. I doubt they'd give us an impossible quest."
"What you really need, then, is recon. Not just blundering into the lair waving a sword around and hoping you can win a fight."
"Do you have a suggestion?"
"You mentioned an attack by kobolds in the south that got away. We could capture some of them; the GMs have already practically promised they'll return."
"Those were a different group, the red-scaled ones."
Arden said, "But you got that dragon coin."
Wait a minute! thought Miles. He said, "You have a point! We've been conflating the two groups, but I assumed even during that battle that we could get a clue about the dragon by defeating the reds." He'd been distracted by the need to reach the southern camp.
Arden nodded. "Maybe some of them are working together after all. Including the mercenaries we have."
"I think we can trust this group; we're paying them well." He tried thinking in game terms, too. "But have somebody with a good Notice skill look for odd behavior."
"Already did. Nothing yet, but our captors hid the result of the roll."
* * *
"We ought to visit the Star village one more time," Miles told the southern Thorn and Eva. "Either they're involved with the dragon and were behind the canyon ambush, in which case they may know something useful, or they're harmless and we might recruit them now that the Star business is over with."
They both agreed. Miles brought Thorn along, and Johnson the guard, who had a 3 in Notice. But before they departed, Johnson said, "What if this village is innocent?"
"Then it's probably the mostly-underground settlement that I sort of found not far away from it. I think that's more likely, really, but let's try the safer encounter first."
The three of them flew by carpet to the village of the Star. They landed outside to avoid getting fried by the thing and walked in. They offered food, an iron axe-head and Thorn's best diplomacy. "We wish to tell you of a dangerous enemy," he said, and explained as though the dragon were entirely unknown to these people.
In the village's largest hut, the chief ate and spoke in friendly but vague terms about his tribe's willingness to forget past disputes. Miles wasn't hearing anything in there about an eagerness to help fight, though, and the lizards kept changing the subject when the topic of hiring them came up. Miles eventually muttered, "GMs: point of order."
The lizards paused as though suddenly losing interest in the conversation. They still moved, but were idle and silent. "What is it?" said Thorn.
Johnson told everyone, "I'm not getting anything but 'seems honest' from my Notice roll, though again I'm not being told if I succeeded."
Miles said, "I want to try a Mind roll to read these people, instead of Notice. Can I do that?"
[On what basis?] wrote the GMs into his vision.
"I learned the name of one of them. Kanak, the drummer. Seemed friendly and impressed by me. Can I roll to recall some useful detail, or strike up a conversation with that one?"
The GMs said, [Difficulty 3, and if you fail, the tribe is offended by your suspicion. Acceptable?]
Miles relayed that and no one objected. "Okay, roll."
[Skill 3, dice -1. Failure.]
"Hunting the Dragon."
[Spending a point on that aspect gives you 4; success.]
The lizards resumed moving in a more lively way, and Kanak arrived bearing a pair of drums. The lizard stared at Miles and said, "You look for the dragon's death?"
Miles tried to smile sincerely. "Yes; how did you know?"
Kanak thumped its chest. "Spirit drummer, and you powerful. Must want dragon's death to be stronger."
"We're trying to kill it, but how?"
The chief hissed. "Dangerous talk. Quiet, Kanak."
"So we have a lead," said Thorn. "Roll Charm, GMs. Ahem. Chief, you've seen that we can fight and we have powerful magic. Fighting the dragon will help protect us all. If you know anything we could use, that would make it easier."
The chief said, "Hmm. Fine. Northwest is Underhill Tribe. They guard dragon's death."
Miles said, "You mean there's an object called that? Some sort of poison or weapon?"
"Shiny rock. Iskandar keeps far away."
Thorn leaned toward the chief and Kanak. "So you're saying that we could get this object from the tribe near the canyon, and use it to fight the dragon?"
The chief nodded. "They not give away. Servants of the dragon. You destroy them, yes?" The head lizard grinned widely, relishing the prospect of his neighboring tribe's destruction. Or possibly the humans'.
* * *
Outside, on the way back to Hartstown, the humans conferred. "Good that we now know we need t
his artifact," Thorn said.
Miles shrugged. "There was talk of giving us a special weapon, earlier, but if we'd ignored it completely the GMs might not have made it necessary. Now that we know, we need to get it. Which means going back to the little northwest village and probably fighting them."
The captain said, "It was just one large hillock with a farm beside it, didn't you say? It's suicide for us to charge into whatever underground maze they've created, but we can gain the upper hand easily by controlling the exit."
"Assuming there's only one," said Johnson. "As far as I could tell, this tribe wasn't lying to us, but they wouldn't mind if we and their rivals killed each other off."
Miles steered the carpet into sight of the fort. "An attack on the Underhill Tribe, then? The trouble is that we're playing a double game, trying not just to complete the Hexapods' quests but to convince them that we humans can be dealt with peacefully. If we solve this problem by a ruthless siege and killing, then how does that make us look?"
"Intelligent and determined," said Thorn. "Please tell me that your alternative is to talk first, as opposed to sending people inside to be killed or captured."
"They were wary of me at best. I suspect this is going to get ugly."
Back at the fort, Eva's eyes lit up. "They said it was the dragon's 'death'? Then it's an artifact. Not so much a weapon as treasure that keeps the dragon alive."
Miles asked her, "What makes you say that?"
"I had a book of Russian folklore on my computer. Think of this Dragon's Death as... its heart stored in a backup location. Or, an item you have to get if you're going to kill it."
* * *
Miles made plans, rested until dawn so that his fate points would refresh, and set out again with a small army. He had Thorn, Eva, Johnson and five well-armed troops on foot plus three cavalry on riding-beasts with spears, making an even dozen. Miles gave the walkers turns on his carpet, but the trip still took hours.
They came by noon to the lone artificial mound that stood on otherwise flat land. The garden looked big enough to support dozens of the kobolds, judging from how absurdly quickly crops grew. The wooden fence that protected it was sturdy-looking but only a meter tall, as though meant to protect against rabbits that nobody had seen in this world.
"First we talk," said Miles, "and try to determine if this artifact exists and we're not just being put on by the Star tribe." He summoned his tent at a safe distance and went into it to cast a cloth-summoning spell, making another bolt of nice fabric. He cast a second spell to levitate the thing, to get that spell warmed up for the scene. He took 2 mental stress this time, not that it'd likely matter. "All set," he said. He left the cloth by the mound's door, and knocked.
Again there was a delay and then slitted eyes watching. "You. You trade?"
"Yes. We have valuable things. Metal, cloth."
"For fruit?"
At least they were talking. Miles said, "We want to trade for the Dragon's Death."
"Hss!" The door guard vanished into the darkness.
Miles backed away. "Thoughts?" he asked the others.
"They recognize the name," said Thorn. "I'd say prepare for a flurry of rocks, but we'll get a helpful battle warning first."
The kobold returned to glare out from the door slats. "Go! Leave!"
Miles said, "Trade us for the Death, first. Do it and we'll forget that you attacked us in the canyon."
"Hss! Enemies of Iskandar, go away!" The guard retreated again into the darkness and there were shuffling sounds, like more kobolds bracing for an attack.
Miles backed away from the zone nearest the door and called out, "Thanks for confirming that." He looked to the others and said, "Okay, we've tried the nice way."
So, his group didn't bother attacking the tribe. Not yet. Instead they made camp, harvesting the kobolds' fruit and planting some spare seeds of their own. Miles left his tent in place for people to take turns relaxing. The others watched the front door and made a cursory patrol to look for other exits.
Eva said, "There's a good chance they have a food stockpile, either because the kobolds thought this out or because the GMs just decided retroactively that they did. We could be here a while."
"We have what we need here. Captain, do you want to head back to base?"
"I'll give it a day. I'm expecting a messenger to come and check on us later today. Meanwhile, someone made these for us." He opened his hand to reveal four dice marked with pluses and minuses. "If I must play this game, I might as well practice and learn to do it well."
* * *
Nobody could escape out the kobolds' front door or reach the garden without being seen, so Miles and company had an easy time maintaining the siege. They kept watch but nothing was happening. Miles asked, "Can we formally stack up a Siege advantage?" Miles asked the GMs. "Call it a Mind test, assisted by the team here."
[Successfully created a "Siege" advantage with two free uses.]
"That was easy." He took his turn on watch, then went back to an improvised Fate game with Eva. Thorn was actually a fun person to play with, when he wasn't directly being responsible for a ship and its crew. They did an old-school cyberpunk game about breaking into a Chinese Empire medical lab to hack its master AI.
Thorn said, "Why kobolds and a dragon, anyway?"
Eva said, "I guess the GMs wanted to see us interact with a weaker race. Dragons are what kobolds would worship, even if there were no dragons." She played with the dice, lost in thought. "For us they both exist to fulfill needs. The little lizard guys are something we can fight without feeling like we're belittling some foreign human tribe. We have dragons because we want a specific shape for the things that terrify us. They have to be frightening to seem real, yet they should seem like something we can beat. Much better to be faced with a dragon than with a nebulous cloud of doubt and sickness and despair."
"But you like dragons," said Miles.
"It's different for me, mostly," she said. Her knuckles were white on the dice. "I'm a bit of a kobold at heart."
* * *
After sunset, the door opened slowly and a pair of kobolds crawled out, trying to hide. The observant Johnson was the first to spot them and signal to the others.
A cavalryman shook Miles awake from a nap in his tent and whispered to him. Miles nodded. Since neither he nor Eva had the Stealth skill they left it to one of the infantry to creep through the grass in the escapees' direction. Miles waited for the outcome of that to see if he should cast a spell.
The sneaky soldier stood up clutching a yelping, gasping kobold by the neck. The other one hissed in alarm and lashed out at him with a knife, but the guard swung his captive like a flail and parried the blow. The critters had been going for the garden.
"Got this?" said Miles.
"Come help."
Miles and three others swarmed in to subdue the pair of escapees. They hauled the pair over to the front entrance, trussed up and wriggling, and showed them off. Miles said, "We want the Dragon's Death. Give it to us and we'll pay you, and let these guys go."
Anguished hisses came from inside, but no surrender.
Day two of the siege came. The prisoners were securely bound. Thorn said, "I want to try interrogating them."
With their muzzles untied, they cursed and spat, but they were each tied against a repurposed fencepost and had no real hope. One of them said, "Why you hate Iskandar?"
Thorn said, "Your dragon's minions captured Miles and Eva, here. They attacked us first. Now we're going to talk with the dragon ourselves, but we need to be safe when we get there. He'll just eat us if we show up without a way to protect ourselves, right?"
"You never kill him! He eat you anyway, even if you beat us!"
Thorn smiled. "Then you're doing him a favor if you give us the Dragon's Death. Because then we'll go to his lair and die, and Iskandar will know you helped him get us killed."
Miles couldn't see the die rolls, but Thorn looked pleased with himself. The kobolds looked
shaken, exchanging glances. One of them finally said, "You let loose, we tell chief this."
"Seems reasonable. Miles?"
"If they don't go back with food, one can leave."
So they cut one of the captives loose to scurry back to the mound and bang on the door. A frantic whispered conversation later, and the door opened just long enough to let the guy in. Silence returned.
Miles told Thorn, in earshot of the other prisoner, "Plan C is still to smoke them out."
The day wore on. "I wonder if they'll make us go through with it," said Eva.
Thorn said, "Probably. They're testing us, seeing our limits. Since it's established that this is a game and we have no other hope of escape being dangled in front of us, I'm prepared to eat lizard babies if we have to."
Miles nodded. "Let's get it over with, GMs." Minutes passed. "Have it your way. Everyone ready?"
He conjured a big roll of cotton cloth, taking a little stress. "Someone do the honors," he said, pointing to the door.
The guards bashed the crude wooden door open. Miles had someone light a slow-burning campfire, then used it to ignite his cotton. He kicked the flaming bale down the sloping tunnel beyond. Then another, and another. Frantic yips and hisses sounded from below.
One of the guards said, "We'll fill the place up at this rate."
Miles was a little shaken by the thought of killing off the tribe, but it was the best remaining option. "A dense bale like this burns slowly but almost completely. I've had plenty of experience with this lately." He launched another improvised fireball into the warren.
"Sirs, smoke!" said one of the cavalry. He pointed to a white wisp around a hundred meters away.
Thorn said, "Backup exit. Take three men there."
Miles lit another bale. "What he said -- but focus your attacks on any lizards who're carrying things. We don't know what the artifact looks like."
"An egg is my best guess," Eva said.
The battle timer began. The secret exit was three zones away, giving the cavalry enough time to chase anyone who exited. Miles smiled in grim satisfaction and heaved yet more fuel into the kobolds' den. "Are we calling this an attack, or what?"
