Foul Water
The Never Ending Quest - Episode 18892
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And so Fred went north. Then he changed his mind and went west. After a
few weeks he reconsidered and went north again. It had been six years
since Fred had left the quest.
Much had transpired in that time. The Dragon had left its lair and begun
a true rampage
of the lands, the initial kidnappings and barn-burnings was just a
teaser. It took everything and everyone they had but the Allarians were
finally able to deal a dastardly
blow to the monster. It wasn't a mortal wound, but the Dragon had had
enough and flew off into the east. Of course in all the fighting Allaria
had become a waste; mountains had been blasted, rivers drained, dammed,
or -in a few cases- damned; farmland clawed, burned, scraped, or
simply blown away; and whole villages wiped off the face of the earth.
The survivors had become refugees, running east and west and south. The
nobles lost both title and wealth; the Order of the Whitehand was
dispersed, its members joining the ranks of renegades, entering the guilds
of other kingdoms, or simply retiring; even the name
'Allarian' had become a byword, a source of derision, a note of futility.
And so it was that on the tenth day of the autumn moon Fred reentered what was once his homeland. There was the faint edge of a road now overgrown with brambles and other shrubbery. He followed it, not knowing exactly where he was. The sketch of a road ended where a stream broke its path. Fred kneeled down and cupped the water in his hands to drink. "I'm bored!" yelled the ghost of Lots. "Shut up!" "You shut up!" Fred knew enough not to argue with the ghost, he may have been crazy, but he wasn't stupid. "Why don't you die already?!?" grumbled Lots. "My time hasn't come." "Sure, easy for you to say.... all you had to do was shove your sticky fingers through my throat and 'poof' I'm dead... but you, hell, constables, brigands, turtles, mages, even pissed-off ex-kings can't seem to get you! It just ain't fair!" Before Fred could reply he felt a strangeness in his gut, not from the wound of the ex-king, but from deep within his stomach - as if the water he had just drank was turning foul. Then Fred slumped to the ground and lay unconscious. "Cool!" said Lots.
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5/29/2002 9:43:03 AM
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