Fifteen Days - Future no more

~~the Dragon is dead and four strangers came to Mudspot; the Knight is captured by the King, the Aqualarian Princess is missing; Velus is nothing more than a shephard who was a prisoner of the Dragon, the fourth man, too, was a prisoner... a man whose good looks is the only thing I know of him...~~

The guard at the gate to the King's Castle shouted out. The mage on the mare shouted back: "Hail! I am Bertrand of Giles, a Mage of the White Stone; I have news for our King, the Great Emry Exultaine." He did not know how wrong he was, how outdated his information. Bertrand soon had his mare in good hands and he was off to see the King's Majordomo.

Penn lay in desolation. The largest city in the southern reaches of Allaria, and it was now a smoldering ruin. Duke Dred, Duke Ospel, and Lord Hasilfur stood on the hill where once was the Tower Eritone. Only stones, boulders and slabs of mortar littered the now disfigured hilltop.

"If I hadn't seen it I wouldn't have believed it."

"Even living through it I still can't believe it!"

"Survivors though we may be, our Liege may think us mad."

And so begins the legend of the headless Dragon...

Back at the edge of the Nelon Forest, within a shack a pony-ride from the black Inn, two people were contemplating a third. The healer sat in the chair while her daughter looked over the unconscious form.

"Staring ain't gonna do no good, deary."

"But why can't you fix him up, mother?"

"Whatever struck him, struck him bad. All we's got to go on are his mumblings... poor soul, he's full o' nightmares by the sound o' his groanings."

"How many days, weeks can a body be a-sleeping? We's feed him drink and he takes it, some gruel and he takes it, but he be awastin!"

Old Alfred sat in his own excrement. He sat in a cage within a cave that had been carved out of a mountain. His only consolation was that... well, actually, he had no consolations. The little girl had brought him here after he couldn't find the amulet. She told him he was a liar, a cheat! yet it was he who had been cheated. When he left with the others to track down Lord Fred's companions he had left the amulet safely within his hut. But safety is all relative. When he had come back he found his hut ransacked. He soon discovered that this little girl did not like surprises, unless she was the one making them. He knew she'd continue to keep him alive, if only to spite him. She would sing to him each and every night, sing in her sweet little voice. But the lullabys that came from her mouth were most foul. Alfred tried committing suicide twice already, but she wouldn't let that happen. She said she was saving him for a neat trick, whatever that meant.

Beatrice was sick of being just a coal-miner's daghter. She wanted to be something. With the strangers coming in and telling tales of heroic deeds, she felt her desire turn to something else: resolve. That lecherous Elder Benchley set her father out with the good news; that, she decided, was going to be her opportunity. Then everything turned wrong: the disapearances, the magic-man, the Black Hand. She was just a little scared girl after all, just a nothing. But then Crutch came by and said he loved her! And he gave her a most wonderful, beautiful necklace to prove his love. And then he said he wanted to take her away from all this! And so here she was, here he was, here they were - riding on an ass south towards Califie. They were going to start a new life. Even as Beatrice thought these thoughts she lifted the necklace from her bosom and marveled at how it shimmered, a strange glow to be sure, but pretty in a wondrous way.

"Mayderry, you son of a buck! I can't believe we did it!"

"Yes, m'Lord. Most incredible. These last days have been like a dream, part dark and part light. Through it all we won the good fight!"

"You said it! Mayderry, have you ever given thought to being a bard?"

"Not me, Lord Fred," he said blushing. "I'm nothing... of that sort."

"You don't think highly enough of yourself... none of these folk do. Well things have changed! This Duchy is mine now, won with your people's aid and the folk of this land - and I plan on keeping it, Dragon-Slayer that I am. And I promise that the people will have a share in this victory!"

"That is the best news I've heard in a while!" said a new voice. One of the few remaining members of the Black Hand came up to Fred on his perch above the Castle Square. "But we still have yet to find Zular, it's as if he simply disappeared."

"You worry too much Reggie," said Lord Fred. "Zular Mollari is no more, his power is gone, he is as good as dead."

~~it'll only be good when I see with my own two eyes his dried out corpse strecthed over a beam!~~ thought Reggie.

1. Indeed, where is the deposed Duke Mollari?
2. What of the undead Astra and Prince Cedrik?
3. How about the LeigeKing in his room full of pigeons?
4. Let's check up on the gnome...

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