A System of Balances still in Place
The Never Ending Quest - Episode 4499
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Astra was taken back by the crying of the Rod. She was taken aback by
this
whole scene. She had come to these Northern Caves to hunt down, to
locate,
and to destroy the DragonMage. She had spent so much time training for
this
mission - and before that, her whole life had been one spent in the Arte
of War. Astra had spent weeks reconnoitering the caves, the tunnels - she
had found much that she had expected, the trackers and rangers of her
people had done well in their maps and descriptions. But still she was
captured by the Dragon's minions, and tortured by the Beast itself. Astra
winced at the remembrance of what that thing had done to her, clothed and
unclothed.
No one had brought back news to the QueenMother of this, however - a Phibo'nauchelus Rod! Though created by the Mad Monk Aristotle, Astra's thoughts went to the despot known as The Dutch. It was he who murdered her old teacher Anina soon after she had executed Aristotle. The sound of the Rod's crying brought Astra back to the present. "Why do you cry?" asked Astra. "Why do you cry?" asked the Rod. Before she could answer a bright light appeared within the warm chamber. Astra quickly found some defense behind a few crates. She saw that the light emanated from a strange sphere. She also saw a figure step from out of that sphere! The figure was cloaked and hooded, human by appearance, and he held a staff studded with hook-blades on each end. Not for the first time Astra cursed the fact that she had not taken that Allarian's sword - he was headed to the library of the Wyrm, what need for steel would he have there? But Astra was not completely defenseless: her whole body, naked though it was, was a living weapon. Her training had taught her how to use arms, legs, joints and bones to incapacitate and to kill. "En guarde!" challenged the stranger. Astra scanned her surroundings: a nearly empty room but for a few crates and the Rod, the stranger, the sphere of light, and herself. Astra picked up some rocks at her feet and threw them to the left, she then leapt high - passing the still-crying Rod - she yelled at the Rod: "Turn down your lights and use your heat to appraise that stranger, please!" Though not under any binding command to obey the naked woman, even knowing that this woman's people had destroyed its creator, the Rod did as suggested. The lights went out but for that coming from the sphere which was considerable; the room shone as if lit by some eerie swamplight. Of more importance, the stranger felt himself heating up for no apparent reason, distracting him and allowing the high-leaping Astra to come down on his chest with a THUD! And instantly Astra realized that her attacker was a woman! What followed was a fight most incredible: the staff flew while Astra whizzed, the stranger kicked while Astra jumped, Astra shoved while the stranger pulled, and into that odd gloom the two figures fought. ----------------------- ------------------------------ ----------------- ---------- Fred, who had attained the library and had been busy searching the place for any sign of weapons or Dragon-sign heard a strange muffled sound. He had a few large tomes on a table and noticed that the sound was coming from above his head. Looking up he saw a grill. Standing upon the table and those tomes he reached up to the grill and felt it - air was passing through - it was a ventilation shaft! He could also hear the sounds better - huffings and puffings and blows. Fred recognized it immediately as battle. But where? and who? Was the Aqualarian in trouble? Was it the cursed boy? Or maybe some other Dragon-hunter or another victim of that self-same Dragon? Fred could not know, but staying in this library would not help him at all. He grabbed a few of the books that looked as if they might hold some clue as to the Dragon and these caves and left the library - his plan: to regress to where he had left the Aqualarian and the cursed Velus, and to head in the direction of the woman. If the dog-boy was in trouble, his death would not be as sore a loss as that of the Princess from the south. ------------------- ----------------- ----------------------- -------- ------------ Meanwhile Astra had discovered something most terrible: ~~this woman fights like an amazon!!!~~ The stranger had, by now, nearly overheated by the concentrated effort and temperature control of the Rod - she was forced to take off the cloak. Astra gasped: "NO! It can't be!" And that surprise was enough for the stranger to use the cloak to wrap the arms of the stunned Princess, bring in the staff and slice her head nearly clean off her neck! The stranger quickly retrieved the cloak, returned to the sphere and dissolved into nothingness. The Rod, which had ceased crying, now simply looked at the corpse with curiosity. It thought upon the words of this now-dead woman. It wondered if she had won this fight whether she would have then turned on it, seeing how the woman considered it a tool of evil. Then it began to hum, it reached out with its magickal mind and sensed its world - the undermountain demesyne of its Master, the Dragon. It hummed because it liked to hum, and as it hummed it visualized all it accomplished: food was flowing throughout the burrows, supplies were coming and going, the guards seemed content - their shifts moved on schedule, and the temperature was just right in all the mountain. Existence was good, thought the Rod to itself. It began heating up its own area, knowing that with heat, the microbes would consume the corpse of the woman much faster, and who would want a rotting corpse on their nice clean floor for very long? Not the Rod, no, not at all.
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YY
12/3/2006 3:48:18 PM
24966105 episodes viewed since 9/30/2002 1:22:06 PM.