Words & Possibilities
The Never Ending Quest - Episode 50426
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Lord Fred stared at this woman on the skiff. His eyes rolled up her
beautiful body with instinctual force even as his tongue broke loose from
the tendrils of agog.
"Woman, I know not of what you speak."
The woman took one step off the skiff and onto the shore. "Stop this nonsense Fred and tell me what happened to Velus." Fred was confused, and not only because there was a gorgeous and nude woman before him. He knew of no "Astra" and of no "Velus". His mind reeled at how this stranger could speak to him as if he were her compatriot, his mind reeled at what multi-hued tricks the Dragon had at its disposal. Fred unsheathed his sword. The woman's eyes widened. "Fred... put that down. Something is obviously wrong here, you're not yourself. Let's talk." Fred didn't mouth a word. To speak with a Dragon was death itself, to speak with a visage was deadly peril. Fred made to attack...and then ceased. He decided that this woman might have knowledge that he could use. "Stay where you are; speak your story." The woman appraised Fred, her eyes looking up and down his form, his body, his body-armour. The body-armour glistened with reddish runes etched into its surface; she could not read the outlandish alphabet but wondered whether it was a magical binding or a tale or both. Standing still as a statue she opened her mouth and told her tale. She told how her name is for her parents and her gods only but that the world knew her as Astra. She told how she had come to the Northern Caverns to destroy the Great-Drake. She told how the fiendish creature had befuddled her brains, duped her through heinous magicks, captured her, tortured her; how it had taken the illusional form of a man who then took her prisoner, how the eldritch Drake was indeed a Drake-Mage. She also told how she was rescued by a knight in steel armour, a knight from the lands to the far north, the lands of Allaria, and how that knight was none other than Frederigo. "STOP!" yelled Fred. He eyed her with anger, distrust and awe. "You make yourself a liar. I have never laid eyes upon you, I have not 'rescued' anyone in these godforsaken tunnels! You are a doppler, a wraith." Fred readied his unsheathed sword to strike. "WAIT!" yelled the woman who called herself Astra. "Yes, I may be a ruse, a trick of the Drake, but this is not the only possiblity." She breathed in as Fred did not strike. "Also is this: you may yourself be under a spell of the Drake, your memories twisted so as to not recall how you gained a compatriot within these dark halls. And a third is this: that I, myself, am the one under a delusion." Her chest rose and fell as she breathed in and out. "I do not want to die," she said. "I tell you now that I am not some monster made to look like a woman. I tell you that either you or I are under a spell of this wicked Drake...and as such I beg your patience, do not strike me. I am unarmed, I am a victim of this beast. Do not trike me down."
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5/30/2005 7:10:53 PM
Extending Enabled
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