Chapter Zero: And Death Shall Have No Dominion

Sylvea cast a glance towards her sister, ever vigilant this close to Palemere. "Pay her no mind, good soldier. I serve Evening Glory and She has seen fit to gift me with my sister's presence." She gave him a good look, "And she obeys my word. She will not harm you, lest you seek to harm myself."

Then she looked at the older man that had traveled with them and at the city again. Shaking her head, she surveyed the wounded and thought she would not be needed any time soon. Her silver dress shone in the light, "We seek entry into the city for reasons that should not concern you but will greatly aid this man." She waved vaguely in Donovon's direction.

"Is there a safe way to enter? Or a time when the sickness is not so rife?"

"Enter? Palemare?" the armsman snorted. "That is out of the question! Even without the threat of Baroness Lessenhoff relieving me of my uniform and clapping me in irons for the breach of quarantine, one would be truly mad to unleash the Laughing Death upon the countryside! We have guards at every city gate--every locked and sealed city gate--to prevent the plague from escaping Palemare. And if there are any other passages into Palemare, the Guard knows not of them."

His wary glance unsubtly drifted again to Ariean, then returned.

"Our only recourse is to remain here, and wait for either a healer to concoct a cure for the Laughing Death or for the plague to claim the life of everyone in the city. And even with the latter outcome, Palemare may not be safe to enter. Who knows how the Laughing Death passes from one person to the next? Even the healers...."

His words died at the thunder of a heavy shower of stone colliding with stone, somewhere to the North.

"Oh, damnation," snarled the guard. "It sounds like that giant is up to more havoc. This can't possibly be good."


Sylvea >

Sylvea raised an eyebrow at the man's tone, not used to her actions being questioned thusly, but it had been a long time since she had left the temple, so she supposed this was what she would have to get used to.

Glancing North, she bit her lip and shook her head. Looking back at the father, she sighed. There really was not much more time left - she wanted to be home again and comfortable to pursue her studies. Why had she volunteered? Glancing at Ariean, her lips ghosted into a smile that was quickly gone. The fresh air was good for her sister.

"Perhaps we can help with your current giant problem. I would be glad to be of assistance - then perhaps we can work on Palemere itself." Not knowing her next course of action was foreign to Sylvea, but she supposed that this was the next logical step. After all, she couldn't leave these men to their deaths - well, not now anyway.

The guard stroked his stubbled chin, contemplating the elven traveller's offer. "Hmm...I haven't the authority to waive the quarantine, but...perhaps there is something which we the Guard may do to help with your dilemna. I am not sure what we can do, but...something, perhaps. For that matter, I'm hardly certain how you can deal with a frost giant. But then, elvenkind seems to be full of surprises. Carry on, madam."

With that dismissal he dutifully returned to his wounded comrades. No sooner had Sylvea turned to address her party than Ariean was already on all fours, gallopping off in pursuit of the giant's trail. With so much blood spilled in the giant's clash with the Guard, any ghoul or vampire could likely track the giant without fail. And the large footprints in the rolling snow were certainly no impediment, either.

Even from half a minute's walk away the damage was evident. Some great force--the giant's powerful thews, most likely--had pushed a tree over, tearing its roots from the deep earth before dragging the tree twenty feet toward the wall, then slamming the tree's trunk down across it. Flagstones from the broken wall had rained from both sides of the breach ten feet up, and the tree's lean provided an easy way over the wall and into the city...though perhaps not an easy way back out.

Ariean was already scrambling over the naked roots and clawing her way up the tree's twisting trunk, up towards the breach in the city wall. Donovon lightly set his hand on Sylvea's forearm, as if to stop her from moving any nearer.

"Madame...priestess," Donovon stammered, "perhaps we should first pause to consider what we are doing...."

"GRARRRRRRGGGHHH!!!"

A horrific roar erupted from somewhere within the city, a pained bellow of something--or someone--considerably larger than a man. Crazed laughter and screaming seemed to rise and converge on the source of the roar, and the thunder of a human-sized body meeting clay brickwork in a magnificent slam burst from the cacophony. More sounds of thundering flesh and breaking bones split the air, and yet the giant voice continued to howl with growing torment and agony and cursing in an unfamiliar tongue.

"Kigorth shigurry! Gorgur hangroth gur drackdoll!"

A giant mass seemed to fall then, crushing a small wooden structure as it retreated further into the city. The deranged chanting and gibbering followed as a mob. And Ariean picked her way through the branches crossing the top of the wall, trying to get a good view of the turbulent action. Unsatisfied for lack of a view, she skipped back down the tree and alighted gracefully, greeting her sister and their charge.

"It seems that our giant has met the townsfolk. Perhaps we might slip in unnoticed now that he has drawn the madmen away from us."





Sylvea >

Sylvea nodded, pausing to try looking over the wall, though the action itself was pointless. "Very well." Turning to their guide she arched an eyebrow, "I hope you can climb well. Stay close and do not make noise. I don't want to attract undue attention." Then she turned to Ariean, "It will be difficult for the horse. We'll leave him here."

She turned to her steed and gave him a pat, not bothering to tie him down. He was trained well and had been in the company of those that were not of his world for longer than he cared to think about it. She soothed him with her words and stroked his neck, bidding him to wait for her. Then she took several packs from his back stashing some, like most of the food and water under the leaning trunk and taking the rest, her supplies and such, giving some to Ariean and hefting the others onto her own shoulders. Her staff she kept in a firm grip, using it to better balance herself.

Then she nodded at Ariean, sending her ahead to scout further, climbing the tree trunk with little difficulty herself. After all, she lived and breathed for this sort of thing. She was an elf.

Pausing only to send a quick prayer towards the wounded, she alighted on the other side of the wall with ease. Ariean was waiting patiently for her, as alert as a mouse in cat territory.

Waiting for Donovon to catch up, she told her sister, "Ariean, refrain from eating anyone here. Or using her teeth.... I do not know what effect this plague may have on you." She did not overly concern herself with her own wellbeing, but this sort of situation with the undead was unfamiliar for her and she did not want to lose her sister a second time.

"Perhaps the rat will sustain me for now," Ariean sighed, understanding Sylvea's concern. The three steadily crept up the fallen tree as the clamor over the walls retreated somewhere to the West.



Unfortunately, Sylvea's earlier estimation was right: the lowest branches hung about eight feet over the ground, too high for any human or elf to reach. A loud cracking of wood pealed as the priestess and her charge alit safely to the ground, and the ghoul's shoulders instinctively tensed at the noise.




Heavy in the air hung the familiar reek of decaying flesh and soured blood. The surrounding streets of Palemare were a macabre spectacle, splattered with bodily humors and littered with the mortal clay of many a townsperson. Some of the bodies were twisted and contorted into repulsive shapes which no humanoid body should ever mimic; their silent screams mortified across their warped faces marked them as victims of the Laughing Death, having run its course. Other bodies had been horridly wounded in their last moments, finding their deaths by blade, by blunt implement, even by deranged teeth and fingernails; these unfortunates had drawn the lethal ire of their fellow madmen...or, perhaps, they had done nothing to earn that wrath at all, struck down in random moments of chaos and insanity. But the freshest blood and warmest broken bodies laid bare the path of the frost giant. Against the wooden edifice of the general store nearest the interlopers sagged the crumpled, inverted remnants of another unfortunate soul; hurled against the wall by a titanic force, the scarlet trail of shattered ribs transfixing skin marked from where she had impacted the building to where she had flopped spinelessly to the street twelve feet below.

The largest trail of moist, red splatters led through the stony streets westward. Surely the giant would be found at the end of that road, a road cobbled from blood and bile and meat. But before the party could take full stock of their situation, a berserk laughter pealed somewhere near them.

"YEAAAAAHHHHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

The two madwomen loped and skipped from West and from South, their fevered stares weighing heavily on the three intruders. Bloodied rents and slashes in their skins spoke of self-injury and the harms inflicted by their peers, and they raised their gore-slicked blades--one a meat cleaver, one a serrated tanner's knife--in confirmation of this.

"It comes for us and brings its friends!" screeched the madwoman to the south. "What wants it? What wants ye, Ash Heart?"

Her cohort briefly lowered her cleaver and doubled over in agony, vomiting a horrid mixture of vomit, blood and bile across the pavestones before her. "Ehh...ehh...grruhhh...KILL THEM ALL!" she howled through a curtain of dribbling spetum and pepsin. "They dine on angel wings and bleed stardust! LET US TASTE IT!"

Almost as one, the madwomen raised their weapons and drew near. Donovon bore only a simple wooden rod which served as a thin club; in his heart he feared that he might never live to attend his son's rescue or burial, and that he might have led his dark benefactors to a grim fate in cursed Palemare City.



Madwoman


Madwoman #2(Init 18)> Knife attack on Ariean
Sylvea (Init 16)> Fights defensively with her staff
Madwoman #1 (Init 7)> Charging cleaver attack on Sylvea
Ariean (Init 5)> Double claw attack on Madwoman #2
Donovon (Init 3)> Move west and club attack on Madwoman #1

Sylvea blinked as the madwomen raged in their own hellish nightmare and shook her head, pitying those that suffered this mighty plague. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she ached to find the reason and the cure to this madness.

But for the moment, the forefront of her will was concentrated on staying alive, for she had no doubt that these women were intent on killing.

Raising her staff, she attempted to block the madwoman's (madwoman 1) rush and attack and counter with her Staff - though how successful she would be was uncertain. She had no time to prepare a spell and those she carried with her this day were too powerful to waste on two mad innocents.

Cackling seemed to issue from the walls around the gathering as the diseased lunatics flung themselves bodily at the threesome, blades leading the charge.



The tanning knife descended and dealt its cut, grating against Ariean's ulna and following through. The madwoman's eyes mixed confusion with disappointment on beholding the ghoul's bloodless wound.



The Staff of the Northern Cross rose with Sylvea's slender hands to greet the threat. Sensing the right moment, the death priestess swung the staff outward, and the cleaver's edge bit the dark wood harmlessly and sent a faint shower of sparking magic raining away.

With her cleaver arm struck off balance, the madwoman's ribs were exposed. And the Northern Cross staff's butt end swung leftward and back, seizing the opening and thumping the plaguebearer's floating ribs with an audible crunk. Hissing with the pain, she bit her lips and swung wildly back with the cleaver, a useless gesture of retaliation which threatened Sylvea not the least.



"Now taste my ire!" Ariean snarled as her angered and hungering heart rose to the surface. Stooping below her enemy's sweeping arms, the elven ghoul tore into the madwoman's vulnerable belly, sending scarlet rivulets arching to the pavestones. Something behind the aggressor's eyes was gripped with a freezing terror, and she stumbled backward, falling to her haunches as Ariean moved against her and continued the counterattack.

Thundering heels reached Sylvea's side, and Donovon released a fearful wail as his sturdy oaken rod rose to deal its blow. "Fear, always a powerful motivator for ending its own cause," Sylvea silently mused as the club swiftly descended.



But his dread, peaked though it was, could not propel a landing strike. The frazzled madwoman quickly leaned away, grasping her bruised ribs with a spare hand as the club kissed only air and rapped the pavestones at her feet.

Two enemies then stood side by side against the cleaver bearer, yet she perversely salivated at the odds, briefly licking the bit of her meat cleaver through a twisted grin before lunging again. Clearly whatever madness spurring her to continue the fray could be neither understood nor reasoned with, only met with greater violence. Surely the afflicted woman had never asked for such a fate, but such was the way of madness.




Ariean (Init 15)> Double claw attack on Madwoman #2
Donovon (Init 7)> Club attack on Madwoman #1
Sylvea (Init 6)> Subdual attack (with staff) on Madwoman #1
Madwoman #1 (Init 3)> Cleaver attack on Sylvea
Madwoman #2> Paralyzed for this round

As Donovon missed his blow, Sylvea snarled and swung her staff forwards, aiming for a blow to the woman's head and hoping to knock her unconscious. She would most likely be a good candidate for some tests.

Looking around to see how Ariean was faring, she gritted her teeth as Ariean's changes smacked into her mind again and was forced to step back as Ariean's claws sliced through the air aimed directly at the first woman's throat.

Shouting for her to stop but knowing it was too late, all Sylvea could do was watch and wait.

Hissing wickedly, Ariean stooped and tore into the pestilent lunatic with a bone-scratching rake across the chest. In a shower of scarlet rivulets and woolen shreds the woman fell back to the pavestones again. But Ariean, overzealous in her attack, followed too quickly after her and lunged off-balance, flopping noisily to the street and landing facefirst between her enemy's ankles.



To the plague-crazed townswoman's credit, she was fearless; once she lost her mind and found herself slowly succumbing to the Laughing Death, she had nothing more to lose...or almost nothing more.

In her wrath she reared back a mite too far with her meat cleaver, leaving her head entirely too vulnerable. Donovon swing wildly, connecting his truncheon to the side of her skull with a resounding thwunk and the cracking of bone. A choked wail burbled from the madwoman's throat as she noisily dropped her weapon and collapsed to the street. Sylvea's staff was already on its way to strike firmly at her forehead, but the fall was sudden enough to elude the elf's blow completely.

The felled citizen of Palemare rolled to her side and crumpled into a fetal ball, staring into nothingness as she waited for Death to come. But the priestess had talent in the mending of broken flesh and bone; there was still time to stabilize the fading madwoman and spare her from the Underworld, if the priestess truly had any interest in preserving her for study.

"This...this is too much!" wheezed Donovon, gripping his bloodied club uncertainly. "I hadn't expected...your ghoul! She is still in danger...."




Sylvea (Init 20)>
Ariean (Init 15) > Getting back to her feet
Donovon (Init 9)> Moving to attack Madwoman #2
Madwoman #2> Paralyzed for this round

Sylvea looked at the woman that curled at her feet and shook her head. Thinking of her preparations before this day, she sighed and let the woman die. She would be of no use - switching her gaze to Ariean, she moved to help her sister up and then turned towards the second mad woman, the one Ariean had paralysed.

"Sister, please, hold her. We need to know a few things, if we can make sense of her." She quietly directed to the ghoul. Of Donovon, for the moment, she paid no heed.

Ariean duly complied with Sylvea's wishes. Grabbing the madwoman's wrists and leaping bodily onto her, the ghoul tackled her and held her fast to the stonepaved ground. Perhaps Ariean and her harrowing touch could keep the lunatic pinned indefinitely. Or perhaps they could not.

The madwoman's eyes fluttered into and out of her senseless state, the fevered madness compelling her to resist.



"It is done," Ariean affirmed, "but perhaps rope or chains would serve far better if we need her for long. She is rather strong, as I am, and she is starting to resist."


Sylvea >

Sylvea nodded, discarding the dead woman easily as she strode towards Ariean and the now struggling madwoman.

"Donovon, please, find some binding. We need to keep Arien's strength up." Then she looked around, "Donovon, does this plague affect animals as well?" Ariean could very well be getting hungry by now... she could almost sense the bloodlust building in her ghoulish sister. But she could not allow Ariean to satisfy herself on an infected person, not before she knew what she was dealing with.

As Ariean held her, she began a light external inspection, keeping her fingers clear of open wounds and the woman's mouth and fingers.

"I've not heard anythin' of animals bein' wracked with the Laughing Death, no," Donovon admitted. "Men and women, elves, halflings...but not cows or chickens or garter snakes. Perhaps the plague only affects creatures with brains or whatnot. Oh, I do hope that this house here has no madfolk awaitin' me inside...."



The deranged captive was stirring vigorously beneath Ariean's grasp. "Release me, bitter sky! Fall! Appease! I do not call you Mother!" Her words made no sense, but her intention of resistance was evident.

But then, the madwoman's eyes dilated and rolled back into her head again, and the resistance ended once more. Lifting her adversary's arms and crossing the wrists behind that head, Ariean found an agreeable position with which to contain the plague victim's fury until bindings would arrive.

And arrive they did. Glancing this way and that, Donovon emerged from the badly damaged home with a long tablecloth in one hand and a dog's leather leash in the other. The lightly tanned leather of the leash bore a wide brown stain inside the collar, suggesting that the dog once tethered at the end of that leash had not suffered a peaceful end.

"Here we are, priestess," Donovon addressed her helpfully. "A linen tablecloth and a leash. Will these hold her?"



Sylvea had looked over the madwoman, who languished again in a comatose state. Her face, her arms and her bare legs sported a score of bruises, cuts and rents torn in the skin, and the soles of her feet--equally bare--bore the telltale cuts and gouges of trodden shards of broken glass and sharp stones; such injuries could certainly be expected of someone too delirious to be concerned with personal safety.

But there, across the townswoman's left calf muscle, Sylvea recognized a half-ring of deep marks...a pattern mirroring that of human or elven teeth. And the teeth had sunken in deeply enough to break the skin and draw blood.

"Priestess?" Donovon inquired, disrupting Sylvea's focus on the limp-bodied woman's wounds and yanking her from her reverie.


Sylvea >

She looked up, her voice distant in distraction, "Yes, donovon?" her murmured words echoing strangely across the cobbles. With such action as they had had earlier, and the screams that could still be heard yonder, it was strange to find such calm now.

Looking around, she spotted the house Donovon had found the bindings he was helpfully offering.

"In there I think, Ariean. It affords better shelter and a calmer place to work." Then she cocked her head, "Ariean, can you discern any difference in her? I mean, can you detect the disease?"

She took the bindings from Donovon before crossing to the house and looking inside, hoping to find a suitable place to bind the woman to.

Ariean sniffed the madwoman over, starting from her hair and pecking, sniffing and occasionally tasting their captive's skin until terminating her search at the feet. With a snort and a dissatisfied shrug, Ariean sighed her analysis. "She smells no different from any other woman who has not bathed in over two, possibly three weeks. Her meat smells...stronger, richer with blood, but otherwise normal. Whatever this pestilence is, it does not attack the skin or the meat of a victim's body nearly as much as it attacks the mind. She is more savage than many women like herself and she is slow to recognize pain, but that can be said of many lunatics."

Her long fingers prodded the bite mark on the madwoman's calf again. "This bite was left by another person, probably someone quite deranged. Was this woman diseased before she was bitten, I wonder? Ghouls like myself are usually bred through diseased bites, as vampires and werewolves typically breed. If the Laughing Death is a similar unnatural disease...hmm. Yes, let us bear her inside, Sister."

Intermittently rising from her torpor only to slip under again, the madwoman spat and cursed and growled as Ariean bore the woman by the shoulders while Donovon seized and hefted their captive by the ankles. Shattered window glass crunched beneath Sylvea's heels as she went to the door and pulled it open for them.



Inside, she beheld what Donovon had beheld. One man lay dead immediately at the door, his demise spelled out by the large stone block nested on his broken torso, by the broken tripwire beneath his ankles and by the loosened ceiling-mounted wire basket where the block had once hung suspended. The trap had already done its duty and was no longer a threat to Sylvea or to any other intruders since.

By her right hand, another corpse lay collapsed against the walls in the corner, his breast neatly pierced by two elven arrows. The arrows were not of wood elf design and bore fletching and arrowheads more akin to those of high elf fletchers, as Sylvea promptly recognized.

A third body lay crumpled near the base of the upward stairs. That torso too had been punctured by arrows--four of them--yet the arrows were unusual; their butts were broad and capped with copper, with no nocking for a bowstring. The green carpeted floor at the base of the stairs lay transfixed with two more similar arrows which had missed their mark, suggesting a total volley of six.

These too were high elven arrows, but fletched for a machine and not for a bow. Sylvea could see no trigger for the arrow trap which had killed the woman but, judging by where the woman had tumbled, bled and fallen, could safely wager that the trigger lay somewhere on the staircase, and that the trap had launched the arrows downward from atop the stairs to meet the intruder. Though the woman had clearly been dead for days, the swelling and blistering of the skin around each arrow wound suggested that the arrows had been poisoned, though discerning the exact poison used would be beyond Sylvea's talents. And, most importantly, Sylvea had no assurance that the trap on the stairs was no longer dangerous.

But these three bodies were clad in the tattered clothes and damaged skin of Palemare's plague victims; in stark contrast, the fourth body lying prone in the center of the room was clad in dapper garb and had apparently died in a single great act of excessively savage violence. Though his ears had been brutally torn away, his features were immediately recognized by Sylvea as those of a middle-aged high elf, possibly the homeowner and the craftsman of these arrows and traps. The quiver on his back lay empty, and his elven shortbow had snapped from excessive tension of the bowstring; that bowstring still circled the elf's neck with strangulating tightness, the deciding agent of his death. Less telling but no less repugnant were the numerous rents in his clothing and his flesh, wounds and damages inflicted by small blades, teeth and fingernails. From his trail of blood he had likely been fleeing for the stairs when he was brought down by his numerous attackers. And still clenched in the death grip of his left hand was a single small key forged from elven goldsteel, ignored by the elf's killers, its mated lock unknown.

"This is a ghastly place," huffed Donovon as he helped bear the captive inside. "I fear dearly for my son if the entire city is like this."



The den lay littered with shattered chairs and a large overturned oaken table, too heavy to be flipped by one person alone. The ashes in the fireplace had been long cold, and the fireplace--like the remainder of the house--was a product of human craftmanship, not that of elves. The nearby guest room's door had been battered inward and torn away by many furious blows; more spilled blood and destruction of the surroundings hinted at a second victim, missing and unknown, likely dragged away by the intruding mob. In the southwest corner of the den, the floorboards had been expertly cut away and trimmed off in previous years, and a small indoor garden had been tilled from the naked topsoil. Even in the dead of winter, there in the den grew dewberry flowers, Gilded Maiden flowers and flowering Heart of Ages vines, ringing a single small gallenfruit bush, still heavy with its uncommon winterborn fruits.

Though Sylvea knew not the specific origin of such plants, she knew that they were favored by elves of most breeds; even Iberril, her home village among the treetops of Bardosylvania's Lillandoril Forest--or the Black Bog Forest to the humans tilling the land below--had boasted Heart of Ages vines winding around every wooden pillar and dewberry flowers blossoming in many a windowbox. The homeowner had likely moved to human lands out of some unknown desire or necessity, and he had sought to stave away homesickness by bringing these living pieces of his homeland with him. A pity it was that his venture into the realms of man had ultimately sliced away the remaining centuries of his life.




Sylvea >

Sylvea for the most part ignored the bodies that lay before her. She paid some attention to the Elf - but dismissed him soon after she bent to retreive the small golden key.

Tucking it into a fold in her robes, she made a mental note to search the house later for what ever it locked. If it was precious to another elf, perhaps it would be worth something to herself.

"Sister, we must secure her tightly. I do not want a repeat of a few moments ago." For a moment she paused, staring at the ghoulish sister and then she shook her head. Hopefully she could get the bottom of this. Her eyes kept drifting towards the dead elf... but she had other things to occupy her mind - for now.

She trusted her sister's instincts - but did not need a deranged Ghoul on her hands as well as the panic that would enduce in their companion, Donovon.

Once the woman was secured, Sylvea gave Ariean another look before she smiled at the sister and took her to one side. "I want you to search the city - discreetly - see if you can find one that matches his son's description. If he proves as like this one, bring him. Try not to kill or injure him."

She looked upon her sister once more, fondness and love shining in her eyes, "If its safe, sate yourself too. Come back to me within three hours.... Do not leave me Ariean - I won't lose you again."

Giving her a quick hug, she bade her sister to go, knowing that the ghoul could search quicker and more efficiently then she herself could. Waiting on her report, however, would be nerveracking, as it always had been every time she had used her sister as a scout.

Turning back to the madwoman and the waiting Donovon, she reached for her pack to see if anything in it would be useful for her purposes.

"I shall do my best, sister," Ariean assured her in returning the embrace. "You and Donovon shall not wait overlong for me. Mayhaps I'll even learn what became of our rather large friend while I'm skulking about. Be well."

With that, Ariean loped to the door and opened it, glancing both ways before slipping away into the streets of Palemare. Donovon closed the door behind her and secured the latch, prompted into ardor by the rising fevered cackles of deranged townfolk in the distance. For a long moment, the giant could be heard bellowing from two or three streets away, his roars followed with the powerful smashing of flesh against pavestone.

As if on cue, the madwoman lashed to the then-righted table before Sylvea chortled as if enjoying a private joke. "Heh heh heh...a thousand diamonds on my path, and I can choose but one! Shan't it be wealth? Shan't it be youth? Shan't it be a gossamer armoire and a hundred dragons inside each other, each larger and more fierce than the last? Mayhaps a breakfast of moonsilk! Aye, a fine repast for repart bebart ere we depart! Callooh gallomedas conkoon dumbay! Callooh gallomedas conkoon dumbay...."

Donovon stamped his heel, growing visibly preturbed with the captive. "I have no ears for this. I'll search the rest of the house. And do find a way to silence her, priestess."

He stepped over the torn body of the high elf and made his way upstairs, leaving Sylvea alone with the fevered lunatic. The madwoman's gaze followed Donovon upstairs, marking the ebb of his shadows against the wall before returning her attentions to Sylvea. And eyes of maniacal laughter sunk into despair and timidity, their cause known only to the mind behind that quailing gaze.

"Bitter heart, drunken on god-liquor...scorned but for his own counsel...no company but those he could catch...no grave for them, no life, no warmth...no crystal minds, naught but lead and dust. Chains...slave chains forged of demon-fire and moonlight. We are no more...we can return. Bavatur is the gate. He rides the pale horse from its heart below the waters...the pestilent heart in his withered hand...poisoned with his own venom! Bavatur is the gate. Bavatur is the gate! AhhhhhhHAHAHAHAHAHAHAaaaaa...."

Sylvea found her body involuntarily lunging away as the madwoman was overwhelmed in a final seizure, thrashing wildly and straining mightily against her bonds! The crazed laughter was immediately steeped with sobs of desperate terror as her every muscle was gripped with the violent throes. Blood mixed with sputum vomited forth freely, and the woman's lungs burst with a powerful screech to tear the ears of all not far away. A screech which was crushed into silence as her violent thrashing pulled the table forth onto the legs to which she was lashed, bringing the table crashing down onto her. A screech which fell silent as her heart's blood spilled forth from nostril and maw, heralded with a long sigh which could only have been her last breath.

And a laughing death it was.

Donovon emerged atop the staircase and jogged downstairs to the ground floor, bearing in both hands a redwood casket, its translucent lid sealed with a small lock forged of mithril or elven steel. And a metal-bordered parchment pinned to the casket's belly dangled and flapped noisily as the peasant's heels thundered to the hardwood below.

"You took a key from the elf's body, priestess. Perhaps I have found what saints and archons preserve us! What became of her?"

The madwoman's death had been quite ugly to behold, as was its aftermath. Taken with consternation, Donovon set the casket and its joined parchment on the floor nearby and put his back into lifting the heavy table upright yet again, bringing the woman's body again to a seated position.

Sylvea could have done nothing to prevent the townwoman's fate; indeed, her deranged and bloodthirsty skirmish in the throughway outside may have hastened her demise. Yet Sylvea had taken the woman captive in hope of attaining some morsel of enlightenment about the Laughing Death. And perhaps Sylvea, in another way, had found it.

The wood elf's eyes trailed to the casket set aside as Donovon set himself to adjusting the corpse and looking her over. Beneath the casket's arched dome of crystal-glass lay a stick of twisting ironwood, its once-living wood allowed to grow around a bead of mottled bloodstone in years past, then bound in mithril wire and etched with Draconic runes which seemed to flow and shift slightly before Sylvea's eyes. A decorated twig, to be certain, and yet, as the parchment bordered with foil of elven brass revealed, far more than that:


"Ideraal,

Within this imbued ironwood twig reside fifty bolts of baleful power. They shall never err in striking their mark, and only spells of shielding may dull the magic missile's bite. Though you now walk the cities of man, keep the elven ways at hand and you shall never be steered astray.

-The Words of Your Father,
Araradh"


And in that moment, even more became clear: with the key in hand, the homeowner--Ideraal by name, apparently--had been fleeing for the stairs when the throng of madmen bore him down...fleeing for an elven ensorcelled wand which, quite possibly, could have saved his life.


Sylvea >

Sylvea arched an eyebrow - already dismissing the now dead madwoman. Crossing over to the casket, she silently read the words over and again - for some reason memorising the precise slant of the letters, the arcing grace of its curve and... tsking she shook her head and crouched beside the casket. This was no time to be missing her home.

Narrowing her gaze, she reached within the folds of her vestments and pulled out the shining key. Spinning it in her fingers, she pursed her lips debating what to do next.

With Donovan now watching her, she took the bait and reached forward to unlock the small case. It swung open without a sound - something else she found relishing about this odd piece of her homeland.

Hesitating only a moment, she reached out with tentative fingers to grasp the twisted wood - and prayed to her Goddess that it was not enchanted to its previous owner.

...and enchanted against others it was not.  Perhaps it was never ensorcelled against any hands but Ideraal's hand.  Or perhaps there was such a protective enchantment, but the spell was broken with the death of its keeper.

But such speculation mattered not.  The wand, for its small size, weighed firmly in Sylvea's hand.  High elves, as smiths, were only humbly skilled when contrasted to dwarves, but as woodworkers they were peerless.  The wand's ironwood was strong and sturdy, almost enough so to rival the strength of iron itself.  The weight of the wand seemed ferrous as well.  So of some comfort it was that the wand would not break easily under the rigors of use; indeed, the mithril wire would snap and the bloodstone would crack long before the ironwood would yield the slightest crack or splinter.

Sylvea was no wizard, but her temple had taught her much of necromancy and other wizardry.  If indeed this was an elven wand of magic missiles, then the most likely command word for the wand to blast the target of Sylvea's ire would be "Nilear'abless"...though it could be equally likely that the wand would fire at the mere push of a compelling thought.  The mode of use would soon be revealed, and the wand's teeming charges were truly a fortunate happenstance, for if Palemare was any more perilous than Sylvea had already witnessed, she would need every bolt of power she had found.



One minute passed into ten, and still Ariean had not returned.  Had she run into trouble, or was she simply taking more time than first anticipated?  Sylvea turned from Donovon and contemplated her choice: head out after Ariean or wait longer for her return.  Either option would spell trouble if Sylvea chose wrongly, for Ariean would be just as lost if she returned late to find an empty house, and Sylvea could be gravely imperiled if she met a howling mob without Ariean at her side, with or without her newfound wand.


Sylvea >

Sylvea rubbed her eyes. She was worried - a sister's no doubt needless worry - but she could not help it. Ariean may be tougher than she used to be, but she was not invulnerable and Sylvea could not bare to lose her a second time. It made her stomach clench to think of that possibility.

But Ariean, in some ways, was stronger than Sylvea and soon enough Sylvea's trust in that strength pushed through. Her sister would return and there were just too many disadvantages to going out to find her before she did.

So Sylvea settled down and tried to wait. Hopefully not much more time would pass before her scout returned. Her fingers clenched in her lap... oh for something to distract her.

Long seconds passed into long minutes. The shuffling feet outside seemed to double in their numbers. An unusually swift shadow darted past the window where Sylvea's gaze happened across. And a clacking, scraping sound rose along the house's wall, somewhere outside, sounding as a ravenous beast climbing and clawing at the plaster and flagstone.

And then, Donovon and the priestess lurched at the disruption of wood splitting and light feet falling against the floor over their heads.

"It is me," a familiar voice sang from the top of the stairs, and the pallid figure of Ariean descended swiftly as the wind. Black blood rippled in rents torn through her white skin in stark unliving contrast to the fresh red rivulets which dribbled from her cruel nails. Her reconnaissance was successful, though she did not come away undetected or unscathed.



If Ariean still lived and breathed, she would be breathing harshly from exertion and exhiliration. As she was, she simply closed her cold eyes and paused to collect her thoughts.

"Our friend, the frost giant...two streets away to the West he sits, wrestling with Death. The marketplace yawns west of him, and north from there is the City Square, where a grand fountain filled with the dead sputters water thick with filth, offal and gore. The sewer grates are alive with the voices of many rats, yet nearer the City Square the voices became something monstrous...rats, yet more than rats. And I thought that I heard a faint chanting voice from somewhere below."

A loud, rising moan from outside interrupted Ariean, but she promptly resumed in a more hushed tone.

"The City Square itself is thick with the crazed, so I dared not go too near. But north from the City Square rises the City Hall. Its stone face is defiled with blood and mad, painted scrawlings, but its doors lie broken on the street outside, and its halls sound deathly still."

"My son's home was northwest of the City Hall," Donovon interjected. "Did you reach that area?"

"I did not. I returned here after one of the mad folk saw me in the shade. And two more came at me as I returned. On that note, be wary of the front door; four more madmen slouch about its doorstep. They may know that we are here, and we may not have much time to stay."


Sylvea >

Sylvea was quick to her feet as she heard the crashing noise from above, her hands clenched in the folds of her gown, but relaxed as she heard the familiar lilt of her sister's voice call out. Reaching the bottom of the stairs just as Ariean descended, she looked over her sister with a swift, assessing glance. The red blood she ignored, knowing that it was no consequence, but the black worried her. Still, she did not want to seem too motherly in front of their companion and settled for a whispered prayer of thanks to Evening Glory beneath her breath.

Sylvea gave Donovan a sharp glance, "Sister, did the Frost Giant have anything you could see that might prove useful to us? If he visits with Death soon, he may be useful to us." Then she glanced at the door and the ominous scuffling sounds from with-out, "They will draw more attention soon. Our silence has been our saviour for now." She nodded up the stairs, "We must search for another way out," she glanced at Ariean once more, yearning to give her sister a comforting, and grateful, hug. But she refrained.

"Ariean, could you hear anything specific about the chanting? Like where it could be coming from?" Something sparked in her mind, but she did not voice her thoughts, waiting until she was completely sure of the outcome.

"We need to escape here - and get to the market place. If your son is alive, he may be hiding there. It seems the quietest place and he will be looking to avoid the madmen."

Ariean's eyes clouded as she pursed her thin lips in recollection. "The frost giant bears an axe as long in the shaft as your height or mine. He seemed to wield it with ease, and the torn bodies of lunatics around him are testament to this. He also wears a great brown bearskin across his shoulders, and his boots and loincloth match it. From his broad brass belt dangles a leathery sack large enough to hold a man; it was not empty, but its contents I could not discern."

Then Ariean heard Sylvea's second question and considered it for a moment. "The chanting beneath the Town Square...one man's voice, and it sounded like no reverent priest at ceremony. The voice rose and fell with anger or madness, sister, but there seemed to be a peculiar pattern or rhythm to it. And other voices near him tried to mimic him at times but more often fell to deranged cackling or gibbering."

A thin scratching sound then raked across the front door again, sending tension through Donovon's body and standing him alert. "Yuh speak truly, priestess; we must find the marketplace...an' swiftly now, before the madfolk find us!"

"We should leave as I entered. Follow me."

Ariean led the rush up the stairs and through the bedchamber, where the splintered window frame hung listlessly in its aperture. Pushing the pane aside, the ghoul stepped through the window and clung to the heavy clay downspout outside, sliding hastily to the street below. Sylvea and Donovon followed in kind, with Ariean's strong arms there to help them alight. Donovon's bones seemed to jolt briefly at Ariean's chilling touch, but all three escaped without coming to harm as, somewhere inside the house, a door broke inward under a hail of hammering fists and heels, and amid a chorus of furious howls and pained screeches.




"I believe our path is this way.

Six streets had woven and twisted behind them, and always present were the crazed voices pealing from windows and reverberating through alleyways. Fortune had kept them from any further encounters with the pestilent townsfolk, but fortune has a way of worsening without notice.




Sylvea made haste through a bend in the alley before them when suddenly a long, familiar hand seized her at the wrist and yanked her back with uncommon roughness. Catching her sister to halt her stumble, Ariean made a gesture of silence to quiet Sylvea and Donovon not far behind.

It was then that Sylvea heard the reason for Ariean's desperate grab: many maddened voices in the street at the alley's end. Inching forward and cupping her ear, Ariean approached the corner as subtly as she could and peered around it. Moments later, she returned to her companions.

"I count four, perhaps five townsfolk ahead...and those are only what I can see or hear."

The voices and their madfolk hadn't seemed to notice the interlopers yet.

"Buh buh buhbuhbuh buh buhbuh buh! Buh buh buhbuh BUH buh buh...."

"It has a dancey lancey pony, but I knows not where to puts it. Pishel booftey hongsoop sourbob pogy-pony boney..."

"They crawl on me! They crawl on me! In my ears! Under my tongue! Between my toes! Heya! Why do they bother me?!? Bother me not, mice! Bother me not!!!"

"...and cats can be rats can be bats can be mats can be thats can be thisses can be kisses! Wabbajack! Wabbajack!!!"

"WHOOOOOAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!!! The street shan't stop spinning! It spins! It spins faster! Great Pelor, Great Pelor! Uhh...uhh...uhh...I must vomit! Catch me, Pelor! WAAAAAAAAHHHHHH...."

And beneath the insane babbling was another babbling, the murmuring of water from beneath the rusted sewer grate in the corner nearby. The sewer's reek of foulest waste and garbage hung in the cold air there...rather unpleasant to the olfactories, but Sylvea had smelled worse in her time. And it seemed broad enough to suggest a broader channel below.

Somewhere in that darkness beneath, a rat chirped and chittered as it made its way around. The Town Square and the marketplace lay somewhere to the west, and the dying frost giant lay somewhere not far to the north. As the party's leader, Sylvea weighed her options carefully.





• There are five madfolk in the street ahead; it may be possible to rush forward, attack them unawares and strike them all down before they can inflict too much harm, but the prospect of fighting them is risky; the street is long with many nooks and alleys, and there may be even more madmen lurking somewhere not far outside Ariean's aural range.

• In their haste to escape the house, the party passed several intersections and several other streets and alleys. They could certainly go back and try another passage, but they fled with haste, not with stealth; other madfolk may have been drawn to the sounds of their racing footfalls as they passed, and retreating may lead to another hostile encounter...perhaps with fewer than five madfolk, or perhaps with more.

• There are numerous windows in the buildings overhead. Ariean may be able to climb the walls capably enough, but Sylvea and Donovon would face difficulty--and the chance of a bonecrunching fall--if they followed suit. And without a rope or a chain among them, Ariean would likely have nothing to lower down to her companions.

• The sewers are an option, of course. They reach throughout Palemare, and the townsfolk to be found down there should be far fewer. Larger and more spacious sewer channels are probably found towards the center of the city, and that is likely where the chanter and his cohorts are to be found. But there may be other hazards and creatures in the sewers besides madmen. And while the noontime sun rippling through the many sewer grates is enough to fuel Sylvea's lowlight vision, there may be broad expanses between the grates where even the faintest glimmer of sunlight cannot reach; Ariean's darkvision would be of use in such places, but Sylvea's lowlight vision would not.

• There may be other options not listed here to consider as well.


Sylvea >

Sylvea shook her head, faced with impossible choices. It seemed that every option before her had disadvantages. The trick was to find one that had the fewest.

She considered the grate near them, leading to the sewers and just as quickly dismissed it. The sewers were something they had to investigater further - not run blindly into. Biting her lip, she tried not to show her indecision, but it was taking her longer and longer to make her decision.

Looking back, she considered back tracking and tried to listen to hear if they were being pursued... but even if she could hear them, likely they would be too close to avoid, or Ariean would have heard them by now. The madmen were truly insane - and so far, not too silent. Which was a boon for Sylvea's small company.

She didn't want to rush through the group either. She had no idea who they were or what they were capable of - and whatever lay in wait for them. Sighing she gave her sister a long look and pain grew behind her eyes as she uttered her words.

"Ariean... climb to the roofs - find a way for us and quickly. Try not to be seen."

She reached out and touched her sister's decaying nose - a guesture from their childhood that bestowed warmth and comfort and love. "I'm sorry I have to use you,"

She would not cry.