Tales of Fantasy & Wonder Vol. 1

V - Alone in the Passages

Alone in the passages...

Game V                                                                           September 6th, 2017

South of the Sailor's camp, Theo and Xammy make plans for the day ahead. The wizard volunteers to keep watch, allowing the ranger to scout over the island for food and materials to advance their eventual escape. He will keep watch for three days, signalling by night with a small cantrip in the night if there is any trouble.

Leaving his javelin and other affects that might slow him down at the bivouac with Xammy, Theo moves south again toward the mountain and shallow valleys. Game tracks along the way reveal more raptors had passed the night before, toward the fern forests of the interior. Making a detour toward the beaches to avoid meeting them, he soon returns to the green paths as the morning sun climbs.

By midday a pig is caught, tackled and handled by its hind legs after fleeing from an arrow shot. Keeping the choice cuts to eat during the day's exploration, Theo removes the tusks and keeps a thigh bone to make more arrow heads, dressing the rest of the carcass in his cloak and hanging it from the ground to keep for later, the scent possibly bringing more game animals into the area, saurian or otherwise. Leaving secret trail marks to help him identify the pine tree from which it hangs, Theo travels on to the edges of the island.

Later as the sun descended over the silhouette of the Black Gate isles out at sea, the ranger arrives again at an old camp on the ridge with views of the southern ruins. Webbed, clawed tracks had been traced over the valley, initially a single figure ranging over the moist earth in the hill shadows, noticed before the vista of the ruins.

Passing through the grown over streets and marketplace of the lower ruins, Theo discovers a second pair of webbed tracks, meeting the first before they rambled together over the grasses, progressing to the worn lion gate and mountain steps. Following the trail to the ascent of the fortress that had been their shelter from the last storm, Theo prepared a camp beside the gates, having gathered wood along the journey, piled over the earthen floor.

The cavity to the tunnels, exposed by Jerac and Xammy days before and subsequently closed again before their departure, had been disturbed. Evidence suggests that the same webbed creatures had removed the piled stone and descended into the shade below.

With the cunning of the woodsman, Theo barbeques some of his hog flesh and lets the aroma permeate the spaces of the inner ruins as night settled. Echoes come from the opening, lured by the savoury air. Lighting a torch from the same cooking flames, he throws it toward the cavity, but it busts into sparks, hitting the rim and balanced teasingly over the gloom.

The unseen ones depart by the time the ranger recovers the torch, toeing it over the side to keep potential foes afraid of its flames as it burns on the passage floor. A ladder is exposed in the light, directly under the trapdoor. Retrieving it with the aid of his grappling iron and rope, Theo makes better use of the creature's tool by leaving it outside the fortress gate, to make a noise against the stones if anyone should trip over it in the dark on approach.

Timing the amount of tallow left on the torch burning in the tunnel, Theo steals sleep between the hours of the night, lighting another torch once the other had burnt out, wedging it above the hole to deter unwanted guests. Before the new dawn he arose and prepared for his descent into the passages, bringing the ladder back into the inner keep.

Dropping a lit torch before his descent to keep the shadows at bay, Theo recovered it from the floor and followed the window of light as it revealed the simple stone walls and ceiling carved into the mountain, with traces of footprints moving away in both directions, the earlier human pair of Jerac and Xammy moving west, and broader webbed toes coming from the east. Knowing that Xammy had spoken of the secret exit some days before, the ranger follows the eastern tunnel to explore new ground.

After an intermittent time he finds fist sized alcoves along both walls that would have once served as oil lamp shelves to light the passage for its ancient makers. Pressing ahead the shadow of a door flickers at the edge of his torchlight. Approaching with caution, Theo peeks around the opening quickly, a pedestal revealed at the far end of a room. Wary of the other inhabitants of the passages, he leaves a pair of unfinished arrow shafts along the floor, before the door he will enter in the hopes that it will sound on the stone if disturbed or investigated.

Curious now, he stalked into the room, testing the floor for traps, searching every line of stone until convinced that he is alone with a hollow-cast golden bust, wrought in the image of a bearded man as it sits on the fluted pedestal. The crown of its head has been removed to the eyeline, crudely torn under great pressure.

Even so damaged, Theo finds that the antique head weighs around forty pounds (18 kilo) and is unwieldy to carry with his pack and belt pouches already full. Untwining four feet of twine from the end of his climbing rope, the woodsman reweaves the strands into a net to distribute the weight of the golden head, working for some time in the gloom by the light of a single torch. As he completes the task of securing the found head something passed against the stone walls, outside the door of the chamber.

The cast head tied bandoleer style over his back, and taking a torch and scimitar in either hand, Theo edged toward the doorway, making his plan to thrust either one at the first sign of war. Lunging out, the ranger slashed at the shadow of a figure, then felt the blow against his armour of another clamped to his torso. Striking with flame and steel, the first amphibian is brought down before he removes the sucking mouth of the other. His sword tip had warped in the initial melee, wounding the other before it withdraws into the gloom of the western passage.

Resetting the arrow shafts between the west passage and the tunnel unexplored, Theo continues east until the passage makes a right angle turn to the left, to which leads descending stairs into a lower flooded level after some paces. Immediately at the turn is evidence of two stone slabs fitted into the wall, to cover what remains unanswered to the ranger for now. Using the gap between the slabs to bend the tip of his sword back into rough shape, he decides to leave the tunnels for now before anything else arrives by nightfall.

The ladder is missing by the time he arrived back under the ruins, the evidence showing the wounded frogling had taken it during its flight. Moving out along the secret exit discovered by Xammy and Jerac, Theo passes back into the afternoon light of the island, then ambushed from above by the foe from the tunnels. Initially surprised, the walking toad is cut down, leaving Theo to explore the outer ruins in peace.

Retracing familiar sights like the temple he and Xammy had studied on the night Jerac left with the sailors, he ranged out to the end of the causeway and the coast, walking over the scant remains of workshops near the tide. One building remains, with strong old timber surviving as walls and fallen beams. Looking back to the mountain, his sharp eyes note the cut out walls of quarries to the east of the ruins, to which he wanders back to investigate.

By sunset he had covered the quarries and area nearby, returning west around the base of the mountain, the same paths he had traced from the bivouac. The wrapped pig is still safe from larger predators, untying it from the branch to add to the burden of weight he carried back to Xammy's camp.

Returning well after dusk to the wizard's hideout, the two adventurers greet each other before they move away from the sailors camp to share swine flesh and tales of what has transpired over the days they had spent apart. Xammy has little news of the sailors, with no signal from Jerac to indicate his plans among them. After weighing up the situation, Theo promises half of the golden head he had recovered to Xammy, and hints that the gold could be a bargaining tool in getting off the island, if they can make terms with First Mate.

Sleepy from the roast pork and strain, Xammy rests in their hidden camp. Silently leaving the scene to journey into an open grove under the moonlight, Theo shakes to the prayer dance of his ancestors, to call on the nature spirits to help guide them safely off the island...