Part 18 - The People of Rhem and Taking Out the Trash

Bone weary, we forge ahead. We decide to try and find the settlement the other villagers referred to before the happenings with the Well. We follow a smoke stack that leads us to the village. When we break through the trees, at the entrance to the village we are stopped by a tall, large, well armored woman.

“Halt, who goes there?” She says in a voice so deep it startles us into silence. When none of us reply, the woman takes up a defensive posture and rings a gong. Archers appear at the tops of the walls and we can make out the sounds of others flanking us from behind.

“Please, my name is Araja, and these are my guards, Isaac, Gideon, and Cortanna,” Araja says lamely. The trick seems to work. The others appear struck when they hear Araja’s name.

“What is it you want?” the woman asks, who we come to know as Roselyn.

“We are weary and we bring some of your people. We ask to seek shelter so we can rest and be on our way,” Araja says.

“Very well,” Roselyn says. She and her guards allow us into the city, “I do apologize, we recently lost town and have been living in this make shift spot for some time. Things started going south for us and we’re just trying to protect ourselves, you see. We are honored you, Araja, would come here, although I’m afraid you won’t find finery and frippery here. Hope you don’t mind sleeping on the ground ‘cause I’m afraid that’s the best we can offer. Gereth here will lead you to your lodgings.”

Gereth, one of the archers who was all too eager to shoot us in the beginning, leads us to a nice mud hut, that is, in comparison to the other mud huts that dotted the hastily assembled town. Apparently they’d been living like this for three and a half years! As soon as the town reached an advanced point of development, inanimate objects would start coming to life and tormenting the people. A well respected wizard amongst the towns people tried to come up with a solution by creating an anti magic field around the city, but just as his plan was about to be executed, some ropes dragged him down into the Well, never to be seen again.    

I ask about the chibi girl and I’m answered with vehemence. She was responsible for the deaths of their old and weak, even after they’d showed her kindness and compassion by taking her in. Her family was supposedly murdered. No doubt by her own hand! I thought with amused satire (not sure if that’s the right word). They described the girl’s victims with bite marks, as if being sucked dry by a blood thirsty creature…In fact; the last person to die was the town’s last Cleric!

As the sun goes down, Araja, Isaac, and I settle in, only Isaac just sits in a corner, lost in his own thoughts. Araja manages to drift off, but I can’t sleep! The cold, wet ground is unforgiving and offers no comfort. Finally with an exasperated sigh, I jump up, grasp Shodan by the handle, and with a swift downward ark, cut at a log in the fire place. The blade of a shortsword meets the unoffending log and it bursts into flame. Finally, with enough warmth from the crackling fire, my tired body is lulled to sleep.  

I wake achy and frozen to the bone. My body might have slept, but my mind seemed to keep me awake with vivid and fleeting dreams. Rekka’s death punctuated these dreams, and so did the deaths of my loved ones. Each time they would be tortured in a different way, but always with death as the end result. Not only that, but I couldn’t help but overhear the town guard as they argued in the night. They didn’t really approve of our presence. We were just another mouth to feed. They too sounded tired and worn. At least my lungs didn’t sting as bad and my cough was beginning to subside.

When Araja finally wakes, she sits us down for a talk. Maybe I pretended not to listen, but she was right. If we were going to be a better team, we needed to trust one another and talk to each other. We owed it to Rekka…

At the end of our conversation, there’s a knock at the door. Gereth is there. His face is pale, his clothes are haggard, and his bow is missing, “Hate to trouble you,” he begins, “Last night was bad. We’ve been fighting these great winged lizards for some time. They only seem to come at night. A while back one of our scouts saw a small group of giants. We didn’t do anything about them ‘cause they seemed to hunt the lizards and kept to themselves. But last night, three of the giants attacked. One of the men said they’d be coming back tomorrow night, and that we were going to pay for what we’d done.”

“Why didn’t you come get us last night?” Isaac said.

“It happened so fast…we did what we could,” Gereth said, fatigue weighing on his words.

Isaac asks Gereth if there’s another wizard in town that might have known the one that fell down the Well.

“You’ll wanna talk to Melinda. I’m afraid she’s the only wizard we’ve got. I’ll go get her,” Gereth says. Before he leaves he adds, “Breakfast will be starting shortly. We eat in shifts ‘cause the mess halls a bit cramped. You’re welcome to get something to eat when you like. The food’s good, though it ain’t no biscuits and gravy.”

A short while later there’s another knock. This time there’s a halfling at the door. She looks exhausted and irritated at the same time. Isaac goes to greet her warmly, but is cut off curtly as the halfling barged into the room. She proceeds to make herself at home and even relights the fire, even though the wood that I’d light previously was nothing more than ash. Melinda warmed her hands by the fire before plopping down on the floor.

Isaac asks her about the anti magic field, but as he and Araja begin telling her about our time in the Well, Melinda breaks into an uncontrollable sob. She blubbers something about her master dying in vain. Araja’s unicorn tries to comfort Melinda, and the halfling ends up falling asleep.

We leave Melinda with the unicorn so she can get some much needed rest. In the mean time, we try to find someone who speaks giant. Every soldier we meet tells us the same story about the attack. They refer us to a woman named Kedra who was currently working in the infirmary.

When we get to the infirmary, it’s filled with soldiers from the previous nights attack. Their injuries appear to be from bludgeoning weapons, which was consistent with the stories the soldiers were telling us. After asking some of the patients, we’re pointed to a person whose back is to us.

Once we get Kedra’s attention, we realize Kedra is not the person we were expecting. She looks similar to Isaac, but with some differences. She greats us with more enthusiasm then the all the people in the infirmary could muster. They seem to treat her differently, and very quickly the reason begins to show.

Kedra is a scholar and even the smallest things seem to fascinate her. We ask her if she’d be willing to go with us to see if we could make deal with the giants. Kedra is intrigued, but she’s not sure talking with the giants would be benificail. She’s excited and willing, but it rapidly becomes evident she is no soldier… We still have some time before breakfast so I volunteer my time and help out in the infirmary. It was the least I could do.

After breakfast, I point out to the others that I’d need some armor if we were going to go up against these giants. The idea of talking to them doesn’t bode well with me. A guard named Carl, that Araja had been conversing with points me to the armory. Kedra finds us there. She looks like a collage of armor and weapons. My stomach wrenches and I try to tactfully tell her to let us do all the heavy lifting.

“Oh I’m very strong!” Kedra says, assuring us of her ability. I mentally face palm…

Geared in armor that had likely seen better days when my grandfather was alive, we set out to track the giants. Giants aren’t that hard to track due to their size. All you have to do is follow the path of destruction. We crest a hill and hear sounds of large things moving about. There’s a clearing in the valley below where four giants are wondering about. Kedra goes pale at the sight of them. I face palm…twice for good measure.

I put on my goggles of far sight to get a better look of the giant’s camp below. There are half eaten remains of the flying lizard creatures Gereth was talking about earlier. One giant appears to have an infected wound. Another keeps scratching his neck, and upon closer inspection, seems to have a strange fungal infection. The third appears to be blind, and the last one had an arm bound in a sling. Kedra takes out a journal and begins scribbling notes and babbling to herself excitedly.

“Are you sure you can speak giant?” I ask the scholar dryly. Kedra assures me she can.

Suddenly Kedra goes into shock, “I can’t do this, I can’t do this!” she says. I grit my teeth, fearing the giants would soon discover our presence as Araja calms her. “Okay,” Kedra says with a note of finality. Then, just as quickly as her shock had started, it ended, and Kedra was marching down the hill toward the giants, shouting in a strange language at the top of her lungs. It sounds like gibberish to me and I cringe as our cover is blown. The giants take notice and say some garble in response. “They’re ready to talk!” Kedra informs us merrily.

As we approach, the giants look pretty bad, obviously having suffered an attack. Kedra translates for us. The giants say they were out hunting when the stumbled upon the village. When the people started attacking them, they attacked back in defense. Araja has Kedra tell the giants she will offer healing, and that we would tell the towns people they meant no harm, so long as they held off their attack. Her words seem to have no effect on the giants though. They seek revenge!

No longer interested in entertaining us, a giant chucks a boulder in our direction. Araja, Isaac, and I scatter, but Kedra’s too slow. She stares at the rock like a cow does at an oncoming train, and then smack! When the rock rolls away, Kedra is flattened to the ground and does not get up. The giants advance and we have no choice but to deal with them.

Sometime during the fight, Kedra regains consciousness and peels herself from her impression in the ground. She knocks an arrow to her bow. I nervously stand at a distance as Kedra fires her first shot. By the grace of the Gods, her arrow flew true, stabbing one of the giants in the eye. As it turns to flee, it trips, landing face first on the ground, arrow thrusting through the back of his skull. The giant was dead!

Once the other giants are confirmed dead, Kedra runs over to the giant she killed and is very fascinated by it. We try to pry her away, but it’s no use. The scholar sits down, pulling out her journal, and begins scribbling notes feverishly, stopping periodically to peer at the body before her or mumble some words to herself. We decide to leave her and head back to the village.