Hello, Everyone!
Last time, our heroes went on the first part of their journey through Ekoba's territory. It was a bleak and confusing journey, filled with empty villages and mysterious holes in the middle of town squares. The three of them decided that they were going to pose as orange merchants, but it seemed that there was not going to be anyone on their way with enough money to buy oranges any time soon.
Two days into Ekoba’s territory, Mary and her friends noticed something rising above the horizon, about a thousand yards south of their way. A dark cloud was swirling over a low plateau. They approached, as far as they could, without leaving the road.
It was a huge murder of crows.
“What could they be circling?” Aurum said. “Let's go see?”
“Or we could just continue on our way?” Mary said. She had a bad feeling about this. Big birds made her uneasy.
However, the group’s curiosity prevailed and they all rode towards the plateau. The smell of rotten flesh hit them halfway towards their goal and Mary, still remembering the corpses in Kloth’s laboratory, felt her stomach churn.
There was something very big and very dead on the plateau’s surface. The birds of prey were circling above it, filling the air with squawking and flapping of wings. One by one, they came down to the plateau to take a peck, and then rose above the ground with a piece of… something… in their beaks.
“We won’t just… go up there, right?” Mary said. “Who knows what might await us, and these birds surely can be dangerous!”
“Of course not!” Aurum said. "We’re not going in blind."
He took out his crystal lense and started concentrating on Clairvoyance.
“I’m there,” he said after a few minutes, having sent his sight above the plateau. “There’s a whole lot of stuff up here, you know? The corpse is real’ big and long, and… uh, skinned. Its head is missing, the feet and the tail too. There’s a big red lizard creature eating it.”
“Lizard?” Mary asked. “What kind of lizard? How big?”
“Big. Like, remember the Bulette? That big. But the dead body is even bigger. It looks like the creature’s been eating it for some time now, and it wasn’t alone. There is a pack of wolves in the distance, looking hungrily at the scene, and there are the birds, as well. Looks like they’ve been taking turns, having a bite or two.”
“Anything else in the vicinity?” Bruno said.
“There’s a bunch of stones close by,” Aurum said. “No, not exactly stones, they look man-made, like small archways that are positioned in a circle. And there’s something like a nest between them.”
“Nest?”
“Yeah, I don't know, like for little baby lizards or something.”
“What about the corpse? Can you see how it might have died?”
“There’s a huge pool of blood over there, in the far end of the plateau,” Aurum pointed. “I can see drag marks from there to where the lizard is feeding, and there are other traces, like fire or something else, that’s burned the ground in long streaks.”
Fear gripped Mary’s heart. The memory of a big splash of green liquid corroding the ground behind her flashed through her mind.
Could it be…
“You know what?” Aurum said. “Now I can see two stubs on the corpse’s back. Something’s been cut off from there, too. I bet’cha they were wings. It must have been a dragon.”
For a split second Mary imagined a scene where a dragon--a specific black dragon--was fighting some poachers or adventurers, or perhaps mighty wizards. The dragon would spew her acid and burn the ground, but would eventually fall dead and would be dismembered, as retribution for all the evil she’d done.
It was a lovely little fantasy but it was highly implausible. Aurum snapped her out of her daydream.
“Remember that thing Kalien said?'' he said. “About Nurvureem enjoying killing her own kind? You think that could be what he was talking about?”
“It can’t be her!” Mary laughed nervously. “She is in her little swamp, all the way over at the Teeth. Miles and miles away! She can’t be here!”
The tunnels under Belfast, her nightmares, the outskirts of Meraket, and now Ekoba. Nowhere was safe from Nurvureem’s clutches.
“Were the body’s limbs cut or chewed off?” Bruno said.
“It looked like clear cuts,” Aurum said.
“I wonder what could a dragon’s limbs and head be used for…”
Mary thought about the skull on Kloth’s staff but didn’t say it. There was a much more pressing worry on her mind. What if Nurvureem came back to check on her latest kill? She looked at the sky, expecting to see black wings and curved horns, and a set of giant green eyes, filled with malice.
“Whatever’s happened here, it’s none of our business,” she said. “It has nothing to do with Ekoba’s economy or Maheshvara’s bells. There are no people in danger, nobody to help or save. The thing is already dead, there’s nothing we can do about it. Why don’t we just… leave?”
Bruno and Aurum looked at each other. A bit reluctantly, they complied and turned their horses around.
A hungry wolf howl followed them as they rode back towards the path.
Uh-oh! What's happened on that plateau? Was it really Nurvureem that'd been there? Or was it something even more sinister?
Well, I guess we'll have to wait and see. Here's the next episode.
Until then,
Take care and be well!
(Also, here's a link to the Chapter Guide, the Glossary and the Map for the series. You're welcome!)
An important disclaimer: These are my notes from a D&D game turned into a narrative. All the worldbuilding and NPC encounters belong to our DM, and all the actions of the other main characters (Aurum and Bruno) belong to my co-players. My contribution to the story is only everything Mary-related (actions, reactions, inner thoughts), as well as the writing itself.