[IC] The Hyborian Chronicles: Of Sword and Sorcery

[POOHEAD189]

Saga 1: Opal of Power

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A fell deed was told long ago in this land.
Past Ophir and Koth, and Stygian Sand.
The Opal of Vulkur the priest did sought.
But the only one who was searching for it, he was not.
A woman of the North had traveled far and wide.
To join the priest in a trap, where a demon doth reside.

A black wind rose and swept through Kafir's infertile lands, shivering what broken roots and withered stems still stood among the barren, cracked earth. It was as if the gods or powers beyond comprehension murmured in displeasure. Tumult and echoes of the last great cataclysm shook the land in earthquakes that shook the very bones of the Ilbar mountains. In the streets of the city, slaves stumbled and sellers of ivory and bronze screamed at whatever customers passed, and yet Abelard still felt the unease in the air. A grim omen to take notice of, that even within the walls of streets of the city he could hear the distant howling. It seemed to pierce stone, sand, and flesh.

The ruddy skinned priest had traveled far just as the prophecy had instructed him, passing through the lands Ophir and his grim homeland of Koth. Just as foretold in his vision, the provinces of Zimbabwe and Achaemenid were in rebellious uproars, slaughtering one another in the streets as a dread plague swept through the closed cities, the fools not realizing the disease was sorcerous in nature. The only thing closing the gates did was to spread the disease among the populaces quicker. He could do no good for them, nor was it his destiny.

Kafir had so far been unaffected by the madness that spread over Iranistan, the city making a sizeable profit by selling its slaves to the desperate cities and fleeing despots in need of men to haul their loot. The activity brought buyers from across the desolate east to the city. Rogued women in ne'er but thin cloth along their hips shook convulsed their bodies and blew kisses at the unamused priest, who was nearly late for his meeting with the thief, Ibn-vakir. The foul smelling nomad given him the information he sought at long last, but now he would provide the key to the tomb of Khuten-ra. Whether the Iranistanian gained the item through nefarious means, he cared not. All he wished for was the key Ibn-vakir had promised him he would need.

Abelard had long lost feeling out of place in distant lands. A man of Koth by lineage, his aquilonian mother had bestowed him his northern name. Of moderate height, Abelard was not a weak man, having served as a soldier of Koth against the black terror of Stygia. But his power did not lie in his strength of arm or skill with a blade. Asura had collapsed the illusion of this world and had opened his eyes to the true nature of reality, bestowing upon him great gifts of insight and even magic.

At his side he bore a sheathed, curved broadsword made of bronze and ivory. His robes were formed of woolen cloth and colored crimson after they had been washed in the blood of goats at day's twilight. The priest's staff was taken from the sacred temple of the Sun in distant Shem and his Atlantean bronze and silver ring was procured from a Pictish shaman. Those memories seemed but a backdrop to his current mission, the significance dwarfing his previous cares in both might and terror.

He passed the codgers and the bakers, the cutthroats and the vagabonds, the weaponsmiths and the glassblowers. Near the corner he strode by a group of hard northmen in rough leathers and iron chainmail, eyeing every corner of the streets with barely supressed violence radiating off of them. Hired by Kafir's King to keep order no doubt. Passed the mercenaries was the archway just as his informant told him, with two crossed spears carved at the center just above the doorway. Abelard stepped down the sandstone stairs into the thief's den, casting a glance behind him to make sure he was not being followed.

A stench of feces and dried blood wafted lightly across the inner air of the chamber and he realized he was now in an outcropping of the sewer. A stone 'dock' within the slowly drifting murk of the collective sewage of twenty thousand Iranistanians. Boxes of timber of unknown origin were stacked on the far end, the rafters holding draped clothes to cordon off sections of the grounded area for various points of business to be had. Meet me at the last area just beside the edge of the black market, Ibn-vakir had told him. He did just that, walking past shadowing figures behind hanging cloth, whispers of fear and business giving a hushed quality to the very air around him.

[Penny]

The only good wizard was a dead wizard. Anya Sorensdaughter had lived with those words from her first memories. Years of travel had provided scant contradiction to the old adage. Priest and sorcerers would bable about their arts and the mighty feats they would work, but however mighty they might be Anya had yet to meet one whose belly would repel a sharp blade. Skavi the Black was a wizard, she had sought him out in far of Asgard, retracing her blood soaked steps through Aquillonia and Cummoria to the familiar snowfields of her home. There, in the frozen north, at the head of a vast glacier she had found Skavi's cave and faced the phantoms he conjured to protect it. For all their terrors they too had been bested by the cold steel of her sword, forged under the light of the winter moon and quenched in the Tears of Ymir where the glacial ice had smoked and sizzled around the red hot iron for a day and a night. Such was the craft of Soren Danicson and of his daughter whom men called Anya.

In these lands she was an aberration. Even here, where men with sharp swords and hard hearts would always find welcome, there were few Aesir, and in all the world, there was only one Anya Sorensdaughter. Among the Aesir, those blond haired and blue eyed reavers of the frozen north, it was not customary for women to go to war, nor to travel beyond the steps of Cummoria and south to the sweltering kingdoms below the desolate hills of that grim country. That Anya had done both spoke much of her unique character. She was short for her kind, though she towered over all but the tallest southerners, with hair of a blond so pale it seemed a snowy white in the sun and picked up the character of the light in all other settings. A mark of Ymir's interest most assuredly, though that was rarely a good or a happy accolade. Ymir was not like the soft gods of the south, to be wheeled with and placated by the endless mouthing of empty prayers. Her beauty too was that of the ice, hard planes and angular bones which no rogue pot could tame. Her body was slender but wound with whipcord tight muscles which gave her the constant and unnerving appearance of a wolf about to pounce. There had been men who had thought she might fetch a fine price on the slavers block. The had regretted their mistake. Briefly.

Kafir was alive on this muggy evening. Citizens bustled about on business or in revel, some animated by they new not what, simply a feeling that this was a time to be alive and doing. Armed men, mercenaries hired by the prince of this sprawling city of adobe houses and high walls of sun bleached stone, patrolled or, more frequently, staggered and caroused according to their wont. These were troubled times, and though the Kolaks and their bands of raiders mounted on wiry southern ponies were always a threat, there was little they could do against steel guarded stone. Perhaps the prince simply felt better with men under arms than in the pay of his enemies, which was a wise enough strategy when plague and disorders stalked the land. A few of them leveled speculative glances at Anya, but the long sword of pale blue steel, the mail of tightly woven links, and the short hafted axe at her belt convinced them to find more congenial targets for whatever entertainment they had planned.

With his dying words Skavi had sent her her, screamed as the ice that had fallen on him slowly crushed the life from his body. The answer to the question of whether the shade of Soren Danicson had entered Valhalla. No. That her father had died in battle she was certain, having held his spear pierced body in her arms, but his shade appeared to her in dreams when the moon was full and the wind was cold, and so she had sought out Skavi the Black and he had told her, through his cracked and bleeding, of the curse that the Vanir shaman had laid upon her father. That such a black rite should exist at all astonished her and she could not abide that the shade of her father should be held by such a trick. The shaman had been slain by a spear of mistletoe fashioned with the blackened bones of Soren Danicson, all that remained was for the blood of the Shaman and the blood of Soren Danicson to be smeared upon the Opal of Vulkur, that Ymir might know that he had been cheated of a soul by base trickery and Soren Danicson might take his place in the halls of Valhalla. For Anya's part, she was eager to be done with the company of shades.

The gem had been lost long ago, stolen by the mighty thief Paven, who had carried it from the crown of the slumbering High King Wulfric in full view of his court. It had passed through many hands since then, but Anya, guided by Skavi the Black's dying words, had come to this place and found the thief who called himself Ibn-vakir. The Iristanian claimed to know where the jewel lay and promised to reveal the information to her in exchange for a fortune in gold. Anya didn't have a fortune in gold, but she suspected that her sword pressed to his genitals would prove equally persuasive. She reached the dockside where they were to meet, nose wrinkling at the smell of human filth and the spicy scent of exotic timbers. This was the thieves quarter of Kafir and she could expect Ibn-vakir to know every bolt hole and back alley. She needed to be quick and clever. As she neared the appointed rendezvous she caught sight of another man, hooded and cloaked. Perhaps she was not the only taker for what the accursed thief was selling.

[POOHEAD189]

The fumes bothered Abelard little, having smelled far worse during his campaigning. There was little that smelled worse than feces and vomit mixed with blood, and mercifully the sewers were filled with mostly just the former. Grey eyes saw a tall, lithe figure stride into his field of view. A northern woman, gleaming white and gold among a land of filth and darkness. She seemed as dangerous as any man in the city, but he didn't foresee her taking any action against him. She seemed a wolf on the hunt, merely curious and stumbling upon a traveler by happenstance.

He removed his blood-red hood, his face hard set and weathered. With his black beard and rough skin, he looked a decade older than his thirty two years of life. Asura's blessings had cost him much of his youthful vigor, an ardent contrast to Set and Ahriman who rewarded their followers with the pleasures and powers of this world at the expense of their very souls. Gripping his staff and turning, he spoke to her. The first time in three days he had chosen to utter any words.

"You enter a den of serpents and rogues, Asgardian. Go back to the frozen white north what spawned you. You will fine ne'er but misery here by my reckoning." He intoned, his manner recondite and shadowed. His words paled compared to the shadow of those that watched from above, black clad and swords drawn, waiting in the deep to plunge their blades into the bosom of the two traveler's chests. Ibn-vakir had betrayed them and sought the favor of this land's new master known as the Bandit Kazim.

Word had spread the nomadic tribes had flocked under one banner, coalescing at the central Vilayet river in the deep wilderness. Or so the stories foretold. The tribesmen were great horse archers and wild lancers famed the world over on ponies that frothed at the mouth, joined by ebony spearmen from Kush clad in naught by cloth. Soon the horde, now perhaps hiring mercenaries with their plundered gold, would be a horde of thundering steel that threatened to trample the province into the dirt.

Wailing spirits of lamentation danced around Abelard's staff, visible only to he. He was used to see them, but only when great violence was about to be wrought. He placed his hand on the ivory hilt of his sword, his subtle facial twitch showcasing he was wary of attackers from behind. Coiled like serpents, the assassin's sprung near silently, leaping from the rafters. They found nothing but mist as they landed on the ground as nimble as apes, Abelard disappearing into nothingness. The Priest of Asura stepped out of the shadows behind Anya, sword in his hand. As they approached, the dozen men eyed the warrior woman the same as the priest.

"They seem to be after you as well."
@Penny

[Penny]

It would seem that Ibn-vakir was less of a fool than Anya had taken him for. A dozen men rushed into the small courtyard, leaping down from the high flat celings of nearby building and rushing from the maze of blind twisting alleys. The wore the tawny robes of local peasants, though in many cases the bulged unnaturally, betraying the presence of mail or leather armor beneath. The priest trick saved his life and Anya felt a slight pang of disappointment, she did not despise trickery, for the mind should be as sharp as any sword, but magic in any form made her lips curl.

"Perhaps priestling," she observed, "I should return to Ymirheim and leave you to your reckoning." The assassins milled for a moment before catching sight of her and surging forward.

"But I think, perhaps I won't," she concluded before throwing her head back and bellowing a blood curdling warcry. Without a moments hesitation she ripped her axe from her belt and swept it up through the jaw of the nearest attacker, sending the man twitching and spasming to the round as the life fled from his ruined body along with blood and brain matter. With a flick of her wrist she reversed the grip on the use worn grip of the weapon and hurled it overhanded into the chest of a scraggly bearded rogue with a rusted spear, the impact knocking the man from his feet and filling the air with the metallic rip of shattered mail. In the half second breathing space the throw brought her she pulled her sword from the leather sheath across her back. The bluish metal sang as it slid free of the leather, its point glinting in the moonlight. She didn't unsling the wood and leather shield with its raven device, for the courtyard was too cramped to allow for more than a sword and the will to use it. With a ululating cry she darted forward leaping the bodies which still twitched in the dusty street, planting a foot on a pile of stacked timber and spring boarding high into the air. Another of the attackers lifted his sword to fend of her strike, but the massive double handed blow with all her weight behind it, shattered the cheap iron of the scimitar like a hammer striking ice. Anya's blade struck him on the left shoulder, severing his arm at a downward angle starting at his collar bone in a spray of blood. She hit the ground in a crouch with one hand outstretched to spread the impact, the sword in her free hand slashing her across the hamstring of one of the thieves who had been too slow to react to the unexpected attack. The man dropped to the ground screaming and clutching at his crippled leg, crimson blood seeping between his dark fingers.

Screams echoed through the thieves quarter as Anya straightened, her eyes a light with the exstacy of battle.

"Come rogues!" she bellowed, "let us see if the men of Iridistan are good for anything other than cheating at dice!"

[POOHEAD189]

The other rogues would have loved to have taken her up on her challenge, but they had not been idle. Nor had the man named Fhundil, having only a second to watch her terrifying display before an assassin robed in rags made a leap at him, stabbing with his short sword. Abelard moved aside as if he had seen it from seconds before the attacker's initial movement. He angled his staff's butt to slip between the thief's legs, tripping him up. He hit the ground just as Abelard tapped his staff-head with the blunt side of his sword. A brass spike shot out of the staff's bottom, and Abelard used it to impale the downed man in the back.

To the common eye, he looked vulnerable to the more cunning cutthroat that had circled behind with a kushite khopesh of bronze, but Abelard turned as if he expected him. His broadsword parried what would have been a fatal stroke as the priest himself stabbed at the man, cutting him in the side. The Iranistanian sliced and kicked out, doing whatever he could to regain his advantage. He hadn't counted on the swinging staff head that cracked his skull. He hadn't the time to realize he was dead until the broadsword was already through his body by its full length. Blood dribbled onto wretched sewer stone. Abelard withdrew his blade and stepped aside politely to let the corpse fall onto its face with a harsh crack of bone.

He opened his eyes and saw the enemies still outnumbered them three to one, and so he held his staff aloft and raised it high as if he could reach the sun under the very streets of Kafir. Some God seemed to answer his call, as the central dias opened and light as pure as the very sun beamed out and blinded the attackers so powerfully, they felt as men who had never seen light in their life. They screeched and cried out, running in all directions, their morale broken as the two cut down what men they could reach with their swords. Blood flowed like running rain into the sewage as the docks became as silent as a tomb.

Abelard approached Anya without fear or hesitation, though he perhaps cracked a small grin. Hard to tell behind his thick beard. "It seems Ibn-vakir sought to betray both of us. From what I can tell, his previous information on the treasure's location was credible. What demon or man got to him to have him wish for our deaths had pulled him into their claws after he had spoken to me. I seek the Opal of Vulkur. Will you travel with me?"

[Penny]

The sun rose over far of Kosala, spreading across the Iranistani steppe to reveal two riders forging their way north towards the distant white capped daggers of the Ilbar Mountains. In the spring snow melt from those mountains would rush downwards in mighty torrents, wending its way towards the sea in a network of shallow creeks and rocky gullies that for most of the rest of the year ran at but a trickle. Like all steppe-land it was the preserve of nomadic headers rather than farmers, with herdsmen moving their flocks of goats or horned sheep from water source to watercourse with the season. Dawn had bought a few smuts of smoke from neglected cook-fires but from horizon to horizon no soul could be seen save for the two riders. That wasn't to say they weren't here of course. The steppe looked flat to a new comer, but deep gullies and short canyons could be concealed by the waving grass and a traveler might pass within bow shot and never know it until an arrow plucked them from the saddle.

The pair had set out from Kafir after midnight on fine roan horses which the Priest had purchased with coin which had impressed even Anya with its variety of denominations. The solution had been cleaner than her own plan of stealing the beasts, and as Abelard pointed out, lacked the problem of potential pursuit. As the Priest had said, the fact that Ibn-vakir had sent men to killed him argued for the veracity of his information, why else spend the hundred silver drachma to engage the Guild of Thieves to murder them? They had ridden as hard as they dared across such uncertain terrain, there was little doubt that news of the assassins failure would reach their paymasters in due time. They could hope it was carried by a horseman and not upon the wings of ravens or some other sorcery. Anya had made her name as a raider by riding hard and relentlessly and coming at her opponents unexpectedly. She saw little reason to change the habit of a lifetime now.

They drove on towards the headwaters of the River Ashan where the faithless thief had bragged that he had seen the fable Opal, though hadn't dared risk its retrieval. How it had come to rest in such a land, so far from the northern glaciers of its birth was lost to the knowledge of men, though perhaps, not that of Gods. Of their purposes they spoke little. Anya was unsure of exactly why her companion sought the jewel, perhaps only as any man seeks a thing that is vaulable, and of her own quest she had spoken only evasively. The peace between them was yet uneasy.

"Smoke!" Anya called as they cantered across a low shale bedded creek, their horses kicking up shimmering spray in the early morning sun. She pointed to a low dome of haze beyond a small hill more or less along their path. It was too significant to be a single cookfire.

[POOHEAD189]

Abelard reined in his roan, the beast whinnying lightly in the crisp morning air. Anya and he had been riding through the night with barely a word passing between them once they had mounted the horses. He found he believed her story and her virtue, however. Her manner against her assassins and they way she moved had a surety to it that spoke of honesty. Perhaps it was the soldier in him, or the still very earthly mind of his that led him to trust her motives. But he knew, somehow, Asura had not spoken of her.

Her vision was correct, he saw a large pillar of smoke rising into the sky. It stood as a black line against the newly risen sun. Abelard dismounted, advising it was best they left their horses here tethered to what roots they could find. The two did so and drew their blades, creeping out of the creek-bed towards the signs of what Abelard knew to be their quarry, even if it were not what they truly sought. Advancing swiftly, they found a small rise that spoke of a sheer drop just before them. The two crouched and almost crawled toward the edge what seemed to be a large, dried waterway. Beneath them more than a score of men spoke and drank and ate a hearty breakfast, devouring the ribs of a great boar they had slaughtered likely the day before.

Iranistanian Horse nomads with their scalemail cuirasses and their strange spiked helms wrapped in cloth, sallow skinned and stout builds grunting in their rugged tongue. They looked armed for war, their horses tied to a small copse of trees within earshot. The nomads had made two cookfires separate from Ibn-vakir and four Stygian giants. Head and shoulders taller than any nomad, the giants were armed with iron tipped spears and shields made of wood and bronze. Queer torques of Set lay on their bare chests, splattered with the grog they drank greedily beside their fire. Their belts were inlaid with gold and Ibn-vakir wore a similar belt and torque atop his rogueish garb. Abelard nearly surged upwards to curse Ibn-vakir to the Gods, but he held himself for what he saw next.

Past the dried inlet was a structure, swept in style as the cloth atop the horsemen's helms. The opening was alien in design. Nearly perpendicular but many layered in stone, like the opening of a flower or the folds of a woman that so drove men mad. Abelard had seen sketches of such structures before in his studies that bespoke it a remnant of the Acheron Empire. It looked to have been rebuilt in an Iranistanian style and then buried in sand from some wild storm, only to have finally been revealed again.

"We cannot take rash action," Abelard whispered to his fellow traveler. He spoke to himself just as much as the Northern woman. The priest likely seemed a coward to the fierce warrior, but his only goal was to keep the Opal out of wicked hands.

[Penny]

"These are Khaseem Bai's men," Anya muttered pointing to a red banner that fluttered from a spear that was thrust into the earth. The silken flag was emblazoned with a black lions head that almost seemed to snap and snarl as the wind worked the fabric. Khaseem Bai was a name much on the tongues of the Iristani. It was said that he had come down from the deserts beyond the Ilbar mountains after the tribes of that inhospitable waste had put aside their ancient blood feuds to drive the renegade from their sands. Since that time he had preyed on the caravans and herdsmen of the step, snatching up city-dwellers and ransoming them for supplies and silver. It was said, among the hokah dens and drinking houses of Kafir, that no blade had ever drawn blood from Khaseem Bai and that he was protected by black and malign spirits. It did not surprise Anya that it had been he who had sent assassin's to kill them after learning Ibn-vakir had sold the same goods three times.

"If they know their footpads have failed they don't show it," Anya observed. Indeed, the mood in the camp was alert but the men did not seem alarmed. As she watched a paunchy man hauled a cauldron of soup from the fire and bawled something unintelligible from this distance. The various cut throats ambled towards him to take their mourning meal.

"Strange, I don't see Khaseem Bai among them," Anya noticed, her keen eyes having finished their survey of the camp.

"Indeed you do not," came a deep basso voice from behind them. Anya whirled her hand going to her blade but freezing as the point of a spear pressed against her throat. Two similar weapons were leveled at Abelard. The men holding them had the dark sun burned skin of desert tribesmen and the hooked noses and slightly slanted eyes of the lands beyond the Ilbar mountains. Their leader was a muscular man in a tunic of white silk. His eyes were dark and burned bright with intelligence and his face was handsome in a brooding way. His legs were covered with armor of tooled leather that gripped the side of a galloping horse so a man could use the short recurve bows in fashion in these parts. The thugs with him were dressed less finely, but Anya wagered all of them were veterans who had come south with Khaseem Bai. The must have snuck around them through some hidden ravine, though they had done so with so little sound that even Anya's razor keen senses had been deceived.

"But do not worry," he said with a formal bow that would not have been out of place in the court of Aquilonia, "Khaseem Bai sees you."

[POOHEAD189]

A strong east wind blew over the desolate earth as Abelard raised his hands in supplication, having dropped his sword and staff. The light of the newly risen sun glinted off the spearheads, their edges sharpened to pierce both flesh and mail. A cry of curious demand in Stygian rose behind them. The two were quickly relieved of their weapons and taken to the camp below to be surrounded by harsh lancers, ebony tribesmen of fierce strength, and towering thugs of stygian strain. Out of the crowd poked Ibn-vakir who was short enough to step through the legs of one of the giants. He spread a smile of teeth the color of mule piss save for the missing teeth so far not replaced with any wealth.

Two of the nomads had brought forth a wooden chair covered in skins that Khaseem Bai reclined upon, sitting as arrogantly as if he were the newly crowned king of Iranistan. In one hand he held his spear while in the other he nipped at an apple unfamiliarly, the fruit a strange sight in this unforgiving land. No doubt a sign of his fortune and prestige. He must be drunk on his own power if he thought that would intimidate Abelard and particularly the warrioress Anya. Even though he attempted to keep earthly matters from his mind, Abelard fretted the imminent fear of death in equal measure to how the smell of the pork churned his stomach.

"How strange to find such two foreign jackals." Ibn-vakir said. His smile spread like the plague with his mustached pulled along as well. "Better kill these two quickly, my lord. We cannot have word getting out on the location of the Opal."

Abelard laughed suddenly, one of the first times he had shown any emotion since meeting Anya. He grinned as feircely as any cimmerian barbarian. "You little fool, Ibn-vakir. You did not think we would ever meet with your precious master, did you? Khaseem Bai you are called? This one had already given me the location of the Opal, and had promised to deliver the same to this one beside me. He then wished to join the winning side and lied to you, telling you we were already in pursuit of the prize. He wished for your assassins to silence us, so that you may never learned he attempted to buy your trust with deceit."

Ibn-vakir paled, the grog in his stomach finally wearing off on his mind. Khaseem Bai's face, at ease before, was now a mask of fury and disgust. With a simple wave of his hand he had two of the giants grab Ibn-vakir the wretch.

"No master! He lies!" The thief shrieked in terror as he was rooted into the ground. Almost ritualistically, and it likely was knowing Set's laws, one of the giants took his belt knife and cut open Ibn-vakir's stomach. Blood and bile and a putrid stench erupted from his torn open belly. The thief sank to his knees, eyes wide opened in death. Despite himself, Abelard found it satisfying. His claim had also been a bluff without divine intervention, but seeing as Khaseem Bai did not correct him, his bluff had been correct and the warlord's side of the claims were confirmed plausible.
@Penny

[Penny]

Khaseem Bai watched the execution without much interest before turning back to his two prisoners. His eyes were dark and intelligent and had a pragmatic cruelty about them as he measured each of them.

"Well one of the two of you looks fearsome enough to have given the Thieves Guild pause," he declared. Anya relaxed ever so slightly. It would be better to die fighting than to be killed in chains but it seemed that the bandit lord had other plans for them, else he would scarcely bother to keep them alive.

"As it happens without Ibn-vakir I will require someone to guide me to my treasure, perhaps..." he drew a long knife from his belt and tossed it into the dirt between the two prisoners, "the survivor would be interested in such a position?"

Anya glanced sidelong at the priest, perhaps she could kill him before he could employ his arts, perhaps not, but either way it seemed of little matter. By herself it would be difficult, perhaps impossible to overcome Khaseem Bai and his men, and much as she hated to admit it, Abelard could be an ally to her in that.

"Lord," she said in his own tongue, with which she had a passing familiarity from time spent as a pirate up in Villayet, "I could cut this whelps throat as you ask, but what if Ibn-vakir told lies to all of us, perhaps together we have enough of the truth to pass the traps he described and reach the Opal." Kasseem frowned, arching a dark eyebrow.

"Traps?" he asked, it wasn't clear if he believed the Aesir woman, but there was enough uncertainty in his voice that she knew she had him.

"There are three traps Lord," she proclaimed, confident for all that these traps existed, so far as she knew entirely in her imagination.

"Fool!" Abelard broke in, "There are five traps each more fiendish than the last! I learned of them in my study and I make Ibn-vakir tell me what he knew of them!"

[POOHEAD189]

"Silence dogs!" Khaseem Bai spat, raising his fist. Were he to swing it down the order would be met to execute them both on the spot. "If you do not wish to wander the desert without eyes or tongues then you will speak when I permit it! Do not be so foolish as to think you are so valuable as not to maim." He grimaced a moment further like a tiger that watches a receding bear. His devil-may-care manner returned once silence reigned once again. "You will both lead at spear point. Have I any inkling that you will betray me, if we cannot kill you we will seal you within the tomb, understand?"

Abelard and Anya did not immediately answer, though he took that as an acquiesce to his command and he grinned as a snarling lion. "Good. Now priest, lead the way into the tomb with the northern bitch close to your heels."

The thieves watched expectantly as the two regarded one another, and they turned to the ancient Acheron structure. Abelard approached it warily, eyeing the opening. He looked at Khaseem Bai, holding his hands together as if to beg forgiveness. "My staff?" He bade. "To better serve your desire of entering. I will give it back once I open the hole."

The bandit lord measured him and nodded. One of the Stygian Giants tossed Abelard his staff, which he caught promptly and placed on the ground. There was an audible 'thud' when it touched the sand, as if the staff weighed far, far more than it conceivably could. Anya could perceive a tingle of power emanating from the rod, and through the top jewel the sunlight poured through and struck the Acheron opening through the center. As the light penetrated into the strange slit, the stone began to move with a deliberate slowness that shoved great rends of sand in the earth around it.

"He has done it." One of the bandits muttered.

"No, I have not." Abelard answered boldly, and all eyes turned to him with sudden incredulity. He smiled calmly, with a certain satisfaction to him. "I opened it, but in an incorrect manner."

"What!?" Khaseem Bai snarled, confused. His curiosity would be sated in moments when the door, now gaping wide like a vast wound, spewed forth three unknown shadow beasts from within. Demons, Abelard knew them to be. Shaped like apes and as dark as the blackest night and as even larger than the Stygian Giants. He had foreseen their presence and purposefully awoke them. He placed his hand on Anya's shoulder, the sunlight still within his staff as the beasts moved quicker than any horse, loping over and attacking the band of cutthroats. Men screeched and pissed themselves as huge arms of abyssal matter wrapped about them and consumed their bodies and souls utterly.

"The sun will banish them before long." Abelard whispered, eyeing the now unguarded door to the Acheron ruin. "Grab your sword and follow me!"
@Penny

[Penny]

Anya snatched up her sword and darted after the priest. The shrieks of the bandits were ghastly as the shadow beasts fell upon them, rending and tearing. Kaseem Bai hurled a dreadful curse at them as they fled and Anya pivoted smoothly to strike sparks as she batted away the warlords thrown dagger. It had been foolish of him to shout but she supposed it wasn't the worst mistake he had made this day. With a burst of speed she looped after the priest, deflecting a spear thrust from one of the wide eyed bandits and taking his throat with her riposte. The pair of them darted through the door of the ancient structure and Abelard raised his staff again. Stone shrieked as the ancient portal began to seal itself, not quickly but with the inexorable inevitability of a tide coming in, or a glacier sliding towards the ocean. The entry stones boomed together, abruptly cutting off the screams of dying bandits as completely as if they had existed only in the imagination of the listeners.

"I'd give you my thanks priest," Anya said, pausing to spit towards the now sealed portal, "but I don't know if our situation is better or worse."

"We are alive," Abelard replied austerly and turned towards the passageway ahead of them. The walls were of sandstone, smoothed but not built, as though it had once been a cave that had been laboriously polished to remove the worst of its irregularity. A thick mist filled it that reminded Anya of the unexplored jungles that stretched for uncounted miles in the lands beyond the forbidding southern borders of Stygia. There was something else on the air too, a faint taste of sulphur that put Anya in mind of the volcanic hotsprings of Trondhel or Aikanaborg. The mist was so thick they could see no more than a few feet infront of them as they edged their way down the passage until they found an opening. Anya had seen many things in her life that others might deem strange, but the sight before them was more incredible than any she had yet witnessed. The passage opened onto a lush fog shrouded jungle, the air so humid that water condensed in droplets on the tip of her blade. Vast trees reached up towards the sky and large leafed plants squatted at their bases. Strange animals called and hooted in the jungle and lizard like creatures skittered and leaped from the wrist thick vines which hung like spider webs. Vast columns of greenish soapstone reached upwards into the low hanging mist which was none the less illuminated by a sickly green yellow light beyond. There was no way that this place existed within the structure they had scene in the desert, either in scale or in the alien aspect of the jungle which was unlike anything Anya had scene.

"By Wotan's eye," she marveled, staring in awe at the landscape before her.

[POOHEAD189]

At first Abelard considered this a dream or some wild vision granted by Asura. But his skin watered from the humid heat, feeling it course and rough to breathe in. He felt itchy from the brushing of the long fern-like grass, and the microscopic insects clinging to his ankles. The Priest had seen many wonders of the gods; vast cataclysms and eldritch spells given to him within visions and dreams. But what manner of magic this thing was, was daunting to his sensibilities. He sensed that the Opal was not far off, however, and that was what they would need to cling their hopes to.

"Ware and steel yourself Barbarian woman," He said to her, clutching his staff in both hands now. Twisting his hands, the spike at the end protruded again and he changed his stance as if he held a spear, which he practically did. In the distance a grinding roar lifted in the air and a porcine squeal echoed. Abelard had heard tale of the great southern jungle cats thrice as large as a man, and felt their potential all too real at that moment. "Whether we are in the Black Lands south of dreaded Stygia or some nether realm, we must retrieve the Opal at all costs."

The two of them crept warily, Abelard with his spear at the ready. Somehow he felt less suited to the situation that Anya, for the woman seemed just as home here as she likely was in the frozen north. Abelard nearly tripped over what he had perceived to be a log at one point, until he realized it was the midsection of an enormous python, resting in the brush. So large was it, it moved too sluggishly to give he or Anya any notice, and the two stepped over it carefully. Likely it was savoring a recent meal, which brought many uncomfortable questions they needn't dwell on.

After cutting through thickly draped vines and undergrowth that clutched at their hips, the two of them burst into a clearing. Anya landing as any skilled warrior would, and Abelard moving like he preconceived where the correct places to step was to keep his footing. The jungle glade was about fifty square feet with turfts of exotic blades of grass mingled with dirt. Sunken bones of both man and beast jutted out of the soil. What was slightly more concerning and significant was the Opal of Power set upon a dias of tied bone at the very center.

[Penny]

Saga 2: The Moon Thief

---

It was a sweltering night in Xarame, but then all nights were sweltering in that desert city of rough yewn sandstone and faded adobe. Xarame crouched where the rocky foothills of the Khorhaja began to shoulder their way out of the sands of the Great Shem, eventually rising to block the way to distant Koth far to the north, save for the few passes on which caravans chanced themselves against bandits and storms for the hope of riches and wealth on one side or the other. The seven spires of the Caliph's palace rose into the moonlight, surrounded by the shorter towers of the cities hungry emirs. Many of those emirs would have built towers to dwarf those of the Caliph, but the difference between wealth and power was a sharp thing in Xarame, in ancient times an emir had tried to build such a tower only to find himself ground into the mortar of the palace while still living, or so the story went. Beyond the palace the city sprawled to its mighty stone walls and its crowning parapets like a wave that struck the edge of a great ocean. The buildings were less grand, slums in some places, but they bustled with trade. Textiles from Stygia, perfumes from Kush, gold and silk from Turan and the lands beyond came to Xarame to be exchange for iron work from Aquilonia, Nemedian wines and even ice diamonds and amber from distant Vannaheim. The great pulsing arteries of trade had made Xarame rich beyond the dreams of the humble shepeards who had founded the city in eons passed, so that it was said among the nations that even the beggars of Xarame ate of gold plate and bathed with frankincense. That wealth had bought with it a paranoia that others might seek to take what the city claimed as its own and so when rumor reached the Caliph that a great thief had come to Xareme to steal the Moon Stone which was his greatest treasure he was naturally concerned.

"I have thwarted many such thieves mighty Caliph," the Stygian Woman proclaimed. Her name was Sythemis and she was a great beauty, round of hip and bosom with jet black hair that shone like lake water under starlight, with the full lips and dark eyes of ancient Stygia. In other lands she was known as the asp or the sand viper for a rumored fondness for poisons and supposed sorcerous arts. Like many she had answered the Caliphs call to protect his treasure until the great thief was apprehended. The Caliph leaned forward on his thrones, the thousand colors of his silken stole shimmering and the gold chain around his neck clicking as he did so.

"You are a woman," he said sternly, "how can a woman accomplish such things?" There was a general murmer of approval from his courtiers, each draped in his own silk and jewelry, though each careful not to rival the Caliph, lest they find themselves in that jealous princes ill graces. They were not best pleased that the Caliph had chosen to bring in outsiders, even though the implication that their own guards might be corrupt was far from unfounded.

"A man looks at another man as a threat," Sythemis said, taking no insult, "but what threat can a woman be?" The question had a playful edge, but as she spoke she lifted her hand and pinched the fingers together. The gesture looked innocent, save for the fact that the shadow cast on the wall of the opulent throne room was not that of a woman closing her fingers, but of a snake striking across the shadowed wall. The Caliph sat back, considering the beautiful Stygian woman in her simple robes of white linen and her serpentine wristlets of polished copper.

"Very well," he said after a moment, "you will bring me the thief before the moon is full and I shall reward you with your weight in rubies." The words bought a mutter of low disapproval from the gathered nobles but the Caliph once again held up his hand.

"If you fail to do so however, you will become my slave concubine for as long as I will it," he decreed. Sythemis lowered her eyes to the tiled floor of the throne room.

"As the Caliph wishes."

[POOHEAD189]

"You offered gold, but intend to pay in blood I see," Amal chuckled, listlessly tossing the bone dice across the slab of sandstone. Idly the dice rolled, until they came up with the exact roll that won him the game not seconds prior. Across from him sat a fierce Turanian whose eyes bulged at the results of the roll, shrieking like a shemite stallion. He bolted upright, his state of bemoaning from losing the game replaced with wrath at having been cheated. The thief gave a grin that would make a jackal rile from envy, deigning not to reach for the twin daggers planted at the center of the makeshift table.

"Cur and loathsome dog!" The Turanian accused, pointing his finger at Amal Ibn Hakeem in the little hovel within the bowls of Great Xarame. The chamber was dry and dim, smoke rising lazily from hookahs and incense candles amid the crowd of ne'er-do-wells and travelers. All seeking refuge from the oppressive guards and the Sultan's taxes. A few white northmen sat and watch, whispering in their brute tongues and laughing as apes. In many cities, the Shem were distrustful of outsides. However, all were welcome in the city of Xarame. Kings and Princes rose and fell over the vast ages of the world, endowing the city with commerce and glory unimaginable, all to bring Amal and this Turanian this little game of chance that would change the Shemite's life forever.

"I am a dog, but this dog has killed bigger goats than you," He quipped, unmoving despite the clear threat. They were not the only ones in on the game; a bone Blythunian glared daggers at both of them, clearly wishing to simply continue whilst the noseless Iranistani was too busy picking his teeth with the femur of his last slave. Amal brazenly took his eyes off the Turanian, coming nose to nose with the Aquilonian dancing girl whose slim arms had been draped around his neck all throughout the game. "And fucked more northern swans than you have."

She giggled, only for it to be stifled by the ring of steel as the husky Turanian unsheathed his shamshir, breaking the vow of Xarame hospitality. Unfortunately, Amal had done the same by cheating, so he could not complain nor call him a fiend. As a pack of lions, three of the Turanian's comrades stood with him, crossing their jeweled arms and glaring at Amal, their noses pierced by brass rings that shimmered in the firelight. Amal calmly reached for his scimitar, but groping, he felt it gone from his belt! The thief turned from his cushion to see the Aquilonian women giving it to one of the Northmen, her wiles now blemished by the betrayal, though he would not blame her. He might have done the same.

Amal did not go for the knives at the center of the sandstone table, knowing they were bait. Anyone who had been there before knew they were glued to the table, so men might make a grab for them and lose an arm in a dispute. The master of the hovel was wicked that way. Instead, Amal flipped backwards in a roll, feet going over his head to press to the ground not a moment before, and he sprung out into the corridor as the Turanian and his friends pursued him out into the street, losing him down the Causeway of The Forbidden, where Amal sank into the shadows and reached the roof of the Temple of Ishtar, cursing his luck.

[Penny]

The Temple of Ishtar in Xarame was a magnificent place. It dominated the temple square, rising from the eastern side of the wide expanse of sandstone like the moon on a clear night. Its sides were sheathed in white marble that had been imported at great expense from Aquillonian quarries across the mountains and then laid so precisely that the a knife blade could not have been inserted between them. Two great obelisks stood to either side of the main gate, through which the flickering oil lamps light the way into the sanctum. Sythemis walked easily to the gate, apparently heedless of the ever present threat of cutpurses and robbers in the torchlit streets. The Temple guards did not know her, but they clearly knew better than to interfere with a well dressed and mysterious woman approaching the Temple at night. They raised their pikes and let her pass without comment, eyes following her from behind their intricately wrought helmets.

Beyond the first gate was a courtyard in which lemon trees had been planted in profusion. Beautiful women stood or longued on marble benches infront of the bowers that that were artfully woven from the citris trees branches. The Temple Prostitutes were famed for their beauty, each selected for their voluptuousness and improved upon by regimes of diet and prayer until the resembled the bronze depictions of their mistress, with swollen busts and wide hips that gave them the aspect of beautiful but very slightly overripe fruit. Two of the girls approached Sythemis but she lifted her palm in a gesture which made the girls instantly abase themselves.

"Mistress," the whispered as one, grinding their faces into the dirt in obeisance. Such whores had their place of course, but it was not their place to question the initiates of the deeper mysteries.

"I have come to seek counsel, you will prepare the bath for me," Sythemis decreed. Both women sprang to their feet and rushed off into the temple. Sythemis turned abruptly, conscious of a gaze upon her and scanned the roofline, but there was nothing but moonlight. Shrugging it of as a passing foolishness she returned her mind to the task at hand. She needed to find a thief afterall. After perhaps ten minutes of waiting the two prostitutes returned. Sythemis nodded and led them into the temple itself. All three of them prostrated themselves before the bronze statue of the Goddess and then stood. The pair of initiates took up their positions to either side of Sythemis. The Stygian began to disrobe methodically, dropping her silken robe to the floor before adding her jewelry and undergarments until she stood naked before the statue. Her body was leaner than her escorts, darker also, dusky with the olive burn of the Stygian sun. In truth she was unusually voluptuous for her race, her bosoms and hips pleasing to Ishtar in the same way as her crooked mind was pleasing to her other patron. She raised both hands above her head.

"Eia, Eai Shub-Niggurath," she intoned, using one of the forbidden names of the Goddess, "Calliya, Calliyae, eian sun nyto!" For a moment nothing seemed to happen. Ten heartbeats passed and then a slow grinding sound shook dust from the temple walls. A section of the floor before the statues feet slid inwards to reveal a passageway down into the earth.

"Leave me," she told the wide eyed Temple prostitutes. The girls needed no encouragement to scurry back into the courtyard as Sythemis began her passaged down into the earth.

[POOHEAD189]

Amal cleaned the blood from his knife, idly wiping out the imperfections on the Nemedian steel. The bright moon glinted off its polish, brightening the darkness of his shemic eyes. Truthfully he had not wished to kill the temple-servant, a boy no older than eleven. But the youth had spotted him among the spires and Amal had been younger than he when he had killed his first. Had he the right mind, he would have run and told someone of the thief's whereabouts. Now he but basked upon the temple roof, perched upon the battlements as he gazed into the structure from above.

The temple girls were supple of limb and gifted in ways men only dreamed, so he contented himself with watching them lounge and titter. A few gave prayers and litanies to Ishtar, which seemed fitting with all the death in Xarame surrounding their pretty little temple. He had heard the northerners of Cimmeria worshipped no Gods, and only paid the barest of homage to one. Grom, that was his name. A barbarian god who gave no shits to who spoke of him was amusing. Perhaps he would go there one day.

Amal's musings were interrupted when someone else entered the temple. Briefly he wondered if they were guards having discovered the body of the boy, but no. This was a Stygian; a woman at that. She made the other women look like silly girls in comparison. There was sly maliciousness in her eyes that enchanted him as much as the Jewel of Khemi. There was an air of gravity to her presence. Something he couldn't pinpoint but it intrigued him. He watched with bated breath as she dismissed the others from the grounds, opening up a portal to underneath the superstructure of the temple. He watched her saunter within, hips swaying like the head of a cobra.

Like a panther he sprung from the heights, landing on the ground in a roll. Some of the women had yet to even exit the door, but their backs were turned. None saw the theif silently pad into the maw of the stone behind the Stygian woman, following her to see what treasures she may seek within...

[Penny]

Sythemis passed down through the tunnel of hand smoothed stone until it opened into a chamber that centered around a large pool of dark water that shone like glass under the light of bowls of burning oil. A great statue of Ishtar stood above the pool wrought of gold and naked. This was not the tame Ishtar that the priests of Mitrha bleated about. This was the primal Goddess her hips and bust swollen, her face contorted in ecstasy or agony, her eyes terrible. The chamber had obviously been a natural cavern one, but the walls and roof had been polished and shaped by patient labor. Niches had been caved out of the walls, each glittering with small statues of Ishtar each bedecked in gold and jeweled highlights. The Stygian paid no mind to them, walking with slow gravitas into the pool sinking to her waste in the dark cool water. She raised her arms over her head and met the eyes of the statue.

"Bikania Ishtar, emadazu nire senargaia Set," she began to chant, her body began a graceful dance, fingers cutting the top of the water in showers of droplets which set up rippling waves of glittering light.

"Bikania Ishtar, emadazu ikuspegia," she chanted, her dance growing more estatic. The lamps began to flicker and writhe weirdly, the light dimming as she moved. Something slid past her in the water, brushing against her leg, but she ignored it continuing the chant and the dance as she beseeched the Goddess

[POOHEAD189]

The Shemite thief was many things, but not a fool.

There was something ephemeral about what was transpiring; some darkness he could only feel in his soul, causing the hairs on his neck to stand on end. Had he been a man who's sense outweighed his curiosity, he might have fled. But that was not Amal Ibn-Hakeem, jackal of the sands. The scents of jasmine and myrrh wafted up the stone stairway, showcasing the pythoness was performing some rite or ritual. Her echoing words, whispers in a harsh tongue. She sounded as if her statement was both a command and an abasement of herself. The knife clutched in his hand, his arm bent to throw even before he saw her dancing there in the sacred pool. He might have seen the ripples beneath her, but her dancing was mesmerizing. The cutthroat felt a very mannish stirring within him, a warmth spreading from just below his belt as he watched her.

He forcibly tore his gaze away to scan the rest of the cavern, spying the statues of gold. The ever pragmatic thief went from desiring her to thinking of slitting her throat before she could halt him from stealing the jewels mounted on the carvings. Lapis and lazulis, garnets and rubies, diamonds and emeralds that glittered like the stars, blinking in and out of existence as the lights began to flicker from what foul magic she was enacting. Amal had made a point to keep away from the dark powers, but this was a scene he couldn't leave empty handed.

He made no sound as he stepped down the last steps and stalked across the stone floor behind the writhing seductress. He moved seven steps to hide behind a small dias that raised the carved stone floor. Certain he was no longer in her line of sight, the approached a small bronze statue of a dog-headed man, likely placed here as a war trophy from the old conquests of Xarame, and he used his knife to dig at its agate eyes, attempting to pry them out silently through the priestess's litany. The water sloshed for but a moment, halting his progress and causing him to look over his shoulder. He waited, and his patience was greeted by another, similar sound. The strong young man crept to the edge of his hiding spot, peering out to view what was transpiring.

"Dagon and Ashtoreth," he breathed, calling upon his shemite gods to protect him.

[Penny]

Sythemis, Child of the Desert, danced in the sacred pool of Ishtar, her dark hair flying as she spun in increasingly ecstatic arcs. The names of both Ishtar and Set spilled from her lips and the water began to churn and foam far beyond the power of her slim form. Shapes began to appear like queer waves, their crests furrowing to suggest the passage of serpents formed of living water, they curled around the Stygian, sliding over her legs and coiling up around her chest before dropping away in showers rain drops. Her chanting grew more frenetic as the water around her waist surged and foamed and she threw back her head dark eyes wide as she shouted the names of the gods interspersed with the arcane syllables which seemed poorly. The candles which lit the grotto guttered and dimmed, almost extinguishing before bursting into a queer black flame that seemed to fill the chamber with sharp hard edged light.

The water spray froze in the air, hanging like a thousand firestruck gems, glowing with light of the braziers and the dark golden gleam of Sythemis' own eyes.

"Mighty Set," she intoned in a voice of breathless anticipation, "reveal to me that which I seek, turn your gaze upon the thief whom I have sought in your embrace. Again the light flickered wierdly and then in an instant, every drop reflected the face of Amal Ibn-Hakeem.