Mike Wild - The Crucible of the Dragon God

Suddenly the rumbling stopped.

The unknown beast hissed loudly.

And then… nothing happened.

A second passed. Two. Three. And then, with a gulp of apprehension, Dolorosa flung her skirt off her head, squinting ahead. There, silhouetted by the evening sun, something shadowed and bulky obscured the hillside. Something with a number of projections on its front, like cannon, that seemed to distort the air in front of them. As she stared the beast disgorged something from its side. No, not something, Dolorosa realised — a figure. A strangely familiar figure, as it turned out, witha what appeared to be a bum sticking out ovva its pants.

The figure looked around, taking in its surroundings.

"Pits of Kerberos," Kali Hooper said, "it worked."

She leapt down from the cabin of the machine she had nicknamed The Mole and limped past the prone and gaping old woman, pausing only to point back and declare with girlish enthusiasm; "Dolorosa, you have GOT to get yourself one of those."

"Bossa lady?" Dolorosa said. And then again: "Boss?"

She picked herself up and, with a backward glance at the strange machine, raced after Kali as she hobbled purposefully towards the Flagons, circling her as she walked and squinting with some concern, but mainly suspicion, at the bedraggled, dirt covered figure. Once she had truly established its identity, she poked it in the chest with a bony finger.

"You are notta dead?"

"Nope. But I am thirsty. Very."

"Beer eet issa notta good when you arra dehydrated."

Kali snorted. "Yeah, right."

They reached the doors to the Flagons and Kali flung them open, frowning in puzzlement at the fact the bar was adorned with a great strip of bunting inscribed, in Dolorosa's strangled peninsulan, with the words: 'Kali Hooper — Resta Inna Peas.'

Rather unnecessarily, Dolorosa declared to all within that "the boss lady issa back", but before the expressions of joy had even had time to settle on the regulars' faces, Kali was already seated at the bar, pointing silently, but self-explanatorily, at the cask thwack. Much to his wife's apparent disapproval Aldrededor was already pouring a tankard, and then another, and then — because he knew the occasion would demand it — another still. Kali downed them all in rapid succession, wiped her mouth with her forearm, sighed and burped long and hard.

"That," she gasped, "I needed. Hi, guys," she added, waving at the regulars and smiling as they welcomed her back.

"'Allo, Kaleeee!"

"Good to see yer, halfpint…"

"So — you are not dead," Aldrededor declared, taking the last empty tankard and placing another frothing one in her hand. "It is very good to see you home, Kali Hooper."

"Likewise, Aldrededor." Kali slapped the empty on the bar. "What made you think I was dead?"

Aldrededor shrugged. "The fact that you have been missing for six weeks. That there has been no news at all and, of course, this — " The one-time pirate pointed at Kali's battered and torn equipment belt, hung in pride of place behind the bar. "It washed up on a beach near Nurn. Luckily, Mister Larson was there on his holiday and managed to retrieve it. Thank you, Mister Larson."

"Six weeks?" Kali repeated. She nodded to Ronin as she reclaimed her belt. "That place really threw me out of whack. So have I missed anything?"

"Oh, the usual," Aldrededor said casually. "Red was arrested three or four times, Miss Scrubb has been nibbling the Dreamweed again and — " Rather surprisingly, Aldrededor stopped and suddenly busied himself wiping glasses.

"Aldrededor?" Kali prompted, but the swarthy Sarcrean only shrugged and devoted all his attention to erasing a tiny spot on one of the tankards, one that was seemingly never going to disappear no matter how hard he tried.

Suspicious now, Kali span on her barstool to face the gathered regulars, but where a moment before it had been all "Here's to Kali!" and "We should have known you'd be fine!" there was now a totally uncharacteristic silence.

Kali stared at Pete Two Ties on whom she could usually depend, but his head had descended into what was obviously a particularly challenging cryptosquare. She stared at Fester Grimlock and Jurgen Pike, who in turn stared at their quagmire board despite the fact their game was clearly over. Then she stared at Ronin Larson, the ironweaver, and Hetty Scrubb, the herbalist, who were staring hard at their feet or out of the window, the former humming something tremulous and the latter giggling uncontrollably. Of Dolorosa herself, there was at first no sign, then Kali caught sight of her peering warily from behind the bravado barrel at the far end of the bar. The bravado barrel was a game of nerve with a single arm-hole in its front and there were a number of… interesting creatures provided by Red hidden inside it, but having someone hide behind it was a first.

Something was definitely up.

"Dolorosa?" Kali said, cautiously.

"What?" Dolorosa objected loudly, throwing her hands in the air. "You thinka that iffa there is something you will notta like it hassa to be Dolorosa's fault?"

That clinched it.

"Dolorosa?" she said again, emphasising her question. "What will I 'notta like'?"

Dolorosa squinted at her, saying nothing, but from the corner of her eye Kali saw Red Deadnettle pointing towards the rear of the tavern, mouthing something that looked like 'band.' Kali turned and stared up the few ramshackle steps that led up to her Captain's Table and saw that what had traditionally been her domain, had been filled with a number of strange musical instruments, including a road-worn, sweeping, stringed affair that looked almost elven — what she thought was called a theralin. Frowning, she mounted the steps and saw that the Captain's Chest — storehouse of her papers and sanctum sanctorum of the peninsula's history — had also been buried beneath a spread of tattered music sheets for such appropriately forgotten classics as 'Boom Bang-a Thud', 'What A Wonderful Pie' and 'Yes, She's Heavy, She's My Mother.

"What," she asked Dolorosa, "is this?"

The thin woman threw up her hands in protest but, nonetheless, looked guilty. "Wotta you theenk eet is? Eet is, eet is — "

Her words were lost as one of the thick timber beams, supporting the rooms above, suddenly curved downward with a stressed and prolonged groan that drowned out every other sound in the bar. Kali looked upward, blinking dust from her eyes. The next beam along bowed down, as did the floorboards in between, and then the next, and then the one after that. It was almost surreal, as if the whole infrastructure of the tavern had suddenly turned to rubber.

Then the top step of the stairs sounded as if it were splintering.

"Oh Gods," Pete Two-Ties said. "They're waking up."

Kali double-taked. "What? Who? Pete — who's waking up?"

"Them," Pete pointed.

Kali span. Whatever it was she expected to see, the last of it would have been a small mountain range, but that was exactly what appeared at the bottom of the stairs. A small mountain range squeezing itself into the bar and made up entirely of flesh. One of the mountains spoke. "Coo-ee, boys," it said, with a wink.

Oh Gods, Kali thought. No, it couldn't be. Not here.

"The Hells' Bellies," she mouthed with dread. Her ordeals of the last few weeks notwithstanding she turned as white as a sheet.

The eyes in the peaks of the talking mountain lit up. "Our fame has spread! This young lady, she has heard of us!"

Kali was tempted to point out that the entire peninsula had 'heard' of them and that their fame wasn't the only thing that had spread. But she held her tongue and, instead, glowered at Dolorosa.

"Explain," she demanded, darkly.

"What issa there to explain?" Dolorosa said in a slightly high pitch, clearly going on the defensive. "We thoughta you dead and so we thoughta we woulda make a few changes…"