From: aaron@space.ualberta.ca (Aaron Humphrey)
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 19:31:23 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: [KQ] Maleiu[Warehouse]: One Or The Other

As the upstairs contingent of the warehouse guards start to pour down into the
first basement level, Maleiu threw open the trapdoor going still further down,
and dives through, somehow sensing the javelin which had been aimed at his
back.  The rest of the Kronquestors followed swiftly behind.

The next level was chaos.  Smoke and flame from several sources filled the air,
and many flat-looking colourful creatures, caricatures of human form, swarmed
about.  A strange squid-faced being and a man Maleiu recognized from the
Dragon's Inn were tied up over unrealistic-looking flame...a vat held some dark
liquid and a wayward lizard man...and in the foreground Marcel was sparring
a skull-faced man.  Marcel's fighting style was limited to berserker blows and
he seemed to be trying to prevail through brute force and battle rage.

Suddenly Marcel's face went slack, and intelligence seemed to return.  His
opponent took advantage of his distraction to disarm him, and was shifting his
grip on his Zweihander for the killing blow.  Azzar, Maleiu, and Rhoan all had
the same thought.  Maleiu threw his spear, which the skull-faced man knocked
aside easily, and Azzar's arrow missed by a hair as he stepped aside.  But
Rhoan's battle axe struck its mark.  The skull-face stumbled as it bit into his
leg.

Kron dodged forward around the strange beings and somehow opened a hole into
the vat where Thk was being imprisoned.  Thk, and a large quantity of the murky
liquid he had been immersed in, gushed out, although the hole disappeared
after Kron removed his hands from the vat.

Colin went to a cage holding several terrified people of various races, and
broke the lock, freeing them.  Then Arvor tossed Rhoan's axe back at him and
ran, limping slightly, toward another exit, where another, dimly-seen figure
lurked.  Colin moved to intercept Arvor, but dodged out of the way as the
shadowy figure threw a flask towards the half-elf, which released a cloud of
greenish gas when it struck near his foot.  As the gas reached Colin's nose,
his eyes rolled up and he collapsed to the ground.  Maleiu retrieved his spear
and fended off a couple of the unreal beings from over Colin's prostrate body.
He appeared merely to be unconscious, at least.

Then a cloud of smoke from the vat where Thk had been lately imprisoned drifted
over, and Maleiu inhaled a whiff of it.  He suddenly felt full of boisterous
energy, and he dropped his spear, picking up his diminutive opponents by the
handful and tossing them up in the air, catching them easily.  Then they
started to fade, and he heard a voice he hadn't heard in years.  "Maleiu, my
dearest," she said.

He turned to see Lyono, his beloved, and he rushed to embrace her.  "I thought
you were still in Nariawah," he said in the tongue of his people.  "How did you
follow me here, to Generica?  Surely your father is searching for you?"  His
mind filled with worry as he pictured Loiu's anger at her disappearance.  He
could almost hear him say--

"Young warrior!  Don't you know it is forbidden for priestesses to commit
themselves to any one man?  My daughter can no more be yours than she can be
any man's.  And you may not see her again until you have walked all the shores
of the world, as I charge you."  With that, Loiu grabbed Lyono and pulled her
from his grasp.  He tried to hold her, but she slipped away, and when he looked
for her, she was gone.  But another was there.

"Mistletoe," he whispered.  His mind compared her with Lyono.  Lyono was a
priestess, always dignified and proper.  Mistletoe was always cheerful and full
of energy and questions.  Their hair was so similar--Lyono's platinum white and
Mistletoe's silver-gray.  Perhaps that was why he was attracted to Mistletoe,
because of that similarity to Lyono and the very thing that made her forbidden.
And there she was, smiling and opening her arms to him.  A sudden rush of love
filled him, and he realized that he loved the real Mistletoe more than the
faraway Lyono.  His mind seemed to change into an entirely new pattern.  He
need no longer complete his quest and return.  He need no longer wait for love,
when it was so close.

Then his eyes seemed to fog.  No, that wasn't Mistletoe after all.  Mistletoe
wasn't so tall.  And she certainly wasn't covered with blue tattoos.  Then he
realized that he held Lady Azzar in a firm embrace.  His eyes met Captain's
over her shoulder, and a sudden hot flush of embarrassment filled his cheeks
with warmth.  He stepped back.  "My apologies, Lady.  I was...disoriented.  The
air in this place is not wholesome."  He could feel Captain's glare on his back
as he turned away.  He saw a pair of slaves, a man and woman--the man had the
same glare, and the woman drew back in fear as his eyes turned to her.  "I am
truly sorry.  I was not myself."  The man nodded, obviously understanding--he
had been a victim of the drug himself, no doubt.  But his eyes were still hard,
and Maleiu turned back.

Mistletoe was not here.  Mistletoe was in Rameshan, a slave of the merchant
Juhlavi bes-Pelmaj.  And he might never see her again.  The comrade had sworn
to meet in Generica if they could get free.  But suddenly Maleiu was filled
with conflicting feelings--despair in ever being reunited, and a newfound hope,
based in love.  He shook his head and thrust such feelings back.  There were
better places for such things.

He heard shouts coming from where 'Raelf and the other being were tied up.  He
turned to see Thk poised to close his jaws on the head of the other being,
which seemed to be pleading for its life.  Then Kron stopped Thk and asked for
some kind of information regarding the one they were seeking.  Maleiu didn't
hear any information being passed, but Kron put a hand to his head and then
nodded as if there had been.  Then the being disappeared in a blast of air, and
all four of them were thrown off balance.

The strange beings seemed to have disappeared, and so had the ropes binding
'Raelf, who introduced himself around.  Maleiu turned to help up Colin, who was
struggling to his feet with a groggy look on his face.  The half-elf spit a gob
of greenish sputum on the ground.  "That was not fun.  That stuff tastes like
the inside of that octopus-thing we fought up there."

Then all those in the room turned as the trapdoor opened again.  The upstairs
guards had made their way down.  The leader seemed to stop as the Kronquestors
turned to face him.  Maleiu imagined what he must be seeing--none of the usual
inhabitants, apart from the slaves, who were starting to arm themselves from
the bodies of the guards, and instead a lizard man, a being that looked like
he was made of stone, an armoured knight(Marcel had also regained his feet),
and half-a-dozen other formidable-looking opponents.  Not to mention a yapping
orc dog pup.

Kron broke the silence.  "We're not the Guards or anything.  We were just
paying a friendly visit here.  Everyone else seems to have left, so we'll just
show ourselves out.  Any problems with that?"  On cue, everyone else there 
bared their teeth and raised their weapons ever so slightly.

The leader shook his head convulsively.  He'd already seen Wernher's corpse,
and the remnants of the elite guards.  These guards were far from the elite,
and he knew that he stood a good chance of premature retirement if he stood and
fought.  The only question in his mind was whether to just retreat and go into
hiding or to provide an active escort...

--
---Alfvaen(Canadian SF Quasi-Activist)
"What have I done to piss the gods off?"  ---Terence Trent D'Arby
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