"Well, here you are!" Eve says cheerfully to the travelers from Stonebarrow, after taking them to the very edge of Blackshire, past the cemetery and other clearly uninhabited areas. "Be sure to stop by on your way back, if don't get eaten or anything. It was fun having you drop by!"
Quite a lot of their gear was stowed inside of Waddles, much to Aviri's discontent - but at least it means he doesn't have to carry a heavy pack.
Aviri, his satchel slung over his shoulder because he'd be damned if he let the Demon have all of his stuff, thanks Eve warmly. "We'll certainly make an effort to do so," he promises. "Well, we've got to, anyway, to deliver the ... the thing."
Lin gives Eve a quick hug and notably doesn't use it as an oportunity to search the Duchess' pockets. "We'll be back! Well, so long as the treasure isn't too iresistible." She winks and goes to check on Waddles to make sure all their gear is stowed properly.
"Not delivering, steal.. uh.. finding," Trilup points out. "Are we supposed to bring it back here afterwards?" she asks the others.
"I'd assume so," Aviri replies. "That's why we came here, right? Give the Duchy of Blackshire whatever Silv was trying to give."
Lin taps her hat and raises an eyebrow. "Well? We did deliver the box. That was the point, right?"
"The box didn't contain the anti-necromatic bludgeon," Aviri notes. "And Silv's still around, so her unfinished business obviously hasn't been finished."
"Oh, right!" Trilup says, and smiles. "Off we go then!" she says, and lights a lantern. "Who wants to go first?"
Shifting his satchel to rest better against his hip, Aviri takes the lead. "See you again, hopefully," he says back to Eve.
"Have a nice trip!" Eve calls, but once entering the wood even the sound of her voice seems muted. It's as if the forest is depressed. And it also feels like it's watching and judging them all as well.
"Onwards!" Lin chirps, waving to Eve and taking the lead with Waddles following close behind. She stops momentarily to light her lantern and tie it to Waddles.
Rattle rattle chuck chuck.. the animated trunk makes odd noises when it walks. At least Trilup is between it and Lin and Aviri, so it can't 'sneak up' on the Lapi. It's also the only thinking making noise. Even a dark wood should have insects.
Aviri picks up the pace instinctively at the approach of Waddles, smoothing down the hairs on the back of his neck. "Worse than the gypsie camp," ne notes to nobody in particular. To Lin he says, "Might be best if you stayed back a bit. Wouldn't wanna have our stuff get eaten out in front."
"It's too quiet," Trilup points out. "Emmett says quiet means something is hunting, everything is already dead, or Gunther is nearby."
"What's wrong with dead things?" Silv asks, actually visible now as she sits atop Waddles. She looks at her barely transparent hand, and grins. "Oooo, lots of spirit juice in these woods. Good for ghosts!"
"I'd prefer dead things to living ones," Aviri agrees nervously, doing his best to not be twitchy.
"T'be fair," Lin notes, "This is an undead forest. If there's gonna be any place that's unaturally quiet, seems like this'd be it. Wonder if we're bein' followed yet." She looks around, scanning the treeline for anything suspicious. "And yes, Aviri, I won't go running off into the deep, dark, spooky woods an' get eaten by some undead horror. That's your job!"
"Nah, Aviri is just bait to lure them off, 'cuz he's got the magic zombie-proof amulet!" Trilup says chipperly. "Unless the monsters aren't out to hurt him though. I suppose zombies could, you know.. hug him and stuff.."
"I'm also fast," Aviri says, keeping his voice light-hearted in an attempt to offset the dreariness of the wood. "Just make sure we're not being followed. Don't have eyes in the back of my head."
The leaves of the trees are black, which makes things stand out if they're lighter. And so Lin spots something up in one of the branches ahead.. that looks like a Creen skeleton. It's perched as it would be in life though.
"You're being followed," Silv helpfully points out.
The Lapi faulters, but manages to keep walking, turning his head to try to spot the offender. "Where?"
"Hey, do you think that's undead or would it have just died and frozen somehow?" Lin wonders aloud, pointing up at the creen skeleton in the trees. She scoops up a small rock from the path and tosses it lightly in her hand, eyeing the skeleton curiously. "An' do you know what's following us?"
"Back there, just beyond the light.." the phantasm notes. "Stop the trunk, it's sounds are covering their approach."
Aviri squints, his ears rotating atop his head to pick up their sound. "Lin....?" he says, gesturing toward the Demonbox.
Lin stops walking and puts her palm on Waddles' lid to settle the magic box. She perks up her little ears as well and listens hard.
With the box silenced, it's easy to hear the only other source of sound in the woods: a clickety-clackety noise, bordering on ratchety, coming from behind them, and getting rapidly closer. Aviri can tell it'll be within lantern light soon enough.
Aviri quickly dashes forward, for once ignoring Waddles' proximity, to get between the clacking and the others.
Linyala dims the lantern on Waddles' lid and whispers, "Maybe we should get off the path and ambush it?" She gestures towards the ink black shaddows of the treeline.
"Ambush it?" Trilup asks. What if it's friendly? We could just hide behind Aviri if it isn't.."
The thing appears. It looks like a giant centipede, except the body is a long length of fused-at-the-ends spines, and the legs are ribs, and the head is a horrible amalgamation of skull fragments stuck together.
Aviri points to Trilup and nods, though keeps his attention focused on the clattering. "Lanter--" he starts to say, the word stuck when the thing appears. His other hand goes immediately to his necklace, as though more physical contact with it would increase it's potency. "Get ready to bolt," he mutters.
"Deffinitely friendly." Lin whispers at Trilup, "Don't you just want to go and hive it a big hug? Looks like it's got the arms for it."
"I will.." Trilup starts to say, then hugs onto Aviri from behind and closes her eyes.
The bone-a-pede rears up to be eye-level with the Lapi, and sort of sways back and forth a bit, which makes an almost musical creaking and grating sound. Then it turns its gaze (which is hard to determine, since there are a lot of eye sockets aimed in many directions) on Linyala.
Lin's spine stiffens and she freezes in place for a moment when she senses its attention focusing on her. As her hands clench, the rock that she picked up digs into her hand a little and she snaps out of it. With a grin, she holds up the rock enticingly and chirps, "Want the rock? Want the rock? Go get it!" She flings it down the path, back the way they came.
The composite monsters actually turns slightly to watch the rock, then turns back and drops to the ground. It scurries around Aviri and Trilup, moving surprisingly quickly! Lin dodges aside before the thing can clamber over her though.. as it heads straight for Waddles! It ignores Silv, and climbs atop the trunk where it.. curls up and appears to go to sleep.. or at least stop moving.
Aviri is a stone statue for this, and by the time he moves it's already over. He manages to resume breathing, looking at the bonapede on the chest. "Right, so we're leaving them both here," he says matter-of-factly.
"Huh," Silv says as she 'sniffs' the monster. "I don't think this is undead, guys."
"It's mine now, and I'm naming it." Lin declares. "Huh? It's not undead?" She gently pads closer to it and tries to get a look through the mess of bones. "What should we call you?"
"It did get too close to me," Aviri notes. "Most undead things tend to stay well away. And no, we're not keeping it."
"It's like a golem, I bet," the ghost claims. "That could be why it's attracted to the trunk. These sort of monsters can occur naturally in underground areas of high magic.. I remember seeing one.. uh.. forget what it was called. Was caught in.. Kroz? One of those places above the old Underground Empire. It drank blood!"
The Lapi shudders at the mention of drinking blood. "Well hopefully it'll go away when we enter less magical areas," he says. "Sorry, Silv. Know you like being visible an' all." He carefully walks around Waddles and the bonapede to resume his place at the front.
"Ooooo.. hey.." Silv says, and slides over to Linyala. "I bet if you fed me some blood.. through my hat.. I could be more solid too," she suggests to the Akwavi.
"What if it's not the only monster in the woods though?" Trilup asks. "We just gonna keep.. collecting them as we go?"
Lin tries to figgure out how to get at the lantern that's strapped to the middle of Waddles' lid without bothering the bonapede, reaching awkwardly over and around it. "Drat." She mutters to herself and gives up. "Could do! This place is supposed to be lousy with Vampires. It shouldn't be too much trouble to give it a shot at some point. Let me know if you see an opportunity an' I'll keep an eye out too."
"Not if we leave 'Waddles' behind," Aviri mutters. Louder, he says "We'll come to that if we come to that. Till then we'd best be getting on, right? Less time spent here the better."
Progress is slow moving through the dark wood. It's like traveling at night, but darker. The lanterns need to be refueled, and every time they stop for whatever reason, another bone-golem shows up. After a few miles, they've collected a three-headed skeleton Creen and a full Rathani skeleton, which sits cross-legged atop the others. And Silv positions herself so it looks like it's her skeleton. The trees change character as well, becoming more ominous, with the typical hollows-that-make-faces and reaching branches that look like clawed arms. They don't move at least, and some of them appear to be petrified. "I'm hungry," Trilup complains. "When do we get out the other side?"
Lin has amused herself by naming the golems, several now sport scraps of paper with names like "Clatterpede" and "Rumblecrusher". "I'd give you somethin' from my stash," Lin chirps to Trilup, "But it's in Waddles and it's a little hard to open right now. Not without upsettin' the mobile boneyard that is."
Aviri eyes the stack of golems warily. "Tomorrow," he says, unable to make that sound any better than 'terrible.' He shoots Waddles a withering look, and takes a deep breath and rummages about in his satchel, proffering Tril some stale bread. "Don't have much," he warns.
The slightly younger otter accepts the old loaf happily, and gnaws at it as if it were a particularly tough swamp crab. This satisfied for a few more minutes at least, until they all come upon a fork in the road that wasn't on the map Aviri memorized.
Aviri groans softly when confronted with the revelation. He doesn't stop walking, though, and just leads on down the right-hand path, as though that was definitely on the map, and this was the right way.
"Where does that other path go?" Trilup has to ask, of course.
"Out of the woods," Aviri says. "But it's a longer path east than straight through." He points ahead.
Lin looks up at the black canopy overhead and chews her lower lip. "I wonder if it's still day." She muses, "Straight through doesn't sound too bad. It's not like we've seen anything really dangerous yet. An' when do you think we should we make camp fer the night?"
Aviri stops and looks around, the fork still just visible behind them. "Could be here," he says. "As good a place as any." He looks up, then down the path he'd arbitrarily chosen, but his own fatigue stops him from suggesting they just keep going.
From this point, the path ahead isn't quite as dark as the path behind them - there's a slight gray glow further up ahead that might be a break in the trees.
The Lapi blinks when he sees the light. "Or up there," he adds confidently, pointing toward the light and resuming his trek.
"Sounds good!" Lin chirps and marches along behind him, casting frequent glances at the pile of bones to make sure it isn't about to topple over and crush them all.
The path begins to narrow a bit as they go on, becoming more like a tunnel as the trees close in.. only to open onto a clearing. The break in the canopy shows that it's evening already. There's a white picket fence, festooned with various charms, that follows the border of the clearing, and even has a little gate. Beyond that is a small cottage with a wooden roof and a chimney rising up from the center, and round shuttered windows to either side of the door.
"Do you think anyone actually lives here?" Trilup whispers to the others. "Maybe it's a golem farmer!"
Lin purses her lips thoughtfully. "Somethin' about this smells like a trap." She intones, looking over the place skeptically. En lieu of touching the gate, she tries to look around and over it to check for tripwires or anything otherwise suspicious. "Pretty little cottage in the middle of this place. Yeah, totally safe."
Aviri chuckles at that. "Well, then we might get paid for aiding the harvest," he says, shivering as he realizes that sounds creepy to say the least. "We should set up camp," he says, and points toward the end of the clearing opposite the cottage.
"Inside the fence?" Trilup asks. "It's got all witchy stuff on it. Maybe a witch lives here, and the fence keeps out.. you know.. things.."
There don't seem to be any obvious traps. Not even a bell on the gate to announce visitors.
"Was thinking outside the fence," Aviri clarifies. He peers at the dangly-bits on the fence, as though he'd be able to discern their purpose.
The Lapi stands upright suddenly. "Silv, could you scout it?"
The ghost abandons her skeleton seat and goes to the fence.. then walks along it, then walks back. "I can't get past the fence, you'll have to open the gate for me," she finally says.
Lin reaches out tentatively and lifts the latch of the gate, trying to do so with as little physical contact as possible. "This had better not zap me again." She grumbles.
"But you look cute when you're zapped," Trilup offers to Lin with a big ottery grin.
Alas for Trilup and the local cuteness quotient, the gate does nothing to Lin. It does make some noise when moving though - nobody has oiled the wooden hinges for some time it seems.
Aviri laughs at that. "Well," he says in a more serious tone, "that Silv can't get in is a good sign--sorry Silv. Wonder if those things can." He gestures at the bones. "Could you send Waddles in first, Lin?"
Lin shrugs and pushes the gate open enough for even Waddles to pass through, trying to get all the screeching and groaning over with as quickly as possible. "I'd have to go in first an' Waddles would follow. I'm not throwing the key in there." She cocks her head then steps past the threshold into the yard.
The result is a bit comical. Waddles passes through the gate after Lin, and once inside all of the golems on its back just fall apart and clatter to the ground as individual bones.
Aviri starts as the golems disintigrate. "That's ... disturbing," he says. He looks at the cottage, then again at the charms on the fence. "Well, an undeadless and golemless clearing sounds like the perfect place to sleep."
"Hey, Waddles isn't affected," Trilup helpfully points out, grinning. "Waddles can't be a demon then, right Aviri?"
"Huh." Lin kicks at the disenchanted bones. "Maybe this place isn't an evil lair of doom afterall. Or it's just a stealthy evil lair of doom. Who builds a cottage in the middle of an undead forest?"
Silv also passes through the opened gate without any issues, other than become a bit more.. ghostly. She fades to a fraction of her outside-the-fence visibility.
"Nothing about the fence says it keeps out all bad things," Aviri says knowingly. "After all, it let Linyala through."
Trilup hmms. "I suppose you have a point," she admits, then bounds after after Lin and Waddles, jumping over the bones.
Lin takes a swipe at Aviri with her tail. "Meany!"
Aviri grins and steps through, too, eyeing the bones warily but not giving them the same berth he gives Waddles. "Lin, I trust you can get the stuff out of Demonbox? Silv! Glad to see you're not stuck outside for the night. Any chance of checking out that thing?" He gestures to the cottage.
The ghost sticks her head through the door, then pulls it back out and says, "I don't see anyone. There's wood piled near the firepit, and some wooden furniture, but no charms or signs anyone actually lives there."
"Its name is Waddles, and yes." She lifts the lid, showing off their inventory then follows Silver and tries the door after checking it for traps.
Aviri frowns and returns toward where they're setting up camp. "Alright, thanks. Probably shouldn't bother with it. No infiltrating, Lin. Whomever made all this is obviously fairly adept at the magics and I'd rather not ire them." He looks at the opened Waddles. "And be sure to not put all our good food back in that thing."
The door is unlocked and not wired with any sort of physical alarm devices. Lin can tell that it's meant to latch from the inside though. And there aren't any smells from inside that trigger her danger sense - it just smells a bit like old smoke.
"It... Actually looks fine in here." Lin calls back to Aviri, letting the door swing open. "Nothing stopping us from camping out here, but I may as well check out the inside. Ain't infiltrating if the door's unlocked." She slinks through the threshold, still on high alert for tripwires or traps.
Aviri sighs and deposits his satchel on the ground a good distance from Waddles.
The furniture inside is fairly rough, but serviceable - and probably all from the local trees. The fire pit is a round brick affair in the center of the room, with brick pillars reaching to the roof where the chimney is. There are some bunk beds, but they don't have mattresses. There isn't anything that isn't wood or brick or glass, and not much light, since the windows are all shuttered from the outside.
Lin wanders around, investigating. She's still suspiscious and pokes into every corner, trying to find any indication that the cottage is anything more than a conveniant refuge for travelers through a strange place. "Silver?" She asks, "What do you think?"
"It's an abandoned cottage," the ghost suggests. "Or it's a road-house. Maybe the forest just isn't as dangerous as it used to be, so nobody bothers with this place anymore."
Trilup shadows Aviri, asking, "So, should we dig a potty hole?"
"Probably," Aviri nods, looking around the clearing. "Feel like it should be done outside the fence, though. Would hate to mar this." He gestures to the peacefulness of the clearing.
"Uh.. but the fence is to keep things outside," Trilup notes, and then goes wide-eyed with inspiration. "There can't be.. uh.. poop-golems can there?"
"Being inside, it seems a lot less unlikely." Lin muses and goes around, opening the windows, "We should probably restock the fireplace if we do stay and have a fire. Courtesy, I guess." She leaves the house and calls to Aviri and Trilup, "It looks safe. No obvious traps or razor pillows. Come check it out!"
"Does it have chamber pots?" Trilup calls as she abandons Aviri to check out the cabin.
Aviri raises an ear at that. "Er, doubt it," he says. He gets to his feet and heads for the gate. "Don't break anything," he calls to the otters.
Lin ducks back inside and looks around for chamber pots. "It all seems pretty simple," She notes, "Silv said it might have been a road house from when the forest was more dangerous. I guess necromantic energy fades over time."
"Maybe it got washed out with the flood?" Trilup ponders as she noses around. She finds a bucket.. but that could be for anything bucket related. "There's no well outside, and no pump in here," she points out. "So.. anyone would need to bring in their own water, right?"
"I wouldn't trust the ground water from around here anyways. Remember Eve's basement? All full of necromancey aftereffects? Water that's been around those kinds of energies can't be healthy." Lin opens up Waddles and lays out her bedroll on one of the matress frames. On a whim, she feels around the undersides of the bunks for hiden switches or levers.
Once outside the fence, Aviri walks a few paces into the forest and starts digging, deciding to do so as far away from tree trunks as possible.
Nothing is under the bunk, especially not the rotting corpse of the last tenant. Just dust. The soil outside isn't that bad for digging at first, but there's clay a few inches down - which might explain why the clearing is a clearing, if nothing can put down deep roots. It might even be the top of a chalk dome, just like in Stonebarrow.
Lin shrugs, at last accepting that the cabin is what it appears to be. She fluffs up her bed roll and flops on the bunk. "Better than the ground at least!" She chirps and lights the lantern that's still strapped to Waddles, who has taken up the role of bedside table.
"There's just the two beds," Trilup notes. "I bet Aviri will want the top one to be away from Waddles.. if you can get him inside at all."
"I'm fine sharing the bottom one. You're prolly right though. He's darn skittish around Waddles." Lin rolls out of the bunk and sticks her nose out into the fading dusk to check on Aviri. "Y'allright out there?" She calls.
From the outside comes the sound of Aviri chipping at the clay with a rock he'd found. A rhytmic thunking. The thunking stops. "'m fine!" He calls back.
"It's gonna be dark soon," Trilup calls out. "We're gonna light a fire!" she also claims, before going to the wood bin and picking two small logs to get things started with.
"We should remember to restock the place before we leave." Lin chirps, helping get the fire ready, "Don't know if there's a caretaker for this place or if it's s'posed to be kept up by the people traveling through it."
"Maybe one of the chairs comes alive and goes and chops wood," Trilup suggests.. but there wasn't an axe when Lin did her search, so that seems unlikely.
Aviri marks the pit he dug with a circle of rocks and closes the gate as he re-enters the clearing. "Hole's dug," he calls up at the cottage. He plucks his satchel from the ground, moves it a few paces to one side for no apparent reason, and then sits back down.
Lin breaks from helping with the fire and comes out to wvere Aviri's sitting. "Gonna spend the night out here?" She asks, conversationally.
"It might get cold," Trilup offers.
Aviri nods. "Still got the blankets from Pike," he says. "Used to cold nights, too."
"Alright." Lin nods, "Top bunk's yours if you want it." She heads back to make sure the fire gets started safely.
"Well.. I guess we should leave the door open just in case then," Trilup suggests to Lin as they return to the firepit. Silv's tail can barely be seen dangling down from the top bunk.
By nightfall, the fire is going and heating up the cabin. And when the last glow of daylight fades from the sky.. the cabin stands up on tall spindly legs that raise it twenty feet above the ground.
The sudden motion makes Aviri's eyes open, just as he was nodding off under his blanket. He sits up, and notices the glow of the firelight isn't where it should be. He's immediately on his feet, blanket in one hand, satchel (which had been a pillow until a few moments ago) in the other. "Lin? Tril?" He calls.
Lin snorts and rolls hastily out of her bunk, wobbling a little against the moving floor. By the time she makes it to the door, the cabin has stopped rising. She slowly opens it and peers outside to see... Treetops! The otter squeaks in allarm and tumbles backwards into the cabin.
"Better get your rope!" Trilup says, and gets on her belly to look out the doorway. "Aviri! What's going on down there?"
Aviri backs away from the stilted house, toward the gate, but doesn't answer immediately. He instead listens, trying to hear if the cottage is further moving.
Lin hurries over to Waddles and fishes out her coil of rope. She's got more than enough and ties one end around the bedpost. The other end gets tossed over the edge where the slack piles on the ground. "Do you think that's it?" Lin asks, "Some kind of extra layer of undead protection or a really weird way to carry us off to be eaten by evil necromancers?"
The cottage is standing still.. but the forest sounds like it's moving. The leaves are all chattering as if in a wind, and the tops of the trees are swaying back and forth. There is also a loud moaning, that might be wind..
"Think it's just extra protection," Aviri calls, returning toward the middle of the clearing, anxious about the outside. He starts coiling and tucking the blanket around himself, until he's wearing it like a toga. "Unless you're digesting up there or something, this is probably a good thing."
"The fire isn't spreading or anything," Trilup reports.
"Seems normal." Lin chirps, now that really crazy things aren't happening anymore. "Want to come up? I could tie a loop in the bottom end and we can pull you up if you can't climb without knots. I don't like the look of the trees."
Outside the sounds of.. movement.. continue. Until a great red beacon seems to light up over the tree-tops some distance off - although Aviri can just see the general glow from the ground.
The appearance of the glow startles Aviri, who glances in that direction only long enough to know he doesn't want to look much longer. "Normal sounds better than being down here," he calls upward. "Can climb if drop rope!" He's obviously more than a little anxious to be off the ground--whatever witch made her cottage stand probably had reason to do so.
Lin flicks the dangling rope so it bumps into Aviri's shoulder. "It's already down, ya goof." She chirps.
Aviri practically jumps out of his skin when touched by the rope, but upon learning it's not some monster-tentacle reaching from the red-glowing forest, he latches onto it and starts climbing.
Lin waves Trilup over to help and starts pulling up the rope as Aviri climbs to get him up faster. It may only be twenty feet, but saving a few seconds could be well worth it considering their cabin just stood up to get away from whatever was on the ground.
Soon enough Aviri is inside the threshold, while the moaning intensifies outside. The first beacon is joined by a second one right next to it.. and when they start to scan around, the effect is that of two giant burning eyes.
Lin reels in the rope behind Aviri and gently shuts and bolts the door. She goes over to the nearest window and peeps up over the sill to look, wide-eyed at the beacons. "Not scary at all." She whimpers.
When Aviri scrambles onto the elevated floorboards, he's shaking, and casts a glance back down over the edge. "G-gonna dig own barrow," he says, though the words are hard to make out. "Never leave Stonebarrow again."