TS 6 - Chapter 33

It was most certainly not ‘fun.’  A week of hiking and tracking the orcs, all while constantly fending off attacks from the wolves and bears of the forest was far from enjoyable.  More than that, Kat hadn’t exactly studied the animals of medieval Europe, but there sure seemed to be a lot more of the creatures and each of them was faster, stronger and more resilient than anything appearing naturally.  On top of that, once the four of them cleared out a territory, it should’ve taken months for a new predator to move in, but instead the animals reappeared every night, forcing them to deal with them again and again the next day.

The beasts weren’t too much of a problem.  Whippoorwill couldn’t quite take them on her own, but with a short sword she could usually hold them off long enough for Kat, Dorrik, or Kaleek to rush in and clean up the mess.  The actual headache was surviving off the land.  There was enough meat from the constant animal attacks, but their team hadn’t acquired a tent before hiking up the mountain.

Theoretically, they could’ve adopted the orc’s solution and built a small fortified homestead, but that option was thwarted by the orcs themselves.  Days before they reached the main orcish camp and the dragon’s cave that lay beyond they started running into patrols.  By the time they were a half day out from the camp, teams of outriders would walk by at least twice a day, forcing Kat to focus on camouflage and ensuring that formal structures and campfires were beyond their reach.

In the four days of travel, Kat had managed to sleep with Whippoorwill in lean-tos made of sticks and covered with leaves and moss.  Needless to say it was uncomfortable, but it managed to keep out the wind and rain.  For the remaining three days while their team skirted the orcish camp and Whip started practicing with the clairvoyance from the crystal ball the dungeon had ‘gifted’ her, she was forced to sleep completely exposed to the elements.

It had only rained once, but that was one more time than Kat was happy with.  Whippoorwill was even more upset with the situation, but really there wasn’t anything they could do about it without alerting the orcs to their presence, and Whip’s forays with her crystal ball had revealed how stupid of an idea that would be.

“How many orcs did you say again?”  Dorrik asked, a hint of a frown on his scaly face as his crest drooped noticeably.

“At least four hundred,” Whippoorwill replied, a sphere of crystal humming with blue light cradled in her lap.  “It looks like the raids on the surrounding communities aren’t something they’re terribly serious about.  If they wanted, nothing short of a proper army could stop that many orcs.”

“I certainly don’t think pit traps and dropping rocks would be enough to stop them,” Kat said, frowning.  “If that’s the case, how are we going to get to the dragon?  If the orcs worship it and guard the entrance to its cave, it almost seems like we would have to wait until it leaves in order to hunt once again.  Even then, my hand crossbow probably isn’t enough to reach it while it’s flying, let alone penetrate armored scales.  It would probably ignore me if I shot at it.”

“Don’t take a defeatist attitude,” Kaleek chided her, laying on his back in a bed of grass and staring at the sky with the back of his head in the palms of his paws.  “The dragon will probably notice you and get offended by your ineffectual attack.  Shooting it with a crossbow would lead to it instantly killing us with that fire breath or whatever it is you claim it has.”

Kat rolled her eyes.  Kaleek was Kaleek.  Honestly?  She couldn’t think of a dilemma that would stir him from his lackadaisical approach to the world.  Ironic for a warrior that spent half of his time in a violent frenzy, but deep down the otter was as serene as any monk.  He just couldn’t be made to care about day to day concerns.  Only the stallesp could bring real anger out of him, and that was mostly due to their past actions.

“I think I have a plan,” Whip said, ignoring Kaleek.  It was probably for the best.  He wasn’t terribly helpful in strategic stages of a dungeon run, and frankly, Whippoorwill had plenty of experience with putting together an operation in the real world.

She poked the crystal ball with her finger and the steady blue light changed, instead showing an image of the center of the orc village.  The creatures had a half dozen boar spitted and roasting over a fire while individual orcs were drinking or wrestling with each other around the periphery.

“From what I’ve seen, orc society seems to be fairly rudimentary,” Whippoorwill began, panning the image on the crystal ball over the village.  “When they have food they eat.  When they have booze they drink.  When they get worked up they-”

Whip blushed, tapping the crystal ball in order to turn it off.

“Anyway, that isn’t important.  What matters is that if they get food they will throw a party.  If they throw a party, they’re going to get blasted on grain alcohol.  Once the orcs are drunk?  The actual entrance to the dragon’s cave isn’t defended terribly well to begin with.  They mostly rely on the fact that any intruder would have to sneak through the entirety of the village in order to get to the dragon.”

“So we can sneak right in,” Kat responded, nodding to herself.  “Honestly?  That sounds like a pretty decent plan except for one thing.”

“Oh?”  Whippoorwill replied, cocking her head to the side slightly.

Kat nodded at Kaleek.  The big otter was still wearing his heavy plate armor as he lay in the bed of leaves.

“Kaleek is about as subtle as a brick to the back of the head,” Kat said with a quick smile.

“A brick to the back of the head,” Kaleek responded, not moving from where he lay.  “I like that.  I wonder if I can get a magic brick somewhere in the dreamscape.  Can you imagine the look on a floor guardian’s face when I hit them in the back of the skull with an exploding brick or something?”

“I understand,” Dorrik replied.  “The two of us are wearing light armor so we’ll be able to sneak past the inebriated orcs.  Kaleek will have to remove his armor or they’ll notice him immediately.”

Kaleek shot up, clanking as he shook his head firmly.

“Absolutely not.  This might not be my actual armor, it doesn’t have any of the fancy enchantments or accessories I’m used to but it’s still my armor.  I can’t even comprehend going into battle without it.  That’s just an absurd thought.  It would be almost as silly as trying to swim while wearing the armor.”

Kat shrugged helplessly as she replied.

“Either you take off the armor or you stay back here in the woods and you defend Whip.  Pick one.  There’s no way we’re fighting through an entire camp full of orcs and then trying to tackle a dragon afterward.  A dozen orcs was a tough fight.  Two dozen is probably impossible.  A hundred?  We’d die almost immediately and you know it.  There just isn’t another option.”

There was another clank.  One of Kaleek’s gauntlets hit the ground followed a second later by the other.  He reached up, pulling his helmet off and throwing it on the pile of leaves, a wide grin on his face.

“Fine,” he responded, continuing to strip.  “If I have to get naked to fight the giant firebreathing lizard, I’m getting naked.  There’s no way you’re going to keep me from a battle this ridiculous.”

The next two days were a flurry of activity.  With Whippoorwill’s help they managed to locate a couple herds of boars.  Kat used her gravity domain to help Kaleek dig a pit for the pigs while Dorrik hunted and somehow disabled the animals.

Finally, once they had a half dozen wild pigs, their team moved onto the next step of the plan.  Over the past week or so, Whippoorwill had been practicing constantly with the crystal ball.  By now, her control over the artifact was fluid and natural.  She quickly discovered a function that allowed her to communicate remotely with whoever it was she was viewing, changing her role from a preparation and organization specialist to an actual operation manager and member of the team.

Whip was easily able to find an isolated orc patrol, and it didn’t take Kaleek and Dorrik all that long to tie up their captured boars and drag them out into the path of the raiders and release them just out of sight while Kat kept watch on the entire situation.

The orcs didn’t question the situation in the slightest.  Once again, they moved far quicker than they should’ve been able to given their size and musculature, and the boars didn’t stand a chance.  Within five minutes of spotting the animals, all of them were dead from vicious axe wounds.

Triumphantly, the orcs returned back to their village.  The four of them watched the procession through Whippoorwill’s crystal ball as the patrol were treated like conquering heroes.  Almost immediately some of the smaller orcs began to collect firewood for the big cooking fires while others ran down into cellars beneath some of the central building in order to pull out barrels full of strong liquor.

That was all the signal that Kat needed.  About two hours later, Dorrik, Kaleek and her were crouched just outside the village, the sun beginning to dip down the horizon as the sounds of a raucous party echoed across the village.

“The guards on the front gate are leaving,” Whippoorwill’s ghostly voice whispered in Kat’s ear.  “Wait 10 seconds and you should be good to sneak in.  Take an immediate right once you’re inside.  There is a group of orcs trying to drag in another barrel of alcohol from a storehouse on the left.”

Kat nodded to Dorrik and Kaleek, holding up ten fingers.  Dorrik nodded while Kaleek stared at her blankly.  Kat opened her mouth to explain the situation before clapping it shut and biting the inside of her cheek in order to stay silent.

Armor or no armor, stealth wasn’t going to be Kaleek’s strong suit.  She could spend a day going through hand signs with him, and honestly she almost had, and it would still go in one furry ear and out the other.  He would follow Dorrik and her lead, and that would have to be enough.

After the ten seconds elapsed, Kat popped up into a crouch and half-ran toward the gate to the orc village.  Dorrik and Kaleek followed her, the desoph warrior looking strange without his usual plate mail.  He still had his great sword, but other than that and a hastily fashioned loin cloth made of untanned deer hide, he was completely unclothed.

Kat tried not to think about it.

The three of them managed to sneak into the complex without any being noticed.  They turned right, darting from one crude wood shed to another.  After they made it about another twenty paces, Whip’s voice hissed at them from the shadows once again.

“Turn left and head toward the center of the town, someone just left a hut in order to pee.”

Kat didn’t bother to respond, immediately changing her direction.

“Go two houses up and turn to the right,” Whip continued.  “There should be an empty- yes it's an empty house, I just checked.  The door is open.  Duck in there.  There are a couple other groups of partiers wandering around, you’ll need to hold tight for a bit while we wait for them to clear the area.”

She turned the corner and slipped inside the hut.  There was only one room with two stinking straw beds laid atop a ramshackle pile of wooden planks.  Leaning against the far wall was a rack with a pair of obsidian axes leaning against it.  Built into the poles that formed the framework of the rack were crude carvings of a dragon, one in flight and one perched on what looked like a mountain.  Or a home.  It was hard to tell given the simplicity of the drawing.

Kaleek and Dorrik filed in after her.  All three of them pressed themselves against the walls on either side of the doorway.  Outside, Kat could hear barks and cheers in the guttural language of the orcs. 

Ten seconds dragged on into twenty.  Twenty lingered into forty.  Finally, after Kat had been crouching in silence for a bit over a minute, Whippoorwill whispered at them from the dark room.

“Your area is clear, time to leave.  Turn at the end of the dirt path, that should take you to the edge of the party.  You’ll have to be careful skirting around some of the larger longhouses to avoid orcs staggering off to use the bathroom or throw up, but once you’re around the corner it should be a straight shot to the cave.”

They needed to duck into huts at least two more times  A third Whip’s warning came a second too late but the orc that wandered by was so drunk it someone managed not to notice the three of them standing perfectly still in the shadows of one of the wooden buildings while it peed in a sorry looking shrub barely five paces away.

After about ten minutes of careful sneaking, Whippoorwill guiding them the entire way, Kat and Dorrik reached the mouth of the dragon’s cave, Kaleek lagging about ten seconds behind.

The cave itself had an empty guard post, little more than a bench next to the ashes of a campfire.  Nearby was a wooden altar with a shoddily carved dragon perched atop a table that was covered in suspicious wine red stains.

With a heavy glance to Dorrik and a quick nod toward the altar, the three of them hurried into the dragon’s lair.  The passage was massive, clearly widened in spots by the orcs, but easily large enough to let the giant lizard pass.  At its narrowest, Kat guessed it was maybe fifteen paces wide and high, but in certain spots it would balloon out to almost fifty paces across.

In those areas, chests of gold, fragrant woods and fine silk lay discarded next to the bones of sheep and what looked suspiciously like humans.  More worryingly were the items that seemed decidedly princess-like.  Scraps of ball gowns were scattered near tiaras and platinum ear rings.

Evidently, the orcs’ decision to try and sacrifice Whippoorwill wasn’t a novel one.  Kat managed to count at least three different patterns of fabric and two sets of earrings.  There was no way of knowing how long the monsters had been feeding ‘princesses’ to the dragon, but it was pretty clear that this wasn’t their first attempt.

She didn’t say anything, but an ember of anger flickered to life in her gut.  Whip was watching the entire scene, and she could put two and two together.  If Dorrik, Kaleek and Kat hadn’t moved quickly enough the piles of shattered bones and gaudy jewelry easily could’ve been her.

There weren’t any directions for Whip to relay.  The cave was more of a giant tunnel than a network or a maze.  They simply passed from chamber to chamber, tension building as the sounds of the orcish party began to fade away.

Soon, the noises were replaced by the steady hiss and whoosh of the dragon’s breath.  Kat had no way of telling how far ahead it was, but its lungs were as big as bellows, and she could actually feel the wind whispering across her skin as it inhaled and exhaled up ahead.

“Slowly.”  Whip’s voice was quiet, barely audible over the sound of the giant creature breathing.  “You’re almost there.  It’s asleep at the moment but I have no idea how easily it wakes up.  Better safe than sorry.”

Kat nodded once, biting her lower lip.  She glanced back at Kaleek and Dorirk, holding a hand up for them to stop before pointing at herself and motioning down the tunnel.  Dorrik nodded while Kaleek looked equal parts bored and confused.

That was enough for her.  Kat hurried off through the cave, hugging the wall as she darted forward, her steps completely inaudible under the sounds of the sleeping dragon.

Then, she turned a corner and came up short.  The dragon was asleep in the center of a huge cave, framed from above and below by stalactites and stalagmites as it rested soundly head atop the end of its tail.

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