Heather the Necromancer

Heather looked up to see a small being about four feet tall with short dark hair. He had a set of curled rams horns on his head and hooves like Grettah. He wore shiny metal plates and held a crossbow in his hands.

“It’s one of those things Dixie is,” Heather said.

“You monsters are not welcome in Goatrah lands!” the tiny voice cried.

“Goatrah lands?” Heather asked.

The armored man nodded. “We are the Goatrah, and the crags and hills here are our lands.”

“We didn’t know this was claimed land. We are just going to the dwarven area,” Frank said.

“Bah!” the armored man said. “Go back the way you came.”

Heather stepped forward and pointed her scythe at the irritating creature.

“My name is Heather. We came here for pizza, and we’re not leaving until we get some.”

“I am Kesivel, the sheriff of Craggarillion, the Goatrah kingdom,” he said. “Monster players are not allowed here.”

“Did you hear what I just said?” Heather asked. “We are here for pizza, not you. If you don't let us pass, I will make you regret it.”

“HA!” he laughed. “And what are you going to do with your grass cutter? You can’t reach me up here with it.”

Heather glared at him with angry eyes. He was out of her weapons range but not it's special power. With a word of command, she produced a red spray and doused him in a cloud of gas.

He sputtered and choked in the mist, waving his hands to clear the cloud.

“Ack!” he shouted, pointing his crossbow wildly. He fired, and the dart flew at the party as Heather blinked in alarm. Frank looked at his arm, where the bolt stuck as if it had hit a tree.

“Hey!” Heather cried. “Don’t hurt my friends!”

“Stop them!” Kesivelcried.

A red light appeared from behind a rock and flew in striking Quinny and causing her to jump back, yelling ow.

Around them, small beings with rams horns appeared from behind rocks and over the lips of hills. They all looked down on them from above with weapons in hand.

“This went bad quickly,” Frank said.

“It's about to, for them!” Quinny cried and dropped the basked. She ran at the closest bunch of the little creatures with her sword in hand. She struggled up a slope as they fired down on her with spells and arrows, making her angry.

Frank went after Kesiveland, the three goatrah who appeared beside him but struggled to climb the steep slope. Grettah, however, quickly hopped up the slope surprising the little creatures by arriving quickly.

“Stop her!” the armored on yelled as he drew a short sword. Three of them ran at Grettah, and she planted her feet to meet their charge. All of them cried out in alarm as bony arms burst out of the ground with dead hands grasping at feet and legs.

“Stop!” Heather yelled. “We didn't come here to fight!” She looked around as Frank arrived beside Grettah. They held their ground and didn't attack since the three were incapacitated. The sheriff hacked at the bony arms trying to free his companions from her grasping dead spell.

“Stop attacking us were friends with Dixie!” she yelled, but the sheriff didn't respond. A cry of pain made her turn around to see that Quinny was in trouble.

Three more goatrah were standing in a line firing arrows and spells at Quinny. Already she had three arrows in her, and several whisps of smoke curled off her skin from the spells. Heather didn't want to cause any harm, but she also wanted to save Quinny. She realized the creatures were all clumped together as she began the chant of her grave blight spell.

Cries of alarm rang out as a sickly yellow cloud formed across the ground around them for twelve feet. They ceased trying to fill Quinny with arrows and ran for their lives, desperate to get out of the cloud. Heather raced to Quinny’s side as she took cover behind a rock and began yanking arrows out.

“These little buggers are good shots,” Quinny said as she pulled the last arrow out.

Heather put her hands on Quinny and went into her mend the dead spell, closing the wounds.

“There,” Heather replied and peeked over the rock. An arrow bounced off the stone, scaring Heather to duck back down.

“Why are they attacking us?” she asked.”It was only perfume.”

Quinny shrugged. “Experience probably.”

Heather shook her head and struggled to think of some way to remedy the situation.

Quinny turned around and peeked over the rock. She made a strange gurgle, and her head recoiled slightly. She ducked back down and turned to Heather.

“Do I have something in my eye?” she asked.

Heather screamed to see the crossbow bolt buried in Quinny’s left eye. She wanted to be sick when Quinny reached up and yanked out like it was a minor annoyance.

“Your eye!” Heather squeaked.

“It will grow back,” Quinny said. “Or, you could heal me again.”

Heather nodded and fell into her spell, healing Quinny and restoring the jet black eye.

“He should have warned us about this group of savages,” Quinny said as she poked at her eye.

“Who should have?” Heather asked.

“That Harkinor guy. He must have known this group was here.”

“Harkinor!” Heather said with excitement. She snatched the sunbonnet off Quinny's head and waved it in the air over the stone. “Stop attacking us! We are friends of Harkinor!”

“Stop!” a voice called from the ledge behind them where Frank and Quinny were fighting the four above.

“How do you know, Harkinor?” The sheriff asked.

Heather stood up slowly, afraid she would be riddled with arrows. When nothing happened, she stood tall and nodded her head.

“We are friends of his,” she insisted. “We came this way because he told us we could get pizza in a town up the road.”

The four creatures on the upper ledge whispered something between them, and the armored one nodded.

“If you know Harkinor, then you know what class he is,” the speaker said.

Heather bit her lip as she realized she didn’t remember the name of his class. It had something to do with rain, or was it trains? She began to look around as she struggled to remember what he said.

“So you’re a liar,” the armored man said.

“I am not lying!” Heather said. “He only told me what it was once, and he showed me how he could channel lightning with his hammer.”

“And this makes you friends?”

Quinny stood up beside her and smiled. “He told us to come this way to get pizza. Said it was the best dwarven pizza in the lands.”

Again the little beings whispered to one another, and Heather felt her patience waning.

“Did we do something wrong?” Heather asked. “Why can’t we just go and get pizza?”

The sheriff stepped to the ledge and leaned on one knee to look down at her.

“You attacked us with your poison cloud,” he said. “Luckily, I am strong enough to have resisted it.”

“It wasn't poison,” Heather replied indignantly. “It was a perfume!”

The man stood up straight, and one of his female companions stepped over and sniffed at him. The woman shrugged, and the sheriff returned to leaning over the ledge.

“Your pizza place is in the dwarven valley just east of here. This road will take you right to it, but to get there, you have to pass through Craggarillion, the lands of the Goattrah.”

“We happen to have a friend who is a Goattrah named Dixie,” Heather insisted.

The man looked to his companions, and they all shrugged. Clearly, none of them knew her name.

“Your people and mine are usually allies,” Grettah said. “We both build on mountains and hills.”

The man nodded. “Too true, but you travel with the undead.”

“They are players like you are,” Heather snapped. “We are just out to get some pizza and do a little shopping.”

“The undead aren’t welcome in our lands or the dwarven lands. You won’t get passed the Hammer gate with them, that is if you even get passed us.”

“Harkinor said we would be welcome here,” Heather insisted.

One of the three approached the armored one and whispered in his ear. He nodded his head several times and looked down on the group with a smile.

“Tell ya what. You do us a favor, and we will let you pass and put in a good word for you at the gate.”

“What kind of favor?” Frank asked.

“There's a cave system back in the hills. Inside it are some Meezle, and deep in the back is a crag lion. That lion killed one of my band and dragged the body off. He had a very important item on him at the time. You get that item for me and bring it here, and we will take you to the gate.”

“A quest,” Quinny laughed.

“That’s all we have to do?” Frank asked.

“That’s it,” the short man said. “Bring us his backpack with the items intact, and we will get you safely to the gate. We will tell the dwarves you helped us, but it’s up to them to let you in.”

Frank let out a sigh. “These guys aren’t very high level. We could probably take them all.”

“Frank!” Heather cried. “I would like to be able to come back here again. I don’t want to have to fight our way through every time.”

He shrugged and sat on his heels as if uninterested.

“Where is the cave?” Heather asked.

The short man pointed into the trees. “About half an hours walk that way; you will find a trail that winds down a hillside. Follow that it goes right to the cave.”

“I can trust you to keep your word?” Heather asked.

He stood up with a cheery smile. “Of course. Never let it be said the Kesivel Thunderhoof is a liar.”

“Ha, we can’t even be sure that’s his name. He could already be lying,” Quinny joked.

Kesivel huffed and folded his arms. “That's our offer. You can take it, or you can go back the way you came and forget about your pizza.”

“Or we can fight our way through,” Frank reminded.

“Every Goatrah in the land will be summoned to stop you,” Kesivel said. “You will be harassed the entire way to the gates.”

“Fine, we will get your stuff and bring it back here. Then you take us to the gate.”

“It is agreed then,” Kesivel said with a nod.

Frank and Grettah climbed down and joined Heather and Quinny at the rock.

“This can’t be too hard,” Heather said.

“If it was easy they would have done it themselves,” Frank pointed out.

“What is a crag lion?” Grettah asked.

“I would rather know what a Meezle is,” Quinny said.

Heather smiled and looked to the trees. “Let's get walking. The longer we stand here, the longer we have to wait for pizza. We can figure out what a meezle is when we get there.”

“Maybe we should just go back,” Frank suggested. “We don’t even know if we will get through the gate.”

Heather turned on him with a shocked expression. “We can’t go back. There is pizza just over these hills.”

“But what about the gate?” he asked.

“Let's worry about the gate when we get there. Maybe they can be reasoned with. If I have to unleash an undead plague to get in, I will.”

“Heather is growing into her class well,” Quinny laughed.

“We could all be killed in this cave,” Frank reminded her.

“Isn’t the risk worth it?” she insisted. “Harkinor said they used too much cheese! Just think of it hanging off the pieces in long strings that refuse to break.”

“And I thought I liked pizza,” Grettah said with a smirk.

“Fine, let's go find this cave so we can get back and get your pizza,” Frank said with a shake of his head.

Heather jumped for joy and picked up her scythe. They collected her basket and headed out into the trees in search of the trail.

The trees here were pines, and the ground crunched with old needles as they passed. Heather felt excited to be doing something more interesting. This was her first quest, and for some reason, she was excited. She looked to the others who more or less shared her enthusiasm. Even Frank seemed to be in a better mood once they were on the move.

Quinny suggested that she and Frank take the lead in the caves. Grettah would be assigned to protecting Heather, who would support them all with spells and healing. Frank readily agreed to the plan and even suggested that Heather use her grasping limbs spell to deal with any large groups.

“This is going to be fun,” Heather said as she smiled. “This is how real adventures work, right?”

“More or less,” Frank said as they passed out of the trees onto a narrow trail.

“This must be the trail,” Quinny said.

Frank looked around the path a little and then up at the hills and tall rocks around them.

“There is no telling what lives up here in these places. There could be more rock trolls.”

“Or griffons,” Grettah added.

“What’s a griffon?” Heather asked.

“It’s half eagle and half lion,” Grettah said.

Heather tried to imagine that and couldn’t get the image right in her head. Thankfully Frank noticed her silence and explained it for her.

“It has the body of a lion with the head and wings of an eagle. Its front two legs are birds legs as well.”

“Maybe that’s what a crag lion is,” Quinny offered.

Frank scratched at his head. “I doubt it. They would have just called it a griffon.”

“Unless hey were lying,” Quinny suggested.

“Why do you think everybody is lying?” Heather asked.

Quinny shrugged. “Experience dealing with people. They will lie about anything they think they can get away with or won't be punished for.”

“Well, I think they were telling the truth. They need this backpack, and they can't get it themselves. So we do it for them, and everybody wins.”

“I still think we should have just killed them all,” Frank said.

“And then every time we came this way, they would be attacking us,” Heather said. “If this pizza is as good as Harkinor made it sound, I would like to eat it more than once.”

“I hope they have good drinks,” Grettah said. “I miss soda.”

“I miss booze,” Quinny said.

“There is sure to be plenty of that in a dwarven town,” Frank said.

“Maybe I should have been a dwarf.” Quinny joked.

They headed off down the trail that snaked its way down the slope of a hill. They were apprehensive the entire way watching the ledges above for any lions that might leap down.

As the sun moved to its late afternoon position, they rounded a bend and came to a stop.

“That’s a big cave,” Quinny said.

Heather nodded as she surveyed the site. The cave was easily twenty feet high and forty wide. It had dark gray-blue stone for walls and the jagged spikes of stalagmites. The ground all around the opening was littered with bones and bloodstains.

“Well, we found it,” Heather said.

“We're not going in there, are we?” Grettah asked.

“Sure, how dangerous could it be?”

As if to answer her, a roar echoed out of the cave and made them all step back.

Heather steadied herself even as her heartbeat furiously in her chest.

“Steady heather,” she whispered. “You’re doing this for pizza.”