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42. Astral Wonderland


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Posted 18 July 2004 - 02:21 AM

42. Astral Wonderland

Onyx closed the back cover of How to Win Friends and Influence People, the colossal magical tome found in the caverns beneath the gnoll stronghold. He shut his eyes, feeling the knowledge seep in, at a conscious and even an innate level.

"It's funny," he muttered to Minsc before opening eyes to look at the ranger, the only other one still awake in the camp, "So much tact, so much skill and effort goes in to diplomacy and charisma, and yet a sea sprite took persuasion of us so much more direly, with but a single sung spell."

The Rashemani shifted his large weight on their log ringed by tents, "True words, my paladin friend. Heroes must be ever vigilant against sorcerous wiles! It is most unfortunate that all evil wizardry comes not in the form of flying orbs and fireballs that are so very easy for Minsc to see. But the very wise champions of the Ice Dragon lodge know that through trial and adventure and experience, young warriors learn to steel themselves against such naughty enchantments."

Onyx rubbed his temples. "I hope so, my great friend. They come in many forms."

--

Jade found herself constrained within the tunnels of the Nashkel mines once more. She felt no claustrophobia, only annoyance, pushing against them and stepping over the dead little marauders. She tred deeper and deeper, snorting at each kobold body, pausing occasionally to wipe her boots against the rock or swipe a missed coin.

She came to a chamber littered with minecarts and heard a sound from below. A column of light descended, and within it and before her stood Mulahey, in no better shape that she had left him, bloodied, now rotting, half his face frozen and shattered, the lazy eye frosted over. Held from whatever afterlife called it, it stood waiting as a dagger of bone hovered before it, its broken jaw moving in breathless curses, its remaining eye without hope. Rightfully so, Jade thought. She reached out to grasp, but then hesitated and instead brushed away the quaint blade. A stranger's weapon would not suffice now; she had to know this phantom would remain among the dead, and reached out to throttle it with her own hands. The doomed half-orc almost looked relieved, and its visage faded as Jade's hands clasped in a strangle, leaving only a faint mirage of a skull wreathed in purple flame.

Jade shrugged, puzzled but little concerned, and turned to leave, feeling somehow done. The mine was hers once again. Over her shoulder she saw her exit blocked, and as she looked back again saw the dagger had become five, a set of hovering skeletal claws. It lashed out and pressed against her chest, and a hollow voice pierced the chill of the main air.

"You should use the tools you are given..." The hand traced a line of ichor on her gray tunic, increasing the pressure like a spear against her sternum. "Listen to what is bred in the bone." The claw pushed straight between her breasts for her heart.

Jade's eyes popped open to find herself removed from the dream. She was intact, mystified, but not afraid. Her heart was not her weak spot.

--

Onyx was started out of sleep with a chill, warm and calm as the night was. He felt as though someone had walked across his grave, and wondered if it were himself. The ground about him opened, and the darkness grew up about him like tall trees. Light returned and he found himself in the stonehenge ruins cleansed of undead by his passage, and then their bloated master, now from the afterlife himself and bearing the rendings of flesh and skull that had taken him there. A dagger of bone hovered above the ground before it, handle pointed toward Onyx, asking him to grab and drive it deep into the Cyricist's black heart.

Onyx turned away; punishment enough awaited this addled soul in Pandemonium, he need not inflict any more. Surprised and thankful, Bassilus hobbled forward, giggling madly, and passed through Onyx off to whatever fate it deserved. Perhaps for safekeeping, Onyx was struck with the thought, it left a part of itself behind. A spark of hope that filled a space in Onyx's heeart just as Bassilus's own wayward soul passed through his, a dagger-shaped hole he hadn't known was empty.

He started at a cry of rage all about the glade. The dagger of bone hurled itself through the air toward his heart. Onyx left the dream just as it should have struck, finding himself in a cold sweat that leaked into and stung his eyes. A disapproving voice that should have disappeared in the dream lingered in his ears.

"You...will...learn!"

--

Jade was now in a woodland, wandering, not sure what she needed to find or where she needed to go, wearing a blue and white sundress, her scarlet hair kept back by a neat headband. She looked about, and recognized where she was - on the road east out of Candlekeep. She walked on, and soon came to the junction with the Coast Way, and there stood a long banquest table, at least a dozen seats to a side, all covered in a checkered tablecloth and cakes and teapots covering it in turn. Pipe-music filled the air, and waving their teacupts in time from the table where Montaron and Xzar, or so it seemed. Montaron's face was twisted like a hare's, with the nose a button, and whiskers springing out from puffy cheeks. His pointy halfling ears now stretched high above his head and were furry and rounded. Xzar wore a three-piece suit instead of his robes, if colored the same, and a tall top-hat that smelt of mercury, with the pricetag still tucked into the brim.

The Xzar-Hatter's first words to her were, "Your hair wants cutting."

Jade's hands went to her head, and she found her scarlet hair was now long, as she had not let it grow since she'd let Xzar shatter the ends off with a Chill Touch spell when they were just twelve.

Jade sat hesitantly at the table.

"Would you like some more tea?" Xzar grinned, holding up one of the teapots and tipping it toward the cup nearest her.

Jade frowned. "How can I have more when I haven't had any?"

"Oh," Xzar cooed, "Easily, you've had none and you can always have more than nothing. What you couldn't have is any less."

"How about just half a cup then?" the Monty-Hare suggested, and jerked a shortsword over the edge of the table, and hacked it down, cutting a full cup of tea in half. He lifted the half with the handle, the tea staying perfectly with its hemisphere as if cut solid by the cup, and offered it. When Jade hesitated, the hare halfling shrugged and drank the tea out of the half-cup himself.

Another large teapot opened, and a tiny demonlike creature popped out its head and sang, "Twinkle twinkle little fiend, how I wonder what you mean."

"What nonsense!" Jade protested.

"Naturally," Xzar grinned, "If it made too much sense it would go without saying."

"Wait," Jade looked at the little fiend in the teapot, "I recognize that grotesque little monster..."

"Be'el Z. Bub, Quasit Extraordinaire," the creature from her last dream with Xzar popped fully out of the teapot, and hovered in the air flapping its bat-wings, and resumed singing, "Through the pits of hell you fly, like a comet in the sky."

"Pray tell," Jade looked about the table, "What is this little tea-party for?"

"Why," Xzar grinned proudly as the quasit perhced on his shoulder, "We're celebrating the fact that we're not in nightmares, or having them!"

"But that's such a funny thing to celebrate," Jade protested, "It's not so much of an occasion."

"Aye, but it is," Montaron poured himself another half-cup of tea, his long ears twitching, "Why, just look at all our tea and cakes! It is quite the occasion indeed!"

"You seem to be making an occasion of it," Jade continued, "I mean that it's not as if you are usually having nightmares."

"Exactly!" Xzar clapped his hands, which were filled with cake, causing the white icing and bread to splatter across himself. "Why would we want to hold a tea-party for something that did not happen very often? Then we'd have little chance to celebrate!"

"I suppose if it's the tea-party you want to celebrate..." Jade frowned in thought.

"Oh, but it isn't," Xzar shook his head, and the icing that had landed in them now flew about and splattered Be'el, Montaron, and Jade's dress. Clinking their cups together, the altered Zhents in approximate unison and harmony sang,

"Statistics prove that you've a dream,
Many times a night.
Some of those are nightmares,
So we're gathered not in fright."

"Oh Jadey, Jadey, we dissuade ye,
Our nonsense misunderstand!
Monty and X aren't here to hex,
This astral wonderland."

"Mommy this night you may have had,
Mirage macabre and strange,
We your friends help want to lend,
And saving grace arrange."

"A very merry unnightmatre to you, to you.
A very merry unnightmare to you,
We toast our drinking to keep your mind's a-thinking done by you.
A very merry unnightmare to you!""

--

Onyx found himself standing on a boat hovering in the air over a desert, clad in only a white robe, and when he tried to move noticed his arms were bound behind his back. With a shock he also noticed he stood very near a plank that led off the end of the ship and into a deep pit in the sand, its scarred-earth sides like a gigantic version of those the anhkegs had popped from in the fields north of the Friendlry Arm. At the bottom of this bit an appropriate enlarged such beast lurked, its hard mandibles snapping hungrily.

His heart sank again as he looked around, and saw that two friends were also bound near him, surrounded by hobgoblin guards with grosesque horned masks and spears. Garrick looked himself, but Minsc's body was covered in brown fur, and when he opened his mouth merely let out a beastlike howl.

Then he noticed a larger ship flying near them, its deck populated with a number of strange monsters, prominent among them a huge, fat reclining flesh golem. He grew angry more than afraid when, right there before the ugly monster, was Imoen herself, but visibly bound in chains and clad only with a braissiere and girdle made of solid gold.

"Oh ho ho ho ho ho..." the golem's bellowing laughter rippled across the ships and the sand.

Near it stood, unbound, Khalid and Jaheira. Khalid wore a suit of armor and faced helm of gold, so tight and fitting it accentuated its natural leanness, and Jaheira was so short her arms dragged on the ground, and she was complaining to her husband, but only bleeps and bloops came out.

"Onyx Coastwalker, Garrick Solo, and Minscbacca," Khalid began, quavering, "His Excellency hopes that you will die honorably. But should any of you wish to beg for mercy, the great Golem the Flesh will now listen to your please."

With defiant bravado, Garrick Solo shouted, "Khaleepio, you and J2 tell that slimy piece of worm-ridden filth he'll get no such pleasure from us. Right?" Minscbacca howled in agreement.

Onyx shouted, "Golem! This is your last chance! Free us or die!"

The golem grumbled something, and the hobgoblin guards prodded him with their spears onto the plan and do its edge. Onyx jumped off, but flipped around in midair, grabbing the end with his bound hands and causing it to bend before catapulting him back into the air. J2 tossed a sword hilt off the larger ship and Onyx caught it, and as he landed on the smaller ship it ignited into the blue-glowing holy avenger from his last dream with Imoen. The other hobgoblin guards moved at him but were all tripped up by the spears of one of their own, which threw off its helmet in a flourish of white hair to reveal the ebony face of Viconia. Onyx twisted his grip to use the blade to cut through his bindings and he flew into a melee against the standing hobgoblins while Viconia undid Garrick and Minscbacca's bonds.

Hobgoblin guards on the main ship unleashed a hail of ill-aimed arrows at the smaller, one hitting Viconia and knocking her of the boat. She grabbed the anchor-chain hanging from it, and the giant anhkeg snapped its mandibles. Garrick threw himself to the deck and reached over the edge for her while Minscbacca growled and pounded one of the hobgoblins with the drow's offcast helm.

Bassilus Fett appeared at the edge of the larger ship's deck, armored and helmed, and leapt over the railing, flying through the air and landing on the boat, aiming a hand crossbow square at Onyx, who slashed it in half with his holy avenger. When Minsc bashed another guard, it spun around blindly and its spear whacked Bassilus in the back. The mad cleric resumed flying, but flailed as it out of control, and smashed into the side of the sand pit and then slid down without a scream, taken eagerly into the anhkheg's gullet.

On the larger ship, Khalid was frantically running about in his shiny gold armor yelping, "Better part of valor, dear me!" while Imoen in her decidedly skimpier gold had leapt up and jumped clear over Golem the Flesh, pulling the chain that restrained her around one half of the grotesque creature's bulbous neck. She ran around him another half-circle and pulled with all her might while the golem gargled and its purple tongue hung limply out of its mouth.

Garrick held a spear over the side of the boat for Viconia to grab, and Minsc hurled the slain hobgoblins' spears back at the inept archers on the main ship. Onyx surprised himself by leaping clear into the air and onto the deck of the ship, and proceeded to attack the archers with demonic fury, the holy avenger humming as it cut through one with ease amidst the monster's aborted attempt to retrain its bow on the paladin.

Across the ship, Imoen was fiddling with the end of the chain attaching her to the dead golem, twisting and sliding out bolts. It came free, and just as a hobgoblin guard made for her she spun with the free chain whizzing around her in the air, smashing the beast across the face and sending him to the deck. She continued to spin her chain around and around overhead, whipping it into hobgoblin after hobgoblin as they attempted to move on her with spears.

"Oh, dear!" Khaleepio wailed as a tiny kobold perched on top of his his helm and laughed, and a hobgoblin took a headlock of him from behind. Onyx ran up and raised his holy avenger, but this only caused the hobgoblin to tighten its grip around his friend's neck, and bellow menacingly.

With a new flash of inspiration, Onyx raised up his free hand and gestured out toward the hobgoblin. "These aren't the Harpers you're looking for," he spoke in a soothing voice. The hobgoblin grunted in confusion, then shrugged, loosened its grip, and wandered off across the body-strewn ship.

Gripping Garrick's spear, Viconia was pulled back onto the deck, and took to the wheel at its helm, spinning it and sailing the ship through the air over the expansive chasm while a halpless hobgoblin from the ship fell into the anhkeg's maw. Viconia brought the boat alongside the ship's deck, and Khaleepio and J2 scuttled on board, followed by Onyx and Imoen. The girl surprised herself by casting a Fireball back at the ship, which exploded in flames, sending debris and hobgoblins flying into the pit as the party's boat sped away over the sand.

--

Jade's eyes popped open, to stare at the triangular ceiling of her tent, to which a near-solid film of moisture droplets clung; as did sweat to her own skin. Her breathing was fast and heavy and excited, and her dreams all crystallized in her mind in the moment when she frantically tried to determine what all of her recent memories had been a dreamt and what real.

Branwen stirred, whom Jade realized with a flash of guilt she had likely woken with her own start. "Are you okay?" the cleric asked.

"Dreams," Jade whispered, "Just dreams."

"So some say," Branwen mumbled, "And some say omens or portents."

"What do you say?"

"They may oft be the idle wanderings of the mind while the body has no need for it, but I believe the gods may send auguries across the astral plane to their favored children. I do believe in signs, as I believe the ruby chesspiece you found was a sign, but where any dream came from I could not even say were it my own, much less another's, but tell me more of it and I will share all the thoughts I have. Beyond that, I can say only that whether you choose to heed dreams or not, Jade, heed first yourself."

The girl whispered, "Thank you, Branwen," and proceeded to retell her dreams.




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