The Hearts on Fire - 3 (off, cont'd from the last Q)

Well, Wyvern surely gave me a job with this one! I hoped to finish it in one go, but, alas, there is still one more part left. So, I guess, you will have to inherit patience with me trying to smuggle it into this quiz. Am I wicked or what?

Note: The party led by Jan Jansen ended up on a hill overlooking Yaga-Shura's encampment. The party consists of Jan himself, Lady Iruilana, Cyrando, her husband, Garrick her suitor, and Coran, her former lover. They are charged by the Bhaalspawn with assassinating Yaga-Shura, the foul Fire Giant. On with it!

3.

“Now, now,” Jan said to his dazed companions, “There is no need to make your impression of Uncle Scratchy when he pulled out of his vegetable row that turnip with Aunts’ Petuania’s wedding ring right in the middle of it. Coran, laddie, you go down there and find us a way to sneak in and kill Yaga-Shura.”

“I recall that you, Jan, were once employed by Lanny as a burglar,” Coran replied lazily.

“’Tis true, but I have just opened the portal with my amazing magic, which if I may point out is a tougher feat than opening Niece Burrow’s cellar doors. And this is not easy, mind you. Why, three strongmen once spend a fortnight trying to get through, only to discover that they should have been pulling, not pushing, and that behind those doors were solid dirt good for nothing but getting worms. You see, Niece Burrow, she had at least twenty faux cellars, and some say that she never head a real one.”

“Coran,” Lady Irulana said sternly, “Even you can’t be so superficial as to fail to notice that my dear cousin is incapable of stealth.”

They all stared at Jan Jansen the Never Silent, resplendid in his adventurer’s wear and his mouth hanging half-opened. Upon completing the full survey, Coran shrugged one shoulder and dropped his backpack and silk purple-and-green cape on the ground.

“I take it, he agrees with you for once…” Cyrando commented in wonder, watching Coran kneel and go meticulously through his belongings. He set aside a dagger in a plain sheath, a coil of thin rope, a garrote, a dark bandana and a tacky, golden spiral weighted by an emerald almost the size of Jan’s nose. That last Coran used to hold his hair together at the nape of his neck.

Under his dastardly cloak, all Coran’s clothes were of supple dark-grey suede - the hooded tunic, the tights and the knee-high boots. The elf thrust the dagger through his belt, stuffed the rest of the gear into mysterious pockets, tied the bandana around his face, and lifted the cowl.

“There is surely enough suede about our dear Coran…” Lady Irulana muttered under her breath. Yet, the person who looked at her out of Coran’s green eyes was someone else entirely. This stranger let her barb fly past him, and slipped down the hill, heading for the camp below. Or at least so they concluded, because the rogue had disappeared from sight the moment he had stepped into the dappled shadow of pussy-willows, circling the top of the hill.

They settled quietly, as if their silence helped Coran, any and watched the fireballs fly over the city’s walls.

“Well,” Lady Irulana said, when the silence grew thicker than cream and fireballs became as mundane a sight for them as the sparks of a campfire might be for another war-party, “perhaps you will shorten our waiting hours with some music, Garrick?”

Garrick paled: “My… my lady… Is it proper? People… they er… they die over there.” He waved vaguely, and not precisely in the right direction, but since that was how Garrick did all things, they knew he was talking about Saradush.

“And the four of us cannot do much but watch,” Cyrando replied, “until Coran returns.”

“If he returns,” Lady Irulana echoed, and seeing Garrick’s indignant stare, softened her voice: “We must place out trust in Coran, even if it sounds like a contradiction in terms. Play on, Garrick.”

“I can help with the words,” Cyrando offered helpfully, “if you’d chance to forget any.”

Without another word, Garrick picked up his lute. One by one he played the songs of another places, another heroes, and another wars. The dread and courage were the same.

Out of the corner of his ear, Coran could hear Garrick singing. It rankled some, but he had no time for pouting. He had taken a good look at the camp even before he started his descent, and immediately decided which tent was Yaga-Shura’s.

Fire giants where simple creatures, like all monsters created so freakishly strong that the need for intelligence never arose. Hence, the biggest tent was like to identify the leader. It stood in the middle of the camp too, golden and round, like some over-ambitious egg yolk. The circus tent in Athkatla’s Promenade could have fit inside and there would be room for the menagerie. Where the circus was build from crudely painted canvas, Yaga-Shura’s field abode was the heavy silks. Even with the sun still high in the sky, the monstrous pavilion gave enough shade to hide a regiment of Flaming Fists or near enough.

Coran slipped past the sentries -he could have gone between their legs, he thought, but did not dare- and rolled under a generous folds of the tent’s side. There, covered by the smooth, cool silk he pulled his dagger out and set to carving a second entrance into the edifice. The fabric parted silently, and he watched the insides before weaseling his way in and crouching behind a chest.

As it happened, Yaga-Shura was holding a war counsel. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was fate, or maybe it was because he held them at noon every day, because it was easy time for giants to identify. “When it’s light outside, but you can’t see the sun,” the orders went. Coran counted five giants standing around a burly fellow, with a leonine mane, wearing an eye-blindingly bright plate of red gold, who cold be none but Yaga-Shura.

The giants grunted and talked about supplies, and pitch, and a tunnel. Coran committed everything he’d heard to memory, hoping that his comrades would be able to identify anything that would help them to devise a plan to slay the red-topped mountain of flesh. It was not till he spoke, that Coran noted a sole non-giant being in the tent except for himself.

“You have all time in the world, Yaga-Shura,” said the man in response to Yaga-Shura’s frustrated orders to do more, to do faster, to burn the city to ashes if they have to. The man -a human of undeterminable age- was uncomfortably looking directly at Coran, as he spoke, though Coran was confident that he was out of sight. Apart from that peculiarity the speaker also seemed to hover above a bamboo mat. No, he was not hovering, but no less astonishingly, he was holding his entire weight up on a palm of the hand, thrust through the opening offered by his cress-crossed legs. He looked like some peculiar flower that way, though nowhere near pretty: ascetically thin, dark feverish eyes looking out of deep sockets and strange pattern imprinted on his forehead and cheeks.

“I rot here, breaking my men on this useless pile of stone, when my siblings hoard their armies!” Yaga-Shura growled, and slapped a table covered with maps for punctuation.

“None of them is immortal, though,” the monk pointed out.

“The dragon and the drow are… or near enough,” Yaga-Shura grunted.

“They still can be killed. Not you, my lord. None of them has their heart on fire, and kept out of harm’s way by a crone in the Forest of Myr.” Disconcertingly, the monk’s eyes bore right through Coran again as he spoke. “Mighty Yaga-Shura has nothing to fear, till his heart burns in the ever-fire!”

Yaga-Shura slapped his chest for punctuation. The monk sweated a bit and lifted four fingers off the floor. He was now holding himself up on his thumb.

Coran needed no more hints and lingered only long enough to pilfer a tiny figurine of a griffin for Jan, a sweet pastry for Garrick and one blood-red rose for Irulana.

Upon his return to the camp on the hilltop, Coran found the company in subdued moods, and Garrick weeping. His own songs did it to him sometimes.

***

“No,” Jan shook his head, fingering the golden griffin, “No, I will not be able to open a second portal before we have rested.”

“Then let us march,” Lady Irulana said, pacing restlessly, “let us bloody march!”

“But I think…” Jan continued unperturbed and placed the figurine on the ground, “I think, that Coran found us the transport. This is no simple figurine, ‘tis one of them that summon creatures from the other planes to do the summoner’s bidding.”

“I’d rather -“ Lady Irulana started, but Cyrando pulled on the fold of her cloak, and when she leaned over to him, whispered something into her ear. She plucked the rose’s petals off one by one as she listened, nodding.

“Alright,” she said finally, “I give my consent. But only because it’s not Jan’s own magic. And if someone else has it in *her* safekeeping. ”

“Why, that leaves only you,” Coran said sourly, “unless one of us is a woman in disguise?”

“Quite likely, considering that sometimes I’d rather disguise my natural form than endure your attentions,” Lady Irulana snapped and looked around her, as if truly believing that one of the men was a maiden in breeches. Cyrando grinned, and Garrick shook his head, licking the crumbs off his fingers.

Jan’s eyes went misty with memory: “It reminds me that time that Edwin, the Red Wizard of Thay talked Lanny into recovering a rare scroll of Netheril. The next night we had the same number of companions, but Edwin’s robes filled out much more satisfactory around the chest area…”

“Jan, stop talking nonsense, and tell me how do I make us the griffin from this?” Lady Irulana pointed at the bronze statuette.

Garrick looked at the figurine, no bigger than his palm and asked cautiously: “Are you… er…serious? Can that thing fly?”

“Yes,” Coran said, “since it is a female griffin.”

Lady Irulana issued forth an exasperated sigh.

“What did I say?” Coran complained, “It’s the common knowledge that only female griffins have wings!”

Throwing suspicious glances Coran’s way, and following Jan’s instructions, Lady Irulana stood in front of the figurine, her hands extended towards it and her face focused. In a few minutes sweat rolled down the Lady’s face, and thin mist billowed around the bronze griffin. The wisps curled higher and higher, up in the air, and the mist grew thicker… Then Lady Irulana stumbled and fell to the ground. With a desperate cry, Cyrando leaped forward, but Jan caught him.

“She will be fine. ‘Tis just like that time that -“

Cyrando cringed: “Was not one of Jansens killed by griffins?”

“Aye," Jan answered readily, “but I meant to tell quite a different story.”

There was no need. Lady Irulana shifted on the ground and sat up groggily. A magestic winged figure, with the body of a lion, the eagle’s head and wings, and the thick paws ending in the claws of a bird of prey stepped out of the fog.

“Command…” Jan whispered.

Lady Irulana looked at the griffin, and at the men, and said softly: “It is not as large as to carry more than two. Cyrando, Jan, I will take you across, and then one of you will return to bring Coran and Garrick. It will be cumbersome, but at least it will be safe.”

Then, without waiting on any arguments, Lady Irulana mounted the griffin as casually as she would a warhorse. Jan and Cyrando, aided by Coran and Garrick scrambled to settle on the beast’s massive ramp. The griffon jumped up in the air, flapping her great wings and made a few circles above the hilltop before disappearing from sight of a human and an elf left behind.

Coran picked up the torn rose, sniffed at what was left of it and sighed: “A waste of a beautiful thing.”

“Why do you… er… persist?” Garrick asked, “do you still hope to win her love back?”

“No,” Coran said lightly, “I don’t like rekindling the old flames. They burn more than they warm you up.”

Garrick stared at him blankly.

“My weapon master, dear Garrick, taught me to always keep my weapons sharp, no matter how unlikely a battle is. An excellent practice, that. Why not apply it in courting as well? A useful exercise, even if I don’t stand a chance to win Lady Irulana.”

“Oh,” Garrick replied, “Oh…” And then he added, blushing: “Do you think that I… er… stand a chance?”

“No,” Coran said confidently, “No.”

Just to let you know that I am following the story. I am a bit confused as to where it is leading, though... but everything in its own time, I suppose.

I cannot help but correct a small typo you have: it is "Irlana" in the game, not "Irulana".

Wow, the lady gets around a bit doesn't she?

One by one he played the songs of another places, another heroes, and another wars. The dread and courage were the same.

Btw this would be other places other heroes and other wars for proper grammar. Not sure if it was supposed to be like that or not.

Wow! Someone remembered that Coran is an adventurer, not just a useless jackass!

Note: The party led by Jan Jansen ended up on a hill overlooking Yaga-Shura's encampment. The party consists of Jan himself, Lady Iruilana, Cyrando, her husband, Garrick her suitor, and Coran, her former lover.

He must have used some nasty charm spells of necklace of domination on her!

“Now, now,” Jan said to his dazed companions, “There is no need to make your impression of Uncle Scratchy when he pulled out of his vegetable row that turnip with Aunts’ Petuania’s wedding ring right in the middle of it. Coran, laddie, you go down there and find us a way to sneak in and kill Yaga-Shura.”

Well that’s one way to get rid of him.

“I take it, he agrees with you for once…” Cyrando commented in wonder, watching Coran kneel and go meticulously through his belongings. He set aside a dagger in a plain sheath, a coil of thin rope, a garrote, a dark bandana and a tacky, golden spiral weighted by an emerald almost the size of Jan’s nose. That last Coran used to hold his hair together at the nape of his neck.

In response to RH’s comment: yep, he’s a useless jackass adventurer!

“Well,” Lady Irulana said, when the silence grew thicker than cream and fireballs became as mundane a sight for them as the sparks of a campfire might be for another war-party, “perhaps you will shorten our waiting hours with some music, Garrick?”

Play it again, Sam, uh, I mean, Garrick...

Coran slipped past the sentries -he could have gone between their legs, he thought, but did not dare- and rolled under a generous folds of the tent’s side. There, covered by the smooth, cool silk he pulled his dagger out and set to carving a second entrance into the edifice. The fabric parted silently, and he watched the insides before weaseling his way in and crouching behind a chest.

It seems you don’t need a lot of stealth to infiltrate a fire giant camp.

Although, I once read that because of that, fire giants often employ cretures like hellhounds who can see through invisibility. And have really high Spot check, I guess.

“You have all time in the world, Yaga-Shura,” said the man in response to Yaga-Shura’s frustrated orders to do more, to do faster, to burn the city to ashes if they have to. The man -a human of undeterminable age- was uncomfortably looking directly at Coran, as he spoke, though Coran was confident that he was out of sight. Apart from that peculiarity the speaker also seemed to hover above a bamboo mat. No, he was not hovering, but no less astonishingly, he was holding his entire weight up on a palm of the hand, thrust through the opening offered by his cress-crossed legs. He looked like some peculiar flower that way, though nowhere near pretty: ascetically thin, dark feverish eyes looking out of deep sockets and strange pattern imprinted on his forehead and cheeks.

Hmm, at first I thought it was Balthazar, but later the monk spoke to Yaga as his master.

Coran needed no more hints and lingered only long enough to pilfer a tiny figurine of a griffin for Jan, a sweet pastry for Garrick and one blood-red rose for Irulana.

What, and nothing for Cyrando? Why, that bastard!

“But I think…” Jan continued unperturbed and placed the figurine on the ground, “I think, that Coran found us the transport. This is no simple figurine, ‘tis one of them that summon creatures from the other planes to do the summoner’s bidding.”

Ooooh, I always wanted to ride a hypogriff!

Jan’s eyes went misty with memory: “It reminds me that time that Edwin, the Red Wizard of Thay talked Lanny into recovering a rare scroll of Netheril. The next night we had the same number of companions, but Edwin’s robes filled out much more satisfactory around the chest area…”

Hee! Fond memories, indeed...

“What did I say?” Coran complained, “It’s the common knowledge that only female griffins have wings!”

What are you talking about? What is he talking about?

“Why do you… er… persist?” Garrick asked, “do you still hope to win her love back?”

“No,” Coran said lightly, “I don’t like rekindling the old flames. They burn more than they warm you up.”

He’s just lost the necklace of domination, that’s all the reason there is.

“Oh,” Garrick replied, “Oh…” And then he added, blushing: “Do you think that I… er… stand a chance?”

“No,” Coran said confidently, “No.”

Which is still much better odd than you have, buster.

Thank you for your comments, Theodur and for the griffins

What are you talking about? What is he talking about?

I did not have my Monster Manual handy, so to get a description of a griffin, I checked Wiki. And here is what I have found out, so I built a joke around it

The griffin (also spelled gryphon, gryphen, griffon, griffen, or gryphin) is a legendary creature with the body of a lion and the head of an eagle with the addition of prominent ears, traditionally termed "ass's ears". The female has the wings of an eagle. […]
Classical and heraldic griffons are male and female. A so-called "male" griffin, called a keythong in a single 15th century English heraldic manuscript, is an anomaly that belongs strictly to a late phase of English heraldry.
Planche's footnote: "The word is certainly so written, and I have never seen it elsewhere. The figure resembles the Male Griffin, which has no wings, but rays or spikes of gold proceeding from several parts of his body, and sometimes with two long straight horns. Vade Parker's Glossary, under Griffin."

Which is still much better odd than you have, buster.

Of course

Yes, I can see what you are saying with it loosing its direction. I have overindulged myself with the character interactions, because it was so much fun. I hope that the ending will work even after so much spreading of too little butter over too big slice of bread.

Thank you so much for giving me the correct spelling! I put the correct one in the last part - better later than never.

Well, she had a couple of lovers. I am not exactly sure about you second comment, but I will double-check. I think, that "of another worlds" is not incorrect

Thank you for reading and commenting, and I am sorry about not being able to write for your quiz topic. It is truly an interesting one - the villian's pov, but I think I am spent on this one.

I like my characters to have different facets to them, and as far as I can recall, Coran was a decent thief. So, I figured, I'd give him his moment in the sun.

Well, she had a couple of lovers. I am not exactly sure about you second comment, but I will double-check. I think, that "of another worlds" is not incorrect

Thank you for reading and commenting, and I am sorry about not being able to write for your quiz topic. It is truly an interesting one - the villian's pov, but I think I am spent on this one.

That's okay. I just read your last section and it was great. Glad you posted this up at least.

Thank you!