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Bookem finally decided that this was enough and took Zippo's toy off him. He gave the leash to Tamper.
The other prisoner, Catherine, was untied completely. The group had decided that she was of no threat. And, as this was dangerous country, she wouldn't get far if she ran — a spell-less wizard with no book.
Later on that day, Grunter sniffed the air and looked at the overcast sky.
"Soon we go to Black Tooth lands," he boasted. "But tomorrow. Now we make camp in cave here." Slipping back into Ogrish to Bookem: "This cave, though currently unmanned [ un-ogre-ed ], is one of our forward strategic outposts, and makes a good staging point for reconnaissance patrols for along the Black Tooth clan's territorial border. Speaking of which, you can see over yonder, an ogre arbalest's bolt flight away, that small pile of stones, is a Black Tooth territory marker, a 'cairn'. Once we pass that tomorrow, we will be in their territory."
The last half-hour or so before dark, Grunter and Zippo collected as much brush, dried wood, and logs as they could forage, and built a large wall against the mouth of the cave. Zippo urinated on it, soaking it in hob urine; kerosene.
"That'll keep the th-tinking zombie-th out," gloated Zippo.
They settled in for the night.
Zippo had Carolyn's limbs tightly trussed behind her, and he lay his head, pillowed on her breasts.
Every time she raised her voice to complain, he'd reach up and grope, tweak, smack or blub-blub them.
"You oo-ill be destroyed utterly..." *smack*
"Ag! You oo-ill not be doing zis to ..." *slick*
"Leave me.." *blobble*
"Get awf me.." *wibble*
"Do not..." *yoink*
"Stop..." *flibber*
Carolyn eventually held her tongue, gritting her teeth in rage. Zippo was soon asleep.
Argo peered into the darkness.
"I better wake the others," she whispered.
Grunter, when woken, took one sniff at the air: "More dead ogres. Two."
"Light the fire," barked Bookem, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
Zippo didn't need further prompting. The wall of wood exploded aflame. Zippo's Affect Normal Fire innate ability added to the conflagration.
In the light from the fire, the two shambling undead ogres could easily be seen. Grunter and Zippo raced towards them. Before they closed, a hail of arrows from the rest of the group porcupined them nicely. The fight was soon over, Grunter was wounded and Zippo scratched. Bookem and Opera patched up the damage.
"Those two were Pink-eye and Odour," mused Grunter.
Everyone went back to bed for the last two hours of the night.
But, almost immediately, ...
"Um... What is that flapping noise?" whimpered Stanley.
Argo peered into the darkness.
"I better wake the others," she whispered.
Suddenly a purple bolt shot into the cave from the pitch-black skies. It struck Tamper, just getting to sleep, near the door. He squealed and jolted wide awake as the magic energies [ Magic Missile ] surged through him.
"ALARM ALARM ALARM!" howled Argo.
Everyone clambered up and hastily dressed — again.
Stanley pointed up into the sky: "Flapping," he moaned.
Bookem raced to the entrance of the cave, just behind the wall of glowing embers and peered into the darkness. He cast a spell, hand on forehead, arm extended: "Detect Evil" he said softly, as his hand cast about the general vicinity. "That way... gloating evil... a stone's throw away. Maybe two. A hundred paces."
Randy sidled up. This was a job for him, he thought, as he silently slipped off his wig, his head beginning to heat.
A glowing purple Dimension Door appeared right next to him, and fifty metres out, its twin.
"Zippo through the door, now," said Bookem hoarsely. "*It* is approaching. About that way. Sixty paces now."
Zippo looked at the rectangular purple opening, a bright purple mist within, and stepped towards it.
Rarmember, Zippo," drawled Stanley. "Yer'll be dis-AWR-ree-nt'd when yer emerge."
Zippo, puzzling over the big word, stepped into the purple mist and vanished.
Opera saw it first. A little marble-size lump of sulphur and guano, glowing a yellow trail in the air, as it sailed into the cave about chest height, moving at sprinting speed.
Bookem's eyes went wide and wild. He managed to scream: "FIRE...!"
The Fireball detonated. A loud crump. And flame — tons of flame: 950 cubic metres, in fact. Despite going down in a sizzling heap of burning skin, Bookem had managed to alert a few of the group with his shout. Opera managed to dive behind Grunter's oversize swag bag, but still caught a lot of the heat; badly burned she was unconscious and smouldering. Tamper and Argo leapt for a crack in the wall, both only burned slightly — most of them was shaded by Grunter's bulk. Stanley gibbered behind a boulder, singed. Randy dived through the Dimension Door catching only the tail-end of the blast. Deep in the back reaches of the cave, Carolyn, despite her stringent hogtie, managed to wiggle down behind Zippo's backpack, making herself as small as she could. Catherine dived behind Carolyn. Lon luckily rolled into a recess in the floor, and his marmalade, spattered all over him, afforded some protection too (the Latent Heat of Vapourization of Marmalade is twice that of water, so much of the energy, that would have cooked Lon, passed harmlessly into a cloud of Marmalade vapour). Enrique, Nellie and Martha just gaped, slack-jawed. They caught most of the blast. Hapless half-elven Martha was the closest to Ground Zero. She was incinerated into a charred skeleton, her flesh burned from her very bones, mouth open in a voiceless scream. Enrique collapsed, his flesh smoking and puppy fat bubbling. Nellie slumped to the ground, clothes on fire, her hair raging.
Zippo and Randy, now out the other end of the Dimension Door, could see the raging gouts of flame billowing and boiling out the cave entrance, but they had no time to stare. They had the source of the Fireball lurking somewhere in their vicinity.
Zippo went running around madly, waving his glowing sword: seeking, searching, swearing.
Randy skulked on the ground, searching in a nearby pile of shrubbery, and lay still and quiet as he could. I'll just search here, he thought to himself.
The flapping could be heard overhead again. Argo, Tamper and Stanley ran from the cave; ran ran RAN. Tamper got to a bush, when a purple bolt struck him from the sky. He collapsed, and was still. Argo and Stanley chose two other dark areas, well out of the light from the still-burning cave.
Zippo by now had done enough "searching" in the dark. He ran back into the cave. Another purple bolt struck him from above as he passed through the entrance. His eyes alighted on the bound Carolyn, as she lay there a little charred. He bodily picked her up and carried her aloft, over his head, and ran outside again. He howled.
"Make it go away!"
Carolyn twisted her head and looked helplessly at him, then at the sky. She shouted something in a language he couldn't understand.
The flapping could not be heard. Zippo tensed and squeezed his eyes shut expecting another Fireball or Magic Missile. But nothing happened. All was quiet.
"What did you thay?!" he yelled at Carolyn.
Carolyn, looking pale and wan, eyed him back and said "Uh... I told it zat ... not to be hurting me. Us. You!"
Twenty minutes passed, and nothing happened.
Argo and Stanley crept back to the cave. Randy emerged from his "thorough searching". He used his psionic healing to bring Opera conscious. She brought Bookem around, and they both proceeded to cure the injured of the group. They actually fared rather well, considering, having only lost ugly Martha. Enrique and Nellie were well and truly zonked, but the loaned Staff of Curing repaired that damage [ expending five charges per ].
But not until Stanley had stashed all of Carolyn's items (the gnoll Y-stick, her necklace & earrings, and magical dagger) in the back of the cave. Hopefully, this would stop Antonio tracking them. Hopefully.
They headed on past the Black Tooth cairn and into Black Tooth territory.
Grunter said to Bookem: "Tell your slaves to make sure they don't stray off. Black Tooth ogres will kill us on sight. This is a violation of our truce."
Bookem relayed this information to the group.
Later on in the morning, a large cross could be seen on a distant hill. It had something large attached to it. There were circling birds.
As they neared, it was quite evident that it was a dead naked ogre, with much signs of rotting. It had been crucified to a large make-shift cross. It's head had been smashed and pulped. Presumably to "cure" the zombification.
Grunter grunted "That is... erm.. was Tongue-man."
At least they didn't have to fight this one.
"Last ogre called ..." he looked at Bookem and said something in Ogrish.
"Cock" replied Bookem.
"Last ogre called Cock," smiled Grunter.
"I wonder why he'th called that?" lisped Zippo.
Sure enough, over the next rise, shambling towards them, was the naked rotting zombie ogre Cock. He certainly lived up to his name: his swollen member was huge. Thick as Randy's thigh and long as his arm. Cock lurched into Grunter and Zippo. It was a short fight, Cock was certainly the worse for wear at the outset and was no match for Grunter.
Grunter removed Cock's organ with his filthy paring knife and held it out to Opera: "You make this pure. I give to Cock's clan-...slut..."
Bookem corrected "Clan-wife."
Grunter shook his head "Clan-slut. They pork around lots."
Opera cast Purify Food & Drink on the organ, and Grunter slipped it in his bag.
"Well, that was the Number Seven: the last ogre zombie," volunteered Argo. "The tracks stop here."
"Hang on, just one Funken Wagnall moment," growled Bookem. "You mean we have been following the trail and it has been getting less and less, one ogre at a time?"
"Yeah."
"Well, that tells us nothing! We wanted to find the spot where they were turned undead. You idiot ranger."
"That's not what you told me, bookworm!" snapped Argo, close to tears. "You said 'follow the tracks'. So that's what I've been doing."
"Back to the border then,"
"That looks about twenty leagues," muttered Bookem. "How long, Grunter?"
"Two nights," grunted Grunter. "But storm here soon."
Then came a long argument as to what the group should do now. Randy's side (Randy and Zippo) claimed that they had done their best and identified the source of the problem and that it was now up to the big guns from Specularum to come and fix all this up.
"We are just a Reconnaissance patrol," said Randy. "We should use the Ring of Return and get the funken back to Hickford. Antonio and his witches are way out of our league."
But Bookem's side (Bookem, Stanley and Opera) claimed that they had made an unwritten contract with the Rift Hugger clan and with Grunter, and that they should continue at least to the castle, and find out as much as they humanly can. Grunter's ogres were going to help Hickford with the lizardmen problem. They might refuse if we bug out now.
"Besides," leered Bookem with a nasty grin. "I have the ring."
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