Empirical Gnollage: Installment 109 [https://squirrel.dogphilosophy.net/Installment109.png]
Fire wasn't especially complicated. Many novice wizards' first successful working of spellcasting was that silly "shower of sparks" trick, and sparks are merely very tiny fires. If one reaches that degree of fundamental understanding of the concept, convincing something like a candle or campfire that it is aflame or extinguished is a small step. It had been a much bigger challenge to create a large amount of burning flame from nothing, and then imposing the degree of control required to constrain the burning into discrete bolts of flaming magical violence had been the most difficult working of magic Al had successfully done so far.
A single, controlled bit of magical fire wouldn't need anything he didn't already understand. Perhaps something like the angry, hateful, destructive little bursts of flame that kept popping out of the ground around Al, here in the bleak wasteland he stood in. He wasn't sure how he'd gotten here or exactly where here was, but he somehow knew that somewhere further ahead in the distance, very bad things waited, so he stayed where he was and watched the deep red, sulfur-scented miniature explosions of fire flaring into existence and disappearing. Despite the unsettling scenery, this would have been almost meditative if it weren't for the distraction of something's attention on Al. There was nothing to see in the barren terrain aside from the sporadic eruptions of flame, but in the same way that Al knew something bad was out there on the horizon, he also knew something small, fearful, angry, and hungry was watching him.
Some sort of spirit? Al wondered. Wait, is this...
Another interruption of his attention manifested itself in the form of a rapid series of the fiery bursts from the ground, each one closer to him than the last and approaching quickly.
POP! POP! POP! POP! Knock knock knock knock...
Dragged back to consciousness in the waking world again by the gentle knocking on the door, Al reluctantly opened his eyes. "Wha...?" he managed to say.
"The time that you'd asked to be awakened has come," Stephen's voice said from the other side of the door.
"Perhaps give us some time to properly awaken ourselves, but we should be ready to leave soon," Bote's voice said from across the room.
"Shall I return in half an hour?" Stephen's voice suggested.
"Yeah," Al said sleepily, "Thanks." He groaned and sat up as as the monster under his bed slid out and stood up.
"Don't wanna," Wikwocket mumbled from the tangle of blankets she was sleeping in.
"If we are to leave with appropriate secrecy to disappear mysteriously, now would be the best time," Bote countered.
"Yeah, yeah," Wikwocket muttered, wrestling the blankets away from her like a constrictor snake.
"We've still got meat pies if you want to eat before we leave," Al yawned, waving towards the small pile of them. A pair of fuzzy, stubby-clawed hands immediately grabbed a few.
"They're probably cold," Wikwocket complained. Al picked one up, and performed a small magic trick to make it warm before handing it over.
"Not bad," Wikwocket said, taking a bite, "but that's just warm, not hot. How about putting a little fire on them?"
His dream half-remembered in his sleepy state, Al found himself beginning a complex gesture and mumbling newly-familiar arcane syllables. He realized what he was doing as the angry little ball of flame began to form in his hand. It dissipated with a quiet POP as he closed his fist and disrupted the magic-working.
"I'm not going to risk burning the place down just to try to overcook your food," complained Al.
"It's too early to give you a hard time for it, so just imagine I made fun of you while I eat my warm pie."
Al made use of his food-warming magic trick on a pie for himself and ate it while made sure he had everything packed. He wiped the grease from his hands with a cleaning-cloth, magicked the grease off of the cloth, and packed it away as well. By the time he finished suiting up for travel and conjuring up what he was now resigned to thinking of as the magic invisible cart to carry their belongings, Stephen returned. To settle their forty-seven gold coin bill, Al gave him forty-nine of the fifty coins he'd reserved for the purpose. Two gold coins still seemed like a large amount for a gratuity to Al, but he felt Hell's Bathtub had been good to them, and Stephen had personally been very helpful It seemed prudent to be generous while they could afford to.
"Thank you," Stephen said, "I hope you'll return again regularly." He considered something for a moment, and continued, "You wanted to leave discreetly, yes? If you'll follow me, there's a service-tunnel that has an exit near the back of the stables. It's meant for staff only, but nobody will object if you're with me."
After a brief pause to rearrange their gear atop the magic invisible cart so that it'd fit through the door, Stephen led them down several hallways and through another door to a shallow downward slope to a lamp-lit passageway. They passed a number of side-passages before turning down one, which eventually led to an upward slope that took them up to a small warehouse.
"It wouldn't do to obstruct guest hallways with deliveries of supplies, so it's important that we have an alternative way to take shipments from here into the main building," Stephen explained. He opened the warehouse door, revealing the back of the stables.
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"The stablehand on duty should have your donkey and cart ready to go by now," he continued, opening the rear door of the stables for them. "On behalf of Hell's Bathtub, thank you for your custom and your assistance. I encourage you to ask for me by name when you visit us again. You've been a delightfully unusual group of guests. Safe travels to you all."
He gave them a smile that seemed genuinely friendly as he held the door open for them to enter. The door closed behind them.
Haunch was already hitched to their cart and lazily waiting as he chewed on the contents of a feedbag. He gave Al a disinterested glance as he saw them, but perked up when Gruntle followed Al inside.
"You're weird, you know," Al jokingly told the donkey as Gruntle helped him load their belongings from their magical cart to their normal one, "normal donkeys don't seem like gnolls much." A feedbag-muffled snort was all the reply he got. Al gave the stablehand the last gold coin from the party-expense fund he'd set aside. The boy removed the now-empty feedbag from the donkey and then looked it over.
"This one looks like it's getting pretty worn out and ought to be replaced," he said with a grin as he carried it over to a barrel of oats. He scooped a few handsfull of oats into it and brought it back to offer it to Al.
"He already had meat pie, I don't think he's still hungry," quipped Wikwocket. Al rolled his eyes and accepted the "worn out" feedbag, putting it on the cart to give to Haunch later.
"Thank you, Haunch seems like he's been very well cared for while we've been here," Al said.
"Oh, no, sir, thank you, he's been no trouble at all. Safe travels!" the happy stableboy answered, and opened the main stable doors for them.
The night was dark and chilly, but not terribly cold. Nobody else was out on the street as they walked to the northern gate. The guard on duty yawned and opened it for them.
"How far is it to the next place to spend the night before we get to Southwall?" Al asked the guard. She yawned again before answering.
"On foot, probably about eight to ten hours of travel to Wayfarer's Rest. The Golden Penance Inn is a nice place to stay but, uh, you probably want to have your big friend there turn back into a normal person before you get there. They might not let them stay like that, and anyone who's camping in the woods near there to save money may not even be that polite. Also if you weren't aware, unauthorized shapechanging magic is illegal in Southwall."
"Thank you, yes, we've heard about that. Uh, anything else on the road here that we ought to know about?"
"I won't ask you why you're traveling at night, but be careful. People have been saying there are rumors of goblins around."
Al tried to ignore Gruntle's murderously eager grin.
"I hate goblins," Al said. "Thanks for the warning, we'll keep watch for them."
With a last exchange of polite nods with the guard, The Gnoll Party passed through the gate and beyond the boundaries of Hell's Bathtub, following the road through sparse pine forest. The air immediately went from "chilly" to "cold" as they left the boundaries of Hell's Bathtub, and Al gladly picked up the pace to keep up with Gruntle's rush to the front.
"You seemed like you were pretty comfortable in Hell's Bathtub, but I guess you were ready to leave to," Al said to him.
"Going to hit people until they stop moving," Gruntle explained, looking ahead into the darkness as he strode down the road.
"I hope that works out. Hopefully this letter of introduction will keep the local militia from panicking and trying to kill us all."
"You can be scary sometimes," Wikwocket interjected from her place on the cart their donkey was pulling, "but you usually don't scare people so much that they want to kill you."
"I don't, no, but a gnoll definitely could. It sounds like we have most of the day to come up with some way to avoid panic when Gruntle shows up with us, we should be reaching Wayfarer's Rest before the next sunset if nothing goes wrong."
"Maybe he could wear a disguise!" Wikwocket suggested, getting a firm rejection from the gnoll in the form of a forceful huff.
"Awww, it'd be fun! We could get you a big floppy hat to hide your head, and a huge set of hooded robes to cover your fuzzy body!"
"I do not believe our gnoll wants to wear any more than he absolutely must, if you will recall," Bote countered.
"Well, then, we could tie a rope around his neck, then everyone will assume we've captured him, right?"
"Hmmm... ," Al considered carefully. "That might work. Seems possibly risky but if we don't come up with anything else before we arrive, we could test that and see how people react in Wayfarer's Rest. If it works, we can take that approach at Southwall, and if not we'll have another day of travel to think of something else. It's probably a good idea to see what other ideas we can come up with, it's not like we're going to be at our next stop soon"
The sun appeared in the sky and the air warmed up. Or, at least, there was light visible coming through the featureless grey sky, illuminating the sparsely scattered thorny bushes dotting the otherwise bleak landscape. This alarmed Al greatly, since the sun hadn't risen, the entire atmosphere around them had just changed. Somewhere off in the distance, pained screeches of some sort of animals fighting echoed.
Gruntle showed interest in the unexpected change, but no worry. Al drew Purgatio from its sheathe and watched for danger. The gleam of the sword seemed out of place for the setting.
"What just happened?" asked Wikwocket, taking out BiteySue and her still-nameless dagger.
"I don't know yet. It definitely doesn't seem like we're where we started any more, but I don't know where we are."
"Home," Gruntle said. His ears twitched, and without a further word he began to lope away.
"Wait! Gruntle, where are you going?"
"Hunting call."
Al thought it was odd that their donkey wasn't making a lot of noise, though the poor creature seemed very concerned and confused as it pulled the cart to follow Gruntle. Al hurried to keep up, sparing a glance at Bote who was falling a little behind.
"My endurance is fine," they said breathlessly as they ran, "but my legs are normal-sized against those of you excessively tall people!"
"Gruntle! Wait for us!" Al called ahead as he ran forward, but Gruntle seemed focused on whatever he was hearing. Al thought he could hear it, too, now. Later, he would struggle to remember exactly what it was that he heard, but for now he had to agree it was an obvious call of some sort.
Gruntle dropped from view. Al and Haunch, with Wikwocket on the cart, caught up to where they'd last seen him and found a wide tunnel sloping into the ground. The indescribable, intriguing sound that they all seemed to be chasing came from somewhere at the other end. The tunnel was short and sloped back up to somewhere dark. Heedless of possible danger, they all rushed back up.
The calling sound disappeared as they reached ground-level again, and Al froze at what he saw.
There was no tunnel now, just a wide patch of grass behind a wooden building, barely visible in the starlight showing through the pine trees. They were encircled by unidentifiable flesh and wet blood, arranged in a clearly intentional pattern. Somewhere not too far away in the darkness, Al could hear screaming.
A thin man with severely stained face, hands, and clothing made excited predatory animal noises as Gruntle listened from there inside the gruesome enclosure where they had appeared.
Gnollish? Al thought.
If it was, Al couldn't tell, but the man's crazed demeanor seemed to suggest he was demanding that Gruntle do something violent, pointing to the mangled body-parts incorporated in the arcane circle. In the starlight, Al thought he could see the man's face looking towards them in the circle, at first with a sort of manic happiness, but changing immediately to shock.
The man pointed angrily at Al, Haunch, and Wikwocket, and made an urgent, angry pattern of bestial noises.
While still not comprehensible to Al as speech, it seemed to be a clear mandate for something murderous.
Starlight reflected a faint amber glow from Gruntle's eyes as he turned to face them.