The following morning came faster than I would have liked. It felt like my head had just hit my small pillow when the brightening dawn leaked through my closed eyelids. My eyes cracked open as I rolled over on my side. Greeted by the prospect of a gloomy morning, I was half tempted to pull my blanket over my head and fall back asleep. We had a lot of work to accomplish this day with the possibility of reaching Cicero’s tower at the forefront of my mind. Twisting my head a little further beyond the edge of my tent flap, I groaned at the sight of overcast clouds as a stiff breeze rushed over me. My skin prickled with the chilliness in the air.
I scrunched my face in disgust as a stink of something ghastly hit me like I was lying next to a corpse flower. The smell had to come from the Nagas, but weren’t they over a hundred yards away? The fabric of my single-person tent rustled violently as another powerful gust of wind crashed over our campsite. It came awfully close to pulling out a few of the stakes holding the tent down, signaling the necessity for me to get up and going.
Thoughts of the battle with the Nagas flashed through my mind. We had been lucky no one was seriously injured, but I pushed the mental images aside as I sat up in my bedroll. My resource pools were all fully restored as expected, though I felt like I needed an extra six hours. Perhaps it was the Naga’s stink at fault for my poor sleep, but I didn’t recall smelling it the night before. The truly appalling scent carried by the morning breeze was wholly unpleasant and I promised myself to get us moving as quickly as possible.
It was like we had set up camp next to an abysmally maintained wastewater treatment plant smack dab in the middle of a bubbling fetid bog. What had we been thinking? Breathing in and out of my mouth did little to keep the stench at bay. Instead of inhaling the putrid stench, I now tasted it. Quickly storing my bedroll into my inventory, I crouched low and stepped outside before moving to stow my tent along with it.
Seeing an unworried Ripley standing in the center of camp, assured me nothing significant happened while we slept. Under her watchful gaze and Lowki’s random scouting patrols, I doubted much of anything could get the drop on us, but one could never be too careful. The danger of such an occurrence finding us would undoubtedly increase with each passing mile as we drew closer to Cicero’s lair. Lowki sat nestled against Ripley’s feet, his deep breaths marking the panther as fast asleep. His shoulder tentacles twitched over his head and occasionally bumped against our guardian’s armored thighs and breastplate. Ripley didn’t seem to mind as her head moved from side to side.
“At least someone got some restful sleep,” I blurted out, quite jealous of the large cat’s state.
Tallos, across the way, was likewise packing up his stuff though he was a few steps further along than me. He gave a slight chuckle, clearing marking my words nearly drowned out with the howling wind. “I bet the cat could sleep anywhere and still awaken completely rested,” the elf stated in a low tone, though my similarly keen elven senses heard him clearly.
“Morning, Xaz,” Stella said in greeting after flying down from the perch on Ripley’s shoulders. She was in a particularly cheerful mood, notwithstanding the poor weather we were facing, and elicited a smile from me nonetheless. Unfortunately, another gust carried the unpleasant smell of carrion back to my nostrils, causing us to grimace. “Damn, it's worse the closer you are to the ground,” she blurted before moving a few feet above my head.
“Sorry about this. I had no way of knowing they would stink this bad when I recommended we rest after last night’s fray. For whatever reason, the damnable Nagas are decomposing at an astounding rate,” she finished while futilely attempting to pinch her nostrils closed.
An idea struck me and I turned my head up to where she hovered, a feverish glint in my eyes. I doubted Stella would be keen on heeding my forthcoming suggestion as it solidified in my mind, but it was worth a try. “Well, since you were the one to have us wait, why don’t you head on over and collect some of that potent Naga venom while we finish packing up,” I said leadingly. I thought she mentioned having to cut our way through hardened snake scales the night before, but perhaps she had some way of looting the thing I didn’t know about.
Stella unhurriedly tilted her head toward me as an obstinate look overcame her canine features. ‘Excuse me?’ her face seemed to question my words. Her nose wrinkled in disgust, and her eyes narrowed as if gazing upon a bothersome bug. After a moment of silence, she slowly, ever so slowly, shook her head as if I just proposed for her to willingly dig through a massive horse apple.
“You can’t be serious,” she finally responded as I intentionally kept my gaze locked on what I was doing in front of me. She huffed as I ignored her disapproving state before flying over to where Tallos worked. “Can you believe him? I would never…” I heard her say to the amused warden before another gust of wind overwhelmed the rest of what she said.
Tallos concluded packing his gear and arched his back in a long morning stretch. Stella was still mumbling something indecipherable as we walked over to where our horses were tethered. A saddle and bridal appeared in his arms, summoned directly from his extra-dimensional inventory, as he called out to the horses in greeting. I had long since given him the necklace of holding I looted a while back from the Hunter, Adom the Savage. It seemed like ages ago at this point.
The Adept’s Necklace of Holding didn’t have nearly the storage capacity as mine, but it afforded Tallos enough room to store the saddle, all of his camping supplies, and a few extra goodies like a few healing potions and similarly useful items. Stella was still speaking animatedly at him, her front paws waving annoyed in the air in front of her. The tolerant elf was unperturbed, nodding along like one would with a particularly chatty co-worker as he continued about his work unabated. As he neared Jax, the prideful horse paused munching on grass before lifting his head and nickering at his friend.
It didn’t take long for us to get everything ready to head out, especially since everyone was hustling to get out of the stink. Unfortunately, thanks to the horrid smell continually wafting our way, no one had much of an appetite. Still, a few strips of dried jerky were passed around after Stella insisted we eat something. Unless I missed my guess with her, it was more for her to eat something than a worry we weren’t eating enough.
The little glutton, I mused to myself.
As she chewed noisily, she assured us we’d have a proper meal once we were no longer downwind of the rotting Nagas. After recasting the few buffs I had, we rode around the smothered and burnt battlefield, where the two unmoving Nagas cursed the field with the vile stuff leaking from their desiccating bodies. Stopping a good twenty yards upwind of the corpses, I dismounted with the hope of at least retrieving one of the likely valuable venom glands.
Wrapping a thin cloth around my nose to ward off at least some of the rotten stench, I approached the Naga slain by my hand. Luck was with me, apparently. Wading through the grass leading up to the snake, my feet kicked into the hilt of the lost Naga blade we abandoned the night before. Crouching low, I laid a hand on its handle before storing it away. Pulling a dagger from my inventory, I held the blade tightly as I forced myself closer to the putrid carcass. What transpired over the course of the next several minutes, as I dug through flesh and scaled hide, was something I vowed never to experience again. Thankfully, I was successful in the task, and had the creatures not stunk so badly, I would have attempted to do the same with the other Naga.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Storing what the System identified as a rare-quality venom gland, I washed off my hands with a pair of water skins. The work had been quite revolting and, thankfully, did not cause me to lose my brief morning meal. Rinsing my hands another time for good measure, I just knew Stella would absolutely refuse to allow me back up on Dutch if I carried even a whiff of their stench upon me.
Returning to my saddle, our party continued our trek to the south, with the snow-capped peaks easily marking our heading. As Stella filled us in on the uneventful happenings of the evening after we rested, my eyes caught Tallos’ magical quiver as he rode beside me. It was packed to the brim. He had been low on ammunition after the fight with the Nagas, so must have spent a decent amount of time in summoning the arrows before falling asleep.
During a lull in our sporadic conversations, I allowed my experience notifications to appear in my vision. I had only recently leveled, so I wasn’t surprised with how short the message was.
Experience Awarded: Invidious Naga Burrower x 2 (level 38 & 42)
Notice! Experience has been split among party.
I was hoping our victory would pop up a completed hidden quest, but, alas, it was only a plain old boring experience. Another message showed minor gains with my spells and skills, but nothing too interesting. Stedious’ words from the previous day bid into my mind as I considered how much more we had to travel.
“After a quarter’s day ride,” our former guide had said shortly before parting ways. “You’ll see a mountain range appear on the horizon. Aim between the leftmost snow-capped peaks, and after another half day’s travel, you will spy the tip of Cicero’s spire stretching toward the stars.”
I wasn’t sure if the lead warden’s ‘half day’s travel’ comment took into account our horse’s previously enchanted horseshoes into account. It was something I probably should have asked him about. The enchantment expired late last night, but we at least had my modest movement buff going to help speed us along that much quicker. So, we would likely find his shining emerald spire stretching overhead sometime between the noon hour and late afternoon, granted we didn’t get snagged by another wayward ambush or two.
We fully expected to encounter more of Cicero’s demented creations well before we reached our final destination, and those expectations became a reality a few hours after leaving our last ambusher's corpses in our wake. Chief among the two skirmishes we come across before finally spotting the tip of the green spire off in the distance was a group of quadrupeds called Deranged Glissade Centaurs. Like the Nagas, they had a humanoid upper body and a horse body, unnaturally connecting the two. Unlike the Nagas, these had human and elf faces glowering spiteful looks our way. These centaurs also appeared to have been combined with a third monster type: an eagle or other type of avian creature. Large, broad wings sprouted from the centaur’s equine shoulders, with feathers stretching all the way to its rump.
Worse yet, the centaurs had some skill with dark magic and could cast some nasty spells which significantly lowered our strength and dexterity attributes. Their magic had a strong impact on Lowki, but his ability to create mirror images of himself kept him mostly free of harm during the brief skirmish. The modest group of five centaurs were roaming alongside a small river cutting alongside our path. They were not immediately recognized as potential enemies, though we should have assumed as much now. In our defense, the group had been partially blocked behind some thick shrubbery. The quintet’s humanoid torsos were bent low to the ground for some reason, and as soon as they caught sight of us, they screamed in outrage in an incomprehensible language none of us understood.
While their wings did not allow them to actually take flight, they did allow the group to easily glide across the modest river separating our two groups. Dutch and Jax were far more frightened by these man-horse hybrids compared to being ambushed by the Nagas the day earlier. I needed to dismount immediately, lest I be thrown from Dutch’s saddle as he reared back from the mob's frantic rush. Looking back, I couldn’t blame him. They were horrid things to look upon and were part horse, after all. Jax handled it better than his brother. It still took Tallos a good minute before he was stable enough to let his enchanted arrows fly.
Disappointedly, none of the centaurs had any worthwhile loot. I had hoped for a spell tome or at least something, but we left the blood-soaked ground empty-handed. Ripley was amazing in the fight, using her great sword to great effect against the strapping creatures. Better still, her natural spell resistance meant she could mostly shrug off most of their debilitating magic. We discussed the battle and what we could have done better. It appeared the centaur's main tactic was to layer enough restrictive bonds of debilitating magic on their victim resulting in them being helpless to resist the stomping hooves that were soon to follow. In the end, we walked away from the encounter with some more well-earned experience, tipping me that much closer to my next level. With the liberal use of my lesser regen after the battle, we were no worse for wear.
The other encounter was ten not-quite-living, yet not-quite-dead ghouls called Putrid Nightmares. The tattered group varied from a pair of stocky dwarves and a handful of adult men to a mismatch of different elven races. I was initially fearful we had too many enemies on our hands when we first spotted them after coming around a dense copse of birch trees. The gunmetal gray creatures were feeding on something about the size of a rhinoceros and looked straight out of a post-apocalyptic zombie horror film. After my first few DoTs either failed completely or were largely resisted, I called for our group turn to run. Thankfully, the pack of ghouls were slow on their feet, no quicker than shambling zombies from one of the shows I used to watch. Their slow progress afforded easy targets for my direct damage spells, as well as Tallos’ arrows. They were taken out, one by one without any appreciable risk.
The experience brought me closer to reaching level twenty-seven and I suspected whatever we fought next would push me over the edge. While I wouldn’t gain much from the level other than a small bump in some of my attributes, it was the level after that I was truly looking forward to. When I hit twenty-eight, I would be given another choice between three average-tier spells.
Closing out my experience notifications, we inspected the grisly bodies, now fully dead. Sadly, we didn’t turn up anything of value, not unless we wanted to pull off sullied and torn bits of cloth and some ruined armor. Stella refused to get anywhere near the deceased mobs, apparently still feeling traumatized from the horrible smell of the Nagas.
In an interesting twist, the ghouls barely smelled of anything. Even after explaining this to Stella, she refused to budge from her perch on Dutch’s saddle. “They are not natural,” she said, her voice thick with disgust. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that.
Hopping back atop our mounts, we made a wide birth around the beaten ghouls and carried on. As the glinting spire in the distance grew more prominent in the sky, the once flagging grass at our feet swiftly transitioned into an arid desert with barely any living plants to speak of. No longer under dense cloud cover, the shift was so dramatic that it felt like we had been transported a thousand miles from the prairie only a few miles behind us. Thankfully the weather did not change to a scorching heat I believed would soon overcome us. Instead, the temperature felt a balmy eighty degrees. Sadly, the dry air was rife with blowing grits of sand. Donning cloth masks, the sand continued to find its way around the thin strips and into our mouths.
An uneventful hour later, we were finally near enough to the glistening structure to make out the intricacies of Cicero’s spire as it grew large on the horizon. Emerald stone gleamed in the afternoon sun and appeared built like a spiral staircase that tapered to a pyramidal top. Stained glass windows of every color coiled up the length of the monumental edifice. While impressive in its own right, our biggest surprise came when we could finally spy on its foundation. We soon discovered the emerald spire was actually levitating above another obsidian structure. A gap of about fifty feet of air separated the green spire floating above from the four-sided monolith below.
“Well, no one said anything about that,” Stella lamented irritably. “How in the blazes are we supposed to get up there?”
“One way or another, we’re going to find out,” I replied confidently. I was going to add more to my comment, but the movement at the base of the magnificent scene caught my attention. A billowing dust trail bloomed into existence, heading directly towards us. It grew longer and larger by the second as if a tightly knit squad of horses bore toward us. I swiftly realized it wasn’t a group of mobs. No, we caught the attention of something far more massive.
“Oh shit…” Tallos said weakly, using the exact phrase I was about to utter at the sight of the approaching behemoth. At that precise moment, a System notification appeared unbidden into my vision.
Quest received: Keeper of the Cabochon Spire!