Molten Wing snorted. “Your wit will not save you.” And he shot a line of fire so that it went between me and Myntilly. She sidestepped it easily. I took some of the flame damage as I tried to move out of the way. I heard Albion give a war cry and lunge at the dragon. The dragon spread his wings and flew over to the other side of the cavern. I saw a couple of arrows fly towards his head. Good old Sadi, at the ready! They missed his eyes, unfortunately.

“We can’t fight him! Let’s retreat.” I yelled in Myntilly’s ear. She nodded and I took a few steps back. I hadn’t gotten used to these short little legs. It took forever to get anywhere.

I didn’t want to turn my back on the dragon so I stepped backward slowly. Instead of moving, Myntilly summoned an orb of acid and flung it at the dragon. He roared in pain and took wing again. I paused in my retreat. “Myntilly!” I whispered. She couldn’t or wouldn’t hear me. I took a step forward. “Myntilly!” This time I yelled. “Let’s go!” She turned around, flashed a smile, revealing those cute dimples, and ran. As she passed me, she said “Try to keep up!”

“Wha? But….” At that moment a huge tree appeared beside me. I blinked. The tree let out a roar and reached its leafy fingers towards the dragon. I was frozen in place. This was the oddest thing I’d seen since I looked in the mirror and saw a dwarf staring back. The dragon quickly engaged with the tree and at first, the tree seemed to be winning. As each second passed, his fingers wrapped more tightly around the dragon.

Suddenly Hamouk was beside me. He landed deftly and I realized that he was going to fly me to safety — if I was smart enough to climb on his back.

I clambered on and he took off. It wasn’t far to the cave entrance, but almost as soon as we left the ground I heard a sharp crackling. I turned and the tree was in flames. Molten Wing beat his wings a few time to disengage from the tree branches and took to the air.

I just knew that any second we were going to be bathed in flames. I hunkered low over Hamouk’s back and prayed.

As we neared the doorway, it seemed like the dragon screamed into my ear: “GET OUT!” I felt buffeted by wind and a little trickle of liquid came out of my ear. I clapped my hand to the side of my face and when I looked at my fingers I saw a pinkish liquid. Before I could think, we flew through a wall of water. Myntilly had cast geyser to protect us from a flame attack by Molten Wing.

We landed and I looked at my friends. Everyone’s mouth was moving and I couldn’t hear a thing. But I was alive. I dropped to my knees in thanks.

“Orbius, the beholder, is the bigger threat. We need to kill him.” Myntilly’s voice was firm.
I shook my head. “But we don’t know where he is. We know where the dragon is.”
“Yeah, who knows maybe we could trade with the dragon. Offer some treasure in return for the collar.” Sadi looked around to see how this was received. “The collar is the key. We get it and ‘Game Over.’”

After a little more debate we decided that the dragon was the way to go. We headed to the warehouse district. The city was covered in smoke. Acgar summoned Hamouk and flew ahead to make sure we wouldn’t be detoured by fissures and lava. As we reached the warehouses, she landed. “There is a funnel cloud of smoke swirling around the city. It’s a fascinating phenomenon. I wish I had time to study it.” The travel was so slow going that it was close to dinner time when we arrived at the freight elevator.

I looked at the group. “Let’s eat something before we go down. Who knows when we’ll have a chance again.”
Ian smiled. “That’s an awfully Dwarvish thing to say! You never cared much about food before.”
“You should always eat before battle. My grandmother taught me…..” My voice trailed off. “Right. Weird. My grandmother was a weaver and lived in the desert.”
Sadi laughed. “Trust me. That’s just the first of many weird things that will pop up. Reincarnation is weird, even if you stay human. You have all these like tribal memories. And they feel real. You’d swear that it was you living them.”

I’d forgotten how hot it was down in the dragon’s den. The lava spurted up every once in awhile and the pools bubbled and spit. It was unpleasant.

“Shall we try talking with him? Myntilly, you’re the most charming of us. You up for it?” She smiled and nodded. “I’ll add an eagle’s splendor to be even more charming.”

She took a deep breath and entered the cavern. “Anyone else going in?” Albion, the dwarf fighter, nodded abruptly and walked in. “One dwarf deserves another!” I said as I followed him.

The dragon, Molten Wing, rose from one of the lava pools. He was big. I’ve never seen a full grown dragon up close. I spotted the collar on his tail.

Myntilly bowed deeply. “O great Molten Wing! We offer you a trade. Treasure for that insignificant trinket you wear on your tail. It is not worthy of you.”
The dragon smiled slowly, revealing gleaming teeth. “You speak fairly for one of the weak. Come closer.”

Albion had been inching to the left of the dragon while Myntilly was speaking. Molten Wing shifted slightly to keep him in view. “Look! You’ve brought companions. Boon companions, no doubt. Could dwarves be any other kind? How…. tiresome they are.”
Myntilly laughed. A little too heartily, I thought. “We are mere adventurers who have heard tales of your –”
“Spare me your lies! I know who you are, Divas. You dare to enter my chamber? You dare to bandy words with me, little girl?” He shot flames into the air. “What could you offer that great Shebolith could not match or best?”

“Shebolith? Have you seen him lately?” I couldn’t help but speak up.
“What do you know about it, dwarf?”
“I know that Shebolith won’t be visiting you anytime soon. We killed him. Pretty gruesome actually. Do you know how long it takes someone to burn to death in lava? Wait, I bet you do know.”
The dragon chuckled. “Would you consider yourself worthy of taking his place? Would you bring me slaves and gold?”
I waved my hand dismissively. “Done. Consider it done.” I pretended to take his order like a tavern wench. “What’ll it be? Girls? Boys? Goblins? Our special today is blackened Kobol.”

….. To Be Continued.

The Vanderbornes had asked us to stop b so they could thank us for recovering Todd’s body. “It was really Acgar that deserves the thanks,” I told Mr. Vanderborne as he poured tea.

To their credit the Vanderbornes didn’t bat an eye when they met Acgar. Many people are put off by her size.
Acgar gave me a side glance at my words. She smiled and said, “No truly, it was Indira. If not for her passionate nature, well, it is hard to say what might have happened to Todd’s body.”

Myntilly squeezed Mrs. Vanderborne’s hand. “He died a hero.”
“Yeah,” said Sadi. “He was very good with a blade.”
Mr. Vanderborne cocked his head. “Yes! I remember Todd telling us about the duel after Gryffon’s wedding.” He sighed. “Todd was always hot blooded. I remember the day we brought him home from the orphanage….”
“Dear, we don’t want to bore the Divas to death! Ask Sally to bring the present in.”

A few minutes later a serving woman came in with a wrapped package. She handed it to Myntilly. “This is a token of our thanks. Please accept it.” As Myntilly unwrapped it, Mrs. Vanderborne went on. “We have heard about some of your adventures and we thought that although you have not yet fought him, that Hookface was a worthy subject for a wall hanging.”

This quilt started in August of 2007. At a guild meeting, everyone was supposed to bring several strips of fabric 3.5″ wide. These strips are cut from the width of a bolt of fabric and usually range from 42″ to 60″. Then we played Strip Poker. Ante up your strip, whoever wins takes the pot.

I won a bunch of strips and then I put them together into the background of the quilt. At that point, I had a pastel quilt that I had no idea what to do with. Then I was painting minis at an event and got to talking with another gamer about my quilting. He suggested that a great quilt would be a traditional “grandma-looking” quilt with a bad-ass red dragon on it.

During a weekend beach trip with my small quilt group in January of 2008, I started designing the dragon. I needed to learn a lot of new techniques to put this together. Since this is a gaming blog and not a quilting blog, I won’t go into detail. But I will say that buying a new sewing machine made quilting in all the details a lot easier.

This quilt was always intended as a gift for Angel, the owner of Guardian Games where we play our weekly game. The challenge was how to work it into the story. A “small token of appreciation” from the town nobility turned out to be perfect.

The air was heavy with the stench of acid. Some pools were tiny and others huge and all of them bubbled and steamed.Cinder and Myntilly walked ahead of the group to scout a path. Acgar, because she is half black dragon and immune to such trifles as acid, wandered off a ways, inspecting some of the large pools.  I felt nervous. The smell of the acid, the tension of wondering what the last test will entail (it is, after all called The Test of Sacrifice), it all had me feeling jumpy. I walked slowly beside Kaurophon, who seemed deep in thought as well.

Cinder came back towards us. “Myntilly is going to fly me up and over the plane. We can really scout ahead and come back with the route through the ulcers!”  I turned to Sadi, who silently shook her head.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Split the party? Is that ever a good idea?”
Before anyone could answer, Acgar pointed to the sky. “Something is coming.” Through the mist we saw a black dragon lazily flying towards us. Cinder and Kaurophon both scurried to hide behind the rest of us. Alek got out his longbow, as did Sadi. We have successfully fought off a dragon before. We have the claws to prove it.

One of the problems with Occiptus is I never feel like I know what is going on. It’s this damned evil influence. I always feel muddle-headed. Before we left camp this morning, I had given each of my friends a treasure. I figured that “sacrifice” might just be monetary or that we could use the treasures to distract any rivals. Alek got a small carved statue; Sadi a fine brass mug; Cinder a silver chalice; Acgar a golden comb shaped like a dragon; Myntilly a pearl and I kept a decorative silver longsword for myself. Watching the dragon fly over us, I thought Is this the test?

Quicker than lightning, the dragon turned, swooped and picked up Kaurophon.  The dragon flew about 300 feet and dropped him in a large pool of acid.  Karuophon might be a half-demon, but he’s not going to die on my watch!

As I got closer to the pool, the dragon gently landed at the far edge of the acid. Kaurophon was struggling to reach firm ground. Sadi had the same idea I did: distract the dragon. She threw her brass mug as far as she could. The dragon watched it land, but didn’t move.  Alek  must have remembered the necklace of fireballs he was wearing because a ball of fire blossomed about 20 feet past the dragon.

I held up my holy symbol and asked for Pelor’s help. The dragon flinched as a beam of sunlight split the acid mists. Unfortunately all I accomplished was directing the dragon’s attention on me. He flapped his wings a few times, grabbed me in his jaws and flew back to the edge of the plane. Lucky for me, we were only a few feet off the ground when he dropped me into a pool of acid.

The acid was so thick that it only slowly seeped into my clothing.  It was a few minutes before I felt any burning on my skin. I’d landed on my back in the pool and as I turned over to try to swim out, my legs got tangled in the longsword. The longsword!

The dragon, as with Kaurophon, had landed just a few feet from me. Back on solid ground, I lifted the sword in both hands and presented it to the dragon. I don’t speak Draconic, so I chose not to speak at all.

I bowed my head, so I only felt the sword being lifted from my hands and felt the flap of his huge wings as he flew away. He only went about a hundred yards before landing with his back to us. That should have been the moment we ran for our lives. Our party was so scattered, though. Kaurophon and Sadi were almost to the far end of the plane. Myntilly had gone invisible, so no one knew where she was. Cinder and Alek were about halfway across. And Acgar was walking toward the dragon as if in a dream.

She called out to the dragon. He turned and walked towards her. They spoke in Draconic for a few moments. The dragon snorted, swiped with his tail and Acgar was on her back. She quickly stood up and in her hands was the golden comb. The dragon slowly came towards her. They spoke again and he took the comb. Again he flew away to examine it.

Suddenly I felt a hand on my arm. “It’s me.” Myntilly had flown back to get me. She put her arms around me and suddenly we were in the air. I am not fond of heights. I get dizzy if I look down. So I focused on the dragon. He was absorbed by the comb. We, in our separate groups, hurried to the far edge of the plane.

Cinder and Sadi made it safely out of the ulcers. Alek, Acgar and Kaurophon were lagging behind. Suddenly the dragon was landing in front of those three.
I put a hand on our bag of holding. “Put me down by the dragon! Please!”

As I landed on the ground, I reached into the bag and felt the circle of metal. I repeated my submissive stance as with the sword. I took the chance of speaking. “Sir Dragon: please accept this golden crown. We bow before your superior strength, wisdom and age.”

My arms were beginning to shake from holding the crown up when the dragon finally hooked one claw through it. As the weight left my hands, I stood up and saw the dragon looking at Acgar again. She was holding her breath and I suddenly went cold all over. If the dragon wanted, he could kill her with one blow.  After a few seconds he rose into the air and just as Acgar began to relax, the dragon’s tail whirled around and knocked her off her feet. It was an insult, to be sure, but he’d continued off into the mists and we were alone and safe.