Ongoing Adventures #1: New Paradigm

To both new readers and old I present the start of Volume 1 of the Ongoing Adventures.  For a better introduction to the principle characters, you can check out the previous stories "In Defence of the Realm" and "Search for Dastardly", both linked on the Ongoing Adventures hub page.

The man was in rather plain clothes – brown pants and off-white shirt with a tunic held tight by a string of rope – but nearby were a set of lightweight gauntlets, and on a rock sat an elegant helmet. He was currently on an outcropping high above the fjord that gashed the land; not an ideal location during the frequent coastal tempests. The breeze was hesitantly growing. Before long the man was shivering slightly.

The reason for his lofty position lay in his hands. What illumination was available from the veiled sun shone onto a handful of rustling paper as the man wrote.

I am called Sir Adrian. My companions tell me that you may have heard the stories. Please take care of this man. He once helped me save a kingdom, but he has lost his mind.

The knight paused. Was it right to do this? He felt like these people didn't deserve it.

A man named Krotar is looking for him. I don't know why, but I have reason to believe that Krotar has lost his mind too.

'We're ready to go,' said a voice behind him.

Sir Adrian, former Knight of the Clockwork City, turned to see the speaker. Renda San was of a sturdy type, dressed in a one-piece leather garment with clipped-on greaves for her legs. These made her look much more like a mythical warrior maiden than should have been legal.

'This isn't worth much,' Adrian brandished the notes and his quill. 'I feel dirty.'

'We won't be far off,' said Renda. 'If anything nasty goes down, Nuff will give us the signal.'

Adrian picked up his spare armour pieces and followed Renda to the camp down the slope. Amongst the trees of the wooded road birds chattered at the horses or sung in tune with Nuff's snoring.

Waory had finished folding the tents and now climbed onto his horse, still uncertain and clumsy after all these days on the road. Renda woke the gnome, whom she rode with on the second horse, and Adrian gave each of them a small root vegetable to encourage the beasts. Sal had completely recovered from her laminitis, so she was comfortable with taking both Adrian and the man who called himself Dastardly. She also seemed to understand that the other horses weren't as fast as her and had kept pace at the back of the group since they'd left the capital of the plains.

'Everyone still up for this?' the knight said. Murmurs of agreement wafted about the clearing.

The false Dastardly gurgled. He hadn't said a coherent word since the old man of a village two days past had given the group a healing herb. His mind was degrading at an alarming rate.

'Onward,' Adrian said with a forced smile.  Onward, he mentally cackled.  Time to ruin somebody's day.

***

The mind and spirit once known to his allies as Dastardly Medieval finally surfaced. Perhaps, though, surfaced is an inappropriate term as its new dwelling place was far from anything resembling a surface.

The mind felt itself lying down. This was at least a physical location, it noted. Nothing was like it remembered. It, or rather he, let out a cry of pain. Death had not been nice.

'Settle down,' he heard a voice say. It was deep but not unkind. 'You've just arrived.'

Lying on a bed of stone. A smell of deep, dank earth. Much deeper than the roads the gnomes had delved.

'Now then, friendly soul, I think you can open your eyes.'

The freelancer did so. He was in cave lit by open fire torches. A presence was nearby, but there was no visual evidence of that fact until a bulky, brown arm swung a bowl on a handle over his head. Little green coals dropped from it and sizzled on the freelancer's face without hurting him.

The freelancer sat up.

'I've got to do it...' he said. 'Death, the Four Ces... it all has meaning.'  He clutched his head and groaned. 'But it's all a jumble.'

'Calm down, please, friendly soul,' said the voice. Directly in front of the freelancer was a craggy snout, like a cross between a crocodile and a pig. The head of the thing must have been a foot long. The thing's face was adorned with tattoos. Many beaded tufts of hair sprung out and dangled, glinting in the firelight. One of four stocky arms was holding the green flame bowl.

'You're a new arrival,' it said. 'We understand that the Ces put you here for a reason.'

The freelancer began to panic, feeling his own face.

'What happened to me?!' He gaped, feeling the long greasy teeth and the rough hairy nose. 'My face! My beautiful face!'

The freelancer grabbed hold of the creature's animal-skin clothing and shook it violently.

'Dastardly Medieval doesn't do ugly! What is going on? Oh, my beautiful face...'

'Settle,' the thing said, waving another arm in the air, wafting a feel of calm through the freelancer. 'That old face wasn't yours to begin with. You are no longer Dastardly, friendly soul. Your name is Stroeg.'

The freelancer was speechless. Useless scraps of information floated around his mind like chunks in soup.

The thing in front of him smiled, as much as the freakish snout could. 'I am Erk, the Death of Trolls. Maybe I can help you understand why you are here.'