RP:Monarchs in a Murder Maze

From HollowWiki

Summary: Macon and Josleen travel to Venturil to meet with its leaders and strengthen ties between the two cities. The routine political visit precedes a planned vacation to Chartsend’s sunny beaches. During the visit, the King and Queen become embroiled in a political coup which uses them as pawns in a lethal scheme. En route to Chartsend, they are rerouted into a mad dryad’s murder maze and after a full day and night of druidic horrors, the couple survive, overpower the dryad, and are rescued by both Venturili soldiers and their own Larketian guard. The political coup is discovered and Macon publicly executes the would-be usurper to let the world know that Larket and its King are no pawns.

Business and Pleasure: Royal Getaway

Josleen and Macon (and Gigi) arrive in Venturil by mid-afternoon. The bard did her best not to dwell on her mother and father’s pseudo marital drama, but found it difficult to avoid in both her mind and conversation. As they neared Venturil, however, the foreign flora and fauna evoked memories of her brief stint as a Venturili resident. Though technically Josleen lived here just five years ago, the memories feel far removed by centuries. She points out a pothole in the road that once trapped her covered-wagon wheel. The donkey, spooked by a coblynau, broke free and ran to the city, abandoning Josleen and forcing her to walk in the rain and mud, while carrying three instruments and a suitcase, all the way to Venturil. She can’t help but laugh at the memory. Would she ever walk in the mud now? Carry her own luggage? Get caught in the rain? Unlikely. How things change, how time flies. In Venturil they’re greeted by Nikolic Provenay, the Ealdorman of Berendebyrg who invited the Larketian Royals in his letter. Everything goes as expected, and smoothly: horses and carriage to stable, (some) guards relieved of duty, Gigi fawned over and fed secret sausages by staff, and Royals put on the state visit track: tea break, “city” tour (if you can call this a city, am I right?), trade talk (yes, trade good, continue?), relaxing time, dinner time. The couple then have an hour before dinner to relax by themselves, during which Josleen soaks in a large tub made of Larketian marble, a symbol of the already functioning trade agreement and peaceful relations with this foreign power that keeps to itself. So why are they here? She dresses to impress for dinner, aware of her role as tasteful eye candy on the arm of the still relatively new King of Larket. She suggests Macon not wear his armor to dinner, but ultimately won’t press the issue if he insists. At dinner they are joined by Nikolic, his wife, and the Berendebyrg entourage, as well as the following three ealdorman and their respective entourages: Calum Glas of Aedrebyrg, Theodor Brahe of Diernebyrg, and Juraj Devic of Denubyrg. It is Juraj and Nikolic who are the most vocal, and usually to contradict, correct, and show up one another. Therein lies the answer to why King Macon was invited here, a local power struggle between two aspiring would-be Venturil Kings. The performance is largely for Calum and Theodor, who seem bored and disinterested in Nikolic and Juraj’s political drama. When not bickering, the four ealdorman also ask about Larket’s recent successes and crisis: congratulations on the wedding; sorry to hear about the earthquake, terrible thing; how’s business, etc. yawn. Just as the dessert is being served, Juraj and Nikolic begin to bicker anew about Venturil’s political future. “What future is there if everything we gain is threatened by the minotaurs?” says Juraj. His byrg is closest to the minotaur lands and the first attacked when the minotaurs raid and plunder. Meanwhile, in the stables, two hooded, burly men drag one catoblepas and two wolf carcasses behind them, then stuff them into three of the Larketian carriages. A third man, also hooded, but less burly and dressed in far too much studded leather, looks towards the moon and crows. Soon two massive silhouettes blot the moon’s face. From a distance they’re difficult to discern, but soon the distinct silhouette of wings extends across the width of the moon face. The eagle-shapes grow larger and their shape elongates to include razor sharp talons and beaks. Back at the state dinner, Josleen has had enough and yawns into the back of her hand then smiles adorably as if she is just oh-so embarrassed by her sleepiness. Nikolic’s wife chimes right in as if on cue, “You must have had such a long day. Are you leaving for Chartsend early tomorrow?” In this way, all the women efficiently play off each other’s sleepy smiles and through cordial phrases wrap up the boring dinner and escort their counterparts away from the brandy and to bed. The next morning, while Macon and Josleen eat breakfast, Wendel approaches them, bows, and asks Macon, “Your majesty, are all the guard required for the trip to Chartsend? It’s a friendly city, and some of the men seem to be enjoying Venturil’s, uh, sights.” Those cads. “I was wondering if it was absolutely necessary to take the entire guard, or perhaps just travel with two or three, then pick up the rest on the return trip home.”


Macon , during the carriage ride, does his best to steer the conversation away from the family problems of Josleen’s that they left behind in Xalious whenever the topic starts to veer that way. He is only mildly successful. Wendell, using whatever strange magic he had used the first time he traveled by carriage with the king and now queen, fills in and smooths over the pothole Josleen points out. Probably not maliciously, as the convoy passes it by. What are a few buried memories up against a smoother ride for the royals? The King of Larket is as unimpressed by the city as he expected to be, and politely keeps that opinion to himself outside of a few silent looks to his wife during the tour that say, ‘we do this better in Larket, right?’ During their break Macon briefly prepares himself for what he expects to go down during dinner. What?! A tub made of Larketian Stone?! You don't say. The King must examine this, and it's contents, thoroughly. He sees the merit of negotiating a trade agreement, (which is what he is expecting to happen at this dinner), dressed as The Rage Knight. However, the Queen’s advice to leave the armor, coupled with his own past experience as a businessman in which he did not need such intimidation tactics to succeed, sees him dressed more for the occasion at hand than for war. During the dinner, Macon is not pleased to have come so far to play audience to this inconsequential power struggle between the ealdormen. ‘Just frame your rivals for murder and bioterrorism, you guys. What do you need me here for?’ he must think. When the Venturilian leaders are not bickering, thanks are given for the aid (if any) the country sent to Larket following the disaster, words chosen carefully to maintain that any aid given is viewed as a gift between allies. As expected not much is accomplished one way or another and the next morning Macon fields Wendell’s question after giving it some thought. Their excursion to Chartsend is likely left off of the official docket and should only become public knowledge -after- the royals have arrived back home in Larket having not missed anything pressing domestically while taking their holiday. Given this, he believes that a planned assassination or the like, would have already been attempted by this point in their trip and allows some of their security detail to remain in Venturil while the last leg of this trip is completed.


Josleen leaves to fetch Gigi from the kitchen, his favorite place, once the King and Wendell have figured out the security detail. She joins Macon back in their room and they set out together for the stables where...catastrophe! The three Larketian carriages and one Denubyrg carriage lie on their side, as does one Larketian horse, whose guts smear the hay-strewn floor. Claw or talon marks rip gashes in the carriages’ cabins. One wheel has shattered, and three of six axles have snapped. Telltale evidence of matted fur, dried blood, and enormous black feathers cling to the wreckage. The stable master shakes his head ruefully, holding back tears, as he explains to an enraged Nikolic and Juraj that there must have been an animal attack in the night, it could not be helped, and yet he feel guilty, this is his stable. Juraj notices King Macon and Queen Josleen first and bows his head regretfully to the monarchs. “We are embarrassed to admit to you,” he speaks mostly to Macon, “that it would seem an animal broke into the stable.” A very large animal, by the look of it. Josleen frowns and looks away. This can all be repaired, but it would mean extending their stay in Venturil, and abandoning the beach holiday she has looked forward to for weeks. Juraj notes the Queen’s dissatisfaction and glares at Nikolic, muttering, “Surely there is something that can be done about this, isn’t there, Nikolic?” Nikolic stammers, addressing primarily Macon, “Y-y-yes, of course. Don’t let this spoil your plans. I-I can lend you a carriage for the holiday, and my men will repair your carriages and find you a horse for the trip back to Larket. It will all be ready when you return from Chartsend.” Juraj adds, “I can lend you one of my drivers as well, as I believe the Venturili style is different from yours, and my men know the way to Chartsend best, as the route will take you through my byrg.”


Macon , upon arriving on this gruesome scene and being briefed on the leading theory on what happened, has stone glares for the three Venturil natives present. The King agrees with the stable master, this is his fault. The proposed solution from the ealdormen is barely acceptable, and only because the trip to Chartsend will -not- be delayed or postponed. The Rage Knight -knows- that Venturili carriages and horses are worse than Larketian ones because they are not from Larket… and don't get him started on the driver. The Furious King growls out his agreement to the offer, “Tha’ will be fine.” They better get a really good horse in recompense when they come back around here on their way home. The best horse. Some slight paranoia builds up in the king in the face of this sudden animal attack and as the royal entourage gains an unknown in the form of the carriage driver, but it is not enough for him to revoke allowing a portion of the royal guard to remain here while they travel to Chartsend. Macon looks to Josleen to make sure she isn't totally disgusted by the offered solution (probably not. They must get to the beach) . Either way, there are no words of thanks from The Rage Knight for the emergency accommodation from Nikolic.


Logistically speaking, the Larketians are also forced to leave behind Royal Guards. Where will you put them? They have downgraded from three carriages to one. Thus, with just one carriage, Wendell will ride up front with the Venturili driver, and Roald and one more scrub (perhaps in a red tunic) will share the cabin with the King and Queen (and Gigi, who is sniffing the large feathers and growling, hackles raised). The crowded cabin annoys the Queen more than the downgrade in carriage quality. Since donning the Crown, she’s become increasingly possessive of her privacy due to the fact Queenhood invites public scrutiny and tabloid gossip. At least Chartsend isn’t very far away. They’ll be there in a matter of hours, in a private villa, on a private beach, and that beats Venturil ‘City’. The ealdormen apologize several more times and gift the monarchs a bottle of wine and a basket of travel snacks to further sweeten the apology. Roald and Greg do their best to glance away from the monarchs and make themselves invisible, but it’s difficult in close quarters. Gigi does the opposite, taking up as much space and attention as he can. Eventually Josleen engages the guards in easy conversation about their lives and Larket. Over an hour later, the view of the plains is obscured on both sides of the carriage by cliff faces. They’re likely in a chasm, which has Josleen screwing up her nose. “Which way are we going?” she muses aloud. She’s traveled from Venturil to Chartsend several times before and never through a chasm. Suddenly Wendell’s ride-smoothing magic ceases and the carriage rocks as it bounces over pebbles and shallow holes. The guards exchange a confused glance, but are not yet alarmed. Wendell may have messed up the spell. It happens. She pokes her head out the window a little and looks behind them to see plains, but soon the carriage is rounding a corner and the plains are out of sight. She looks forward now and the chasm continues for far longer than makes topographical sense, then ends in a blaze of forest green. “Excuse me?” She calls to the driver and Wendell, neither of whom she can see from her position at the window. No one responds. “Sir Wendell?” she calls a little louder. Suddenly the horses spook and break into a trot, then, abruptly and with a surge, a gallop! “Macon!” Josleen cries in a panic. The sandy cliff faces blur into a row of hedges on either side of the cabin. The hedges stand taller than a giant, and their verdant leaves are brighter than any trees or grass in the plains they left behind. The horses continue to run, braying in a panic that mirrors the Queen’s, though there is nothing on the path to spook them. The hedge-lined path they are on continues for two hundred meters more, then turns abruptly right at ninety degrees. No sign of Wendell or the driver.


Macon, when Josleen starts to show some real concern, is less patient than the Queen and barks towards the head of the carriage for Wendell to answer her. Obviously no response comes and the horses speed up. Roald, a young veteran Kingsguard now, positions his back to the side door of the coach and sticks the top half of his lightly armored body out the window. From that vantage point, with the wind from their forward progress whipping at his face, he can see that the driver and his fellow royal Guard, Wendell, have vanished. “Wendell and the driver are missing, ” the swordsman informs the other passengers with more wonder than panic. He leaves three of his bladed weapons on the carriage floor and climbs out. Roald pulls himself up, using the roof as leverage to get his feet onto the window sill. Thankfully his king and queen do not have the vantage point to see the look on his face when the wheels hit a little bump and he nearly is sent tumbling to the rushing ground below. He exhales, finding steady enough balance to lift himself again and roll onto the roof of the carriage. The passengers can hear him crawling forward above them and then falling into the driver’s seat at the front. The young guard yells out “Woah!” because he has heard people yell that before while pulling back on the reigns he found up there. The horse tries to slow down and turn as they come up on that 90° bend, but the momentum behind it is too great. It manages about a 50° turn and barrels through the hedges lining the path in an explosion of leaves and twigs that is immediately followed by a larger explosion of leaves and twigs as the coach follows. Inside, Macon’s focus is on Josleen and bracing her for impact. Thankfully he's forgone the armor and Rage Axe for another day and he isn't more of a danger to her than an aid. Gigi survives the crash, but had to deal with the sheathed swords Roald left behind during all of this. A harrowing experience indeed. Between the turn and pair of crumpling impacts enough speed is lost that the horse can finally come to a stop and the party can assess their position, no longer on the road, about 10-20 meters beyond it.


Josleen braces herself between Macon and the door, and shuts her eyes tight as the carriage flips. The torque from the careening carriage also flips the horses off their feet. One resist the torque, manages to get a leg under himself, and snaps the harness. He gallops down the hedge-lined path, his neighs growing fainter as he abandons his mate to the crash. The second horse brays as he tries to right himself, but struggles to do so under the retraints of the harness and weight of the carriage. His struggle jerks the carriage around, making it harder for Gigi to stand. Poor Gigi was banged up by the sheathed swords, but the sheathes spare him any serious damage. Still, when the carriage collided with the thick hedges, the prince pooch landed at an unnatural angle on his left front paw, spraining it. Josleen, despite her bracing, smashed against the wall, but thanks to Macon’s protection, avoids banging her head and getting a concussion. Instead his arm took the blow from her head, giving it a softer place to land. “Macon, are you alright? Greg?” Greg opens the carriage door and helps the royals escape the wreckage. Roald was thrown from the driver’s seat, and kicked by one of the horses behind the thigh. Thankfully it was only a glancing blow, not direct impact, and some gnarly bruising is all he will suffer. Once he has recovered from the pain, he gets to work calming the remaining horse down and helping it free of the harness to stand. Josleen first asses Macon’s condition, then Gigi’s. She’s in one piece, though disheveled and spooked by this close call. Her heart races and she gulps air to catch her breath. This is the second carriage crash she and the King have survived together, and a first for the poodle who is trembling violently from the adrenaline. Josleen crouches before Gigi and tests his paw’s reflexes and mobility. He can walk with a limp, and favors his three good paws instead. The Queen kisses Gigi’s head and smooths his fur, then turns back to Macon with a frown. Greg jogs a few meters up and down the pathway to get a better idea of where they are, and look for any exits or turns. Roald returns to his King and says, “Sir, I don’t know where Wendell or the driver are. We lost one horse. Greg is trying to get our bearings. It’s unclear where we are, as nothing like this was on the route to Chartsend.” Greg returns and reports, “Up ahead in the direction to horse fled there is a T-junction. To the left and right are more pathways that end in more turns. Behind us is the sole turn we took, back to the left. That pathway I cannot see the end of that path from here.” Roald speaks again, “Sir, what are your orders?”


Macon examines Josleen while she examines him. The King hit his head in the crash, but aside from that and a few currently unseen bruises, he is alright. Once he is sure the Queen is as well, and after giving Gigi a secret, sympathetic look, he goes to wherever the cargo is and retrieves the empty Rage Axe. He listens to the briefing given by Roald and Greg and weighs their options. If Wendell were here, he could fly up and get a better look at the surroundings and maybe see where Wendell and the driver ended up. Darn. The Rage Knight growls to himself while deliberating, looking up and down the path. He sees no merit to continuing forward if they were actually not heading towards Chartsend, as Roald suggests. Macon fears that the driver was leading them into a trap, and that it may have already been sprung given the disappearance of one of the royal Guard. He returns to Josleen’s side, holding his weapon of choice high in one hand so that the butt of the handle rests against the ground, and points back the way they came, “We'll go back. Look for Wendell,” he decides. “And the driver.” This is said with venom, suggesting that he is suspect number one for this latest Royal carriage crash, and he probably would not like it if they find him. “Figure out where we are.” The command is sent Roald’s way. Josleen is given a slate glance, she lived around here once. Does she know where they are?

The Legend of the Maze

Josleen and the guards agree that the King’s plan is the most sensible. The Queen shakes her head to Macon’s unspoken question. “These hedges are trimmed. Perhaps we’re on someone’s estate? An ambitious garden?” The Queen is not wearing sensible shoes, but she did pack a pair of hiking boots. Her suitcases were lashed onto the top of the carriage, one large and one small. “Hmm…” she paces around the carriage and kneels to peek under the toppled wheels. “My suitcase must have fallen off the carriage when the horses broke into a gallop. We’ll find it when we retrace our steps.” Thankfully her boots were in the big suitcase and she changes footwear before setting off. Following the King’s plan, they head back the way they came with Roald in the lead and Greg and the remaining horse bringing up the rear. The hedge-lined path appears endless, but of course they know that cannot be. Still, instead of an exit, there’s a blurry haze of green. After about twenty minutes of walking, they come upon Josleen’s smaller suitcase, which indeed had fallen and burst open. Some of her lacier and strategically-cut under garments are in there, and the Queen blushes bright red as she slams it shut. The side handle broke off and the Queen abandons it in the grass. The suitcase has a shoulder strap and Greg offers to carry it for her. After another ten minutes of walking, the air grows thick and the light tints green. A hums rings in their ears and the air grows heavy on their limbs and lightly squeezes their skulls, as if freediving in the ocean. Although it isn’t painful, it’s still alarming, and the guards, poodle, horse, and Queen alike all look as if ready to break into a gallop. The horse in particular panics, in the same manner he had earlier. Greg controls the horse and forces it to walk at a quickened pace. The feeling passes, but Josleen gasps and points at the ground. They’re passing that same broken suitcase handle! Behind them, a long distance away, is the crashed carriage, and ahead of them is the green haze. “Your majesties, wait here,” says Roald. He breaks into a sprint moving forward and after a few minutes disappears before their eyes and reappears a few paces behind them, running in the same direction. Josleen’s stomach drops along with Roald’s and Greg’s faces. “...Macon,” Josleen whispers breathlessly as if realizing something at last, “Remember what Juraj said at dinner last night? About his lands?” She wipes a hand over her mouth and rubs anxiously at her collar. Greg stands on Roald’s shoulders but cannot clear the height of the hedges. Though the lack of information is starting to unnerve them, they do not panic. They are trained Larketian soldiers. Roald points at the carriage. “I’ll stand on that, then you stand on my shoulders, Greg.” They need to head back to the crash, and on the way Josleen fills in Macon on her discovery, “Juraj mentioned his lands is often raided by minotaurs. The valley of the minotaurs is nearby… and…Do you know the legend of Oheth? The Wild Monk of the Plains? He lived long ago, before King Rheven ruled these lands under the Archmosian Empire. He was a monk of Hind and caretaker of the plains and the Dead Forest north of here. The minotaurs lived in the valley even then. They began felling trees in the Dead Forest for wood, but they made a grave mistake and chopped a dryad’s tree. The dryad would have died were it not for Oheth who saved her roots and replanted them on the edge of the plains so that she may grow alone and in her singularity be noted for her importance and never again be mistaken for a common tree. The minotaurs, fearing retaliation from the dryad, convened a council. They could not kill the dryad or they would incur the wrath of Hind and his servant Oheth who at the time was very powerful and feared. They decided to build a circular wall around the dryad’s tree before the roots flourished back to their original strength and the dryad’s power was restored. And it worked, for a while. For years, the dryad and her tree grew in isolation from the forest, growing mad in her solitude. But the birds brought her twigs, flowers, and berries from the forest, and after a decade she was strong enough to break through the wall. When the minotaurs heard of this, they sent masons to patch the breach, but the dryad was waiting for them and sought revenge in the exact same way the minotaurs harmed her, by building a wall of hedges, several walls in fact, to drive them mad as they had done to her, drive them mad as they searched for an escape. She built a labyrinth. The minotaurs sent soldiers and priests to save their kin, but the dyrad met each envoy with more and more walls. Over hundreds of years the minotaurs again and again tried to best the dryad, and each time she met them with the same mad game, and the labyrinth grew. Eventually the minotaurs forfeited their quest and the dryad is said to have hid her labyrinth and tree by means of her druidic magic and its location was forever lost, save to the minotaur priests who guard this secret.” They reach the carriage at this juncture in the story, and Roald and Greg stack on top on each other and the carriage to get a better view. They gasp as they take in the breadth of the maze of hedges. It extends as far as the eye can see in 180 degrees, they say. They are on its southern wall, and there appears to be no exit along this wall. Josleen pulls out quill and parchment from her suitcase and asks Greg to identify the best path moving forward, and she jots down his instructions.


Macon raises a brow as they begin walking through the thick, green air. The King has the same idea as Roald after seeing that discarded handle a second time and when the Kingsguard breaks into a sprint, The Rage Knight turns 180° and looks for the young swordsman to appear from back the way they came. The (no longer practicing) Death Knight looks more angry than concerned with the fact that they are perhaps trapped in some kind of looping space. On the way back towards their crashed lookout point, Macon listens to Josleen tell him the tale curiously, offering spaced out grunts and such that reassure that her audience is captivated. He looks somewhat incredulous that she believes that they are trapped inside of some legendary hedge maze. The royal guardsmen stack up and reveal that they are trapped inside of some legendary hedge maze. The Rage Knight grumbles something about Wendell being able to fly and steps away from Josleen for a bit while she is taking notes. Believing that he is more clever than a mess of minotaurs, the King moves towards what has been identified as the southern wall of the labyrinth, takes the Rage Axe in both hands and starts hacking mightily at the base of one of the hedges. ‘Why didn't those cows just cut their way out?’ he wonders, judging the captives from the tale to be very dumb.


Josleen believes 80% of myths and legends without any shred of evidence, so this, by comparison, is the same as meeting Sven and shaking his hand. Now she’s a believer. The guards, who had also heard the tale, grow anxious. “Does this mean that there’s a mad dryad somewhere in here?” asks Greg. Roald glares at Greg to nut up and beat that twinge of fear out of his throat. Greg’s green, greener than these hedges, and the Larketian training did not cover what to do when trapped inside a legendary labyrinth, and without your mage. The hedges seem to have their mage, however, as the wood and leaves regenerate instantaneously as Macon hacks away at the shrubs. It’s about as effective as cutting a shrubbery with a herring. The Rage King will exhaust himself to death before seeing a dent. “Oh my gods,” Josleen mutters into her palms as she paces away from the group and rubs at her face. Gigi limps after her and whines. She takes a deep breath then paces back. “There’s more. According to legend, there are two ways out of the hedge. You kill the dryad, rendering her magic powerless, and hack through the hedges, or… you find Oheth’s grave. He is buried somewhere in here, in a tomb of wood and flowers. Inside the tomb is his Staff of Hind which grants the wielder dominion over plants, and then you can will the hedges to part, though the legend has various versions and the staff doesn’t appear in all of them. If only Wendell was here, he may have a way to…” She grimaces, glances at Macon, then looks away as if realizing something which he may not. She doesn’t speak her mind. Greg speaks up, “What if we climbed over the hedges? We have rope from the reins, and the carriage gives us a leg up. We could climb, help the Queen down gently first.” Roald looks skeptical of the idea. “The hedges are bewitched. If the dryad is real, and it seems it is, and it wants us to complete the maze, then… without Wendell, I don’t see how we escape.”


Macon discovers what the minotaurs in the tale must have found out during the ambiguous time that they were trapped inside this same maze. Brute force will do no good here, it seems, or at least not the amount the Rage Knight has access to right now. There are those death knight skills… he was practicing on plants the last time he used them, but that is no longer an option for The King of Larket. He is not a death knight anymore, because of love or something. His right eye twitches as he stops hacking at the hedges and drops the butt of the empty Rage Axe down onto the ground hard, and with a growl. As The Fury Knight, Macon prefers the first proposed solution from the legend; killing the dryad, but it appears that both courses of action require the same thing be done. That is, traverse the maze. Roald and Greg debate climbing and The King makes a final decision on that idea. “We will move through the maze.” He doesn't want to lose any more Kingsguard to this place and is afraid climbing on these plants could lead to just that. “Lead the way,” he says to Josleen. It is a figure of speech, as he'll be walking in front of her, but she'll be directing with those notes she took. She looks away from him and he pries, curious, “Wha’ is it?”


Josleen had realized the same thing Macon did, that the very same powers he gave up for her could help them escape this situation. She shakes her head at his question, eyes glancing towards the kingsguard to suggest she won’t speak her mind before them. She reflexively follows his order to move out, but doesn’t make it the length of the carriage before she’s turning back, pacing anxiously, her nerves more powerful at the moment than the King’s command. Gigi whines at the distance that grows between Josleen and Macon, sticking by the Queen, but begging the King to stop, something’s wrong. Josleen paces alongside the carriage then abruptly enters it with her small suitcase in hand. She unpacks everything lacy and replaces it with the food the Venturili nobles gifted them, and takes a canteen from her bigger suitcase and packs that too. She gives the contents of the suitcase an unsatisfied look then clicks it shut and rejoins the men outside. Greg takes the suitcase again and ties it to the horse’s back, over a horse blanket he found in cargo. The Queen takes stock of the group, their wares, and the grim line of her lips is the best attempt she can muster at hiding her despair. She knows not to poison morale with her concerns, but her nervous energy makes itself felt nonetheless. This isn’t the first time she has found herself against odds heavily in death’s favor. This also isn’t the first time she’s found herself trapped inside the game of a mad magical entity, and the last time she was trapped she remained trapped for what felt like a year--a full year. And their group has no magic user, not without Wendell, and not without the King’s secret dark powers. As they walk, she does two things: she drops crumpled bits of paper every couple yards or so, and she draws a map, doing her best to represent scale, but the King has a poorly drawn whisky label on his desk that proves scale isn’t her forte. “To not double back on ourselves,” she explains. 10 minutes pass, then thirty, then an hour, and here they run out of directions to follow from Greg’s scouting and must make decisions impulsively, and based on the Queen’s new map whose routes are incomplete and scale is questionable. A couple of times they find themselves on passageways already littered with her discarded paper, and sometimes figure out that they must retrace steps to find another turn. What more, the scale of her map is a problem, as many times they open onto an already-tread path and she has no idea from which corridor they just came. She’s constantly revising the map, making educated guesses where she can. A second hour passes, and all there is to see is rows upon rows of green hedges. Boredom comingles with nervousness. Is there an out? Will they find the dryad? At least the temperature isn’t torturous, neither hot nor cold, and at least it isn’t raining, though Josleen wishes it would as the guards’ canteens won’t quench their thirst for much longer. Gigi’s limp grows worse as he is forced to endure a longer walk than his paw can handle. During the third hour, hunger sets in and the Queen’s scant snack offers only a temporary solution, while bringing into sharp focus their problem. This could take a while, in the order of days, and they are ill-equipped. Exposed to the elements, without food or water, they may die an unglamorous death here. They make a left turn and find another trail of crumpled paper. They’ve been here already. They are completely lost. Josleen catches up to stand beside Macon and whispers so that only he can hear, “We need a better plan. The minotaurs died in here. How are we to do any better?”


Macon shoots a slate glance towards Greg and Roald when Josleen indicates that she won’t speak in front of them. The former Death Knight can’t tell that he and his wife are both thinking the same thing, and he puts the idea of using those ‘old’ skills out of his mind as an impossibility. It has been over a month since he tried any of them, so it actually may not be possible anyway. Of course he waits for the bard to repack for their current situation when Gigi whines. He will lament the loss of the lacy stuff when and if they make it out of this damn place.The King and Royal Guard do not openly show signs of fatigue or hunger, the latter due to professionalism, and the former because Hard Larketian Stone. Macon does growl feraly however, whenever they return to a part of the maze already littered with Josleen’s breadcrumb replacement. Hour three sees the Queen rushing to his side to express her concern. He asks, grasping at straws, and in a non-mocking manner, if she has any top secret bard skills that might help them find the correct path. He looks towards Roald and then Greg appraisingly, as his only other idea outside of solving the maze will require their strength. This party cannot be outperformed by a bunch of cow people. They must make it out, and so Macon offers his plan B, thoroughly convinced that the legend Josleen has told is true and they are living it. “We can try to lure the dryad out… Start a fire.” He’s not totally sure that would even work on the hedges or piss the master of this labyrinth off enough to draw ‘her’ out, but that’s all The King has got at the moment.

Treacherous Topiary

Joleen gives Macon a withering look when he asks if she has any secret bard skills. In that look is rant translated into a brief glare, a rant whose thesis goes something like this: Are you really criticizing me for being ill-equipped for a magical murder maze. Me, your queen, who you’re supposed to protect and whose abilities to bust out of magical murder mazes should be irrelevant because you are the one who should be busting us out of anything? Then she clicks her tongue, exhales audibly, and looks away, a second rant, another thesis: I’ve been useful already. Macon may not have intended to mock her, but frayed nerves and a very immediate fear of death-by-maze-attrition has everyone on edge. And, judging by the way Greg secretly pinches his thigh, he’s doubting reality itself. Could this be a dream? Roald perks up at the King’s suggestion of fire. He rips a fistful of branches off a hedge (which instantly regenerates), strips the twigs of their leaves (these do not regenerate once the branch has been torn), and using his sword, a stone, the Queen’s paper, and some elbow grease, he sets the bouquet of twigs alight then uses this torch to burn the northside hedge (they’re in an east-west corridor). Burned twigs do not regenerate as quickly, and soon Roald is burning a hole that sticks. “It’s working!” Josleen exclaims. Greg and the Queen (and Macon?) fashion more torches from branches and expand the fire. Roald smacks burning branches downwards with his gauntlet to speed up the process. Curious green haze (like the one that teleported them back a few feet in the southernmost corridor) fills the hole that Roald opens. Soon the hole is large enough to pass one-by-one four people, a dog, and a horse, but there is no indication as to what is on the other side. They have a choice: take their chances through what is likely another magical portal, or, continue in their corridor, walking in circles in the maze where they may likely die of starvation. “Last one didn’t kill us,” says Roald. “But we don’t know what is on the other side. It could be a trap,” counters Josleen. Greg, who still doesn’t believe this is real, shrugs and volunteers to go first. “Can’t die in a dream, can you?” he says. Greg’s mental resilience worries Josleen and she looks to Macon to see if he too is concerned. Roald takes the harness from the horse and ties it around Greg’s middle. “So we can yank you back if anything happens,” he explains. Greg nods then disappears through the haze, the floating leash in the center of the portal the only indication that he is still on the other side. Less than a minute later, his head pops back through and he’s chuckling at their frightened faces, mostly Roald’s, “It’s beautiful, and an improvement I’d say. Come!” The rest of the group files through the haze, with Roald bringing up the rear and the horse. Instead of yet another corridor, they walk but a garden with berry bushes and fruit-bearing trees, benches made of twisted wood, and trimmed hedges shaped like minotaurs, most standing, some kneeling, all looking towards the skies, braying. A carpet of colorful wildflowers replace the green grass, and between the bright flowers shoots of honeysuckle extend towards their knees. In the north east corner there is a pond fed by a brook with water fowl swimming. Gigi limps in that direction, tail wagging wildly. He would love to hunt the birds! Yes! There’s also squirrels chittering in the trees, and groundhog holes. What more, the garden isn’t surrounded by heades, but by the same hazy green portal extended like a wall, with openings and turns in places, like a maze of hazy magic portal. Josleen’s finger traces the hazy-wall’s shape in the air and she asks the group, “Do you think this is a mirror of the hedge maze? We need to get some height again and see.” Even without a vantage point they can see far in the north western distance, beyond the wall, a broken circular tower with a massive tree bursting through its roof and one side. “The dryad’s tree,” Josleen says with a gasp as she points at it. The branches are partially burned, and the burn looks brand new, some of the embers still alight. Greg scouts ahead and says, “Roald, I’ll stand on a bench, you stand on my shoulders.” Greg hops onto the strange, warped wood bench and secures his footing as best her can on the gnarled, rounded roots. He waves for Roald to join him, but just as he does so the wood beneath his feet twists upwards and loops around his ankle. Josleen screams! Roald shouts “Greg!” Roald as he runs forward, drawing his sword. Vines and twigs bud up Greg’s legs, the very same type as those that formed the braying minotaur bush shapes. Roald hacks at the thick wood beneath Greg’s feet, but it quickly regenerates. Each time Roald hacks the wood, the dryad’s tree in the distance shakes and loses twigs and branches that very quickly also regenerate. “Fire! We need fire!” Roald shouts. Then Greg starts screaming in blood-curling pain. Twigs burst through his very flesh! Outwards through his clothing, or getting stuck beneath his armor! Bloodied shoots and buds erupt from his flesh as if it were the soil! From his feet up, the shoots burst outwards, so that increasingly Greg looks like one of the trimmed, shapely bushes. Josleen screams in terror but does what she can to help Macon start a fire.


Macon didn’t mean it that way, Josleen. He raises a brow warningly at her twin, wordless rants, but does not argue against them. Apologizing for the imagined slight is beyond him, as apologies often are for the current King of Larket. Besides, there are bigger fish (or tree people in this case) to fry. The Rage Knight helps to burn away the passage into the maze wall as it turns out he -is- more clever than those stupid minotaurs! Fire! Genius! It’s working! While the small party discusses what to do with the portal they just opened up, Macon growls internally at Greg’s insistence that this is a dream. His concern for the wellbeing of this green kingsguard is overwhelmed by his desire to know what is on the other side of the hole in the hedges and so the rookie royal guardsman is allowed to take his journey through the mystical haze into the other side. Inside the mirror of the maze The Rage Knight eyes the minotaur hedge sculptures cautiously, as if he is expecting them to come alive (and try to impale the group with twiggy horns?). He squints through the translucent haze towards the tree and building towering in the distance. He sticks his hand through the green mist and watches it disappear and reappear with a handful of a couple of twigs torn off the hedge wall on the ‘other side’. He’s thinking quietly while the others prepare to make their second human totem pole and only snaps out of it when Greg is grabbed a hold of. Panic. The Rage Knight is right there with Roald, hacking and slashing with his massive axe at the bench, managing to chop off a few good chunks, but they regenerate with ease, the tree in the distance doing the same. Roald calls for more fire with as level a head as one might be able to have in this situation and Macon follows the command. He (at least) had brought his makeshift torch through the haze with him, but it was not designed to last for more than a few moments to do its job, so the fuel that it burned is all but ash and charcoal now. This, the twigs he pulled from the other side, and the chunks of bench he knocked off, are what the king and queen use to get the new fire going, but it is slow going, and feels even slower thanks to the cries coming from Greg adding pressure to the situation. They succeed in starting a fire (Josleen is angrily forbidden by the king from getting anywhere near the bench or even the pieces of it), but when applied to the bench, the fire takes longer to ignite the thicker wood than it did the branches of the hedges and with the time it took to start the fire, Greg is nearing the point where he is completely swallowed up. The Fury Knight, while the bench slowly starts to burn beneath Greg, glances at Josleen, looking slightly apologetic for what he is about to try to do, before he turns his back to her, hiding the movements of his lips as he offers a silent ‘prayer.’ When used properly, the Death Knight ability Macon is trying to access would imbue his weapon with a deathly aura that would cause anything struck to begin to decay, but even before The Rage Knight swings his great axe again he knows it will not work as intended. The ability is lost to him now that he has abandoned Vakmatharas and the strike against the bench yields the same result as the previous ones, only perhaps a bit more effective given the presence of the flame. Roald helps to spread the flame, futilely attempts to calm the sprouting Greg, and starts hacking away again when he sees his king do the same.


Macon’s prayer doesn’t put off Josleen in the slightest. Quite the opposite, she looks eager for it to work, leaning forward as if expecting some dregs of death-juice to darken the branches. Her morality is situational, it would seem, and if Vakmatharas gets the job done and spares Greg’s life, then so be it. Gigi barks and snarls at the malevolent bush. The poodle lunges forward and back as if he is prepared to fight the bush, once he figures out what the hell it is. Josleen yanks him back by the collar, but she calls another name. “Macon!” She’s as scared the bush will take him as he was scared it would take her. It’s too late anyway. Greg’s eyes roll as the branches burst through his beating heart and out between his ribs, spraying Roald and Macon’s faces with blood. The only voice screaming now is Josleen’s. Greg’s gone. “Macon, please! It’s too late!” Branches extend up Greg’s throat and out his open mouth, as twigs grow out his face like a beard before there’s no flesh or hair left and he’s indistinguishable from an ornamental hedge. As soon as Macon stops swinging, Josleen is pulling him back by the arm, scared that he may be the bush’s next victim if he stands too close. She stands very close to Macon, facing him, her back to Greg’s green corpse. Her lips quiver and a few tears roll free. Although she’s seen many deaths as a war nurse, those, though difficult, felt different than this. Those were soldiers who volunteered to fight for a crown or ideology they believed in, who knew the risks. Yes, Greg volunteered to protect his King and Queen, but what sort of death is this? What risk is there in traveling to Chartsend for a beach holiday? What dignity is there in being claimed by an evil tree spirit to adorn her garden? Roald struggles with this particular death as well. He doesn’t cry, but his face is red with the effort it takes not to. He wrings his eyes and looks away, though his feet stay planted by his fallen comrade. The horse fled during the fight and can be seen in the distance across the garden, near the pond. The sun hangs low in the west. The have a couple precious hours of light left. Josleen looks up at her husband as if asking ‘what now?’ She wipes away at yet more tears, doing her best to hide them from Roald.


Macon keeps on chopping away at the wood that is beginning to char even after it is clear that it is too late to save Greg. The swings of the great axe stop being part of a rescue mission, and turn into violent acts of vengeance. In the distance the massive tree takes minimal fire and chopping damage to mirror the strikes against the malicious bench, but the sight is slightly reassuring to the Rage Knight that he is actually doing -something- anything. The King grieves with fury while The Queen and Roald hide their mourning from each other. Josleen finally manages to pull the former death knight away from the bench to see that he is gritting his teeth and staring off towards the tree in the distance through the walls of green haze. He hasn't wiped Greg’s blood off of his face yet, maybe not even noticing it in his anger. Josleen’s back is to the Greg bush and Macon puts his right arm around her waist, pulling her slightly closer to place just a little more distance between her and that killer bench. The Rage Axe remains in his left hand, the end of the long handle resting on the ground. “We're going to kill the Tree and get out of here.” He says, answering her silent question while glaring off into the distance. There is really no other option that he can see. There is only one landmark to head towards. Roald moves to go collect the horse and himself while Macon stays with Josleen. Before they start moving again they will craft more permanent torches using cloth and whatever alcohol the Venturilian’s saw them off with…


Josleen presses her face to Macon’s chest when he hugs her close. Macon’s words do little to encourage or rally his Queen and guard. It’s getting late in the day, hunger has set in, morale is at an all time low, they are not equipped for any of this, they’re at a huge disadvantage in this dryad’s maze--and from the looks of things they’ll be camping in it tonight. Josleen knows enough not to complain, but Gigi does not, and his whining only adds to the group’s distress. Once Roald has gone to fetch the horse, Josleen pulls a handkerchief from her small suitcase and hands it to Macon to wipe his face of Greg’s blood. The cloth, soaked in wine, can be repurposed as torch fuel. When Roald returns, the Queen pats his shoulder comfortingly. “Let’s say a few words.” A small funeral kills precious time they don’t have before the sun sets, but the bard senses it is absolutely necessary to perform. Roald could have died just as easily as Greg (and so could she or Macon, but she tries not to dwell on that fact), and thus it is important that Roald sees Greg’s life (and by association his life) is valued, and their deaths appropriately mourned. The Queen (hair shriveled, dress dirty, face sweaty, make-up all but gone) leads Roald and Macon in a quick, traditional Larketian eulogy for fallen soldiers. Roald adds a personal line about Greg being a dependable, loyal friend. The Queen squeezes Roald’s shoulder a second time and says, “The King and I were just discussing awarding Greg the medal of valor posthumously, as soon as we get back to Larket.” They weren’t just discussing that at all, but Roald’s face brightens a little to hear that they were. The Queen’s gambit works. Tradition, hope, honor rallies Roald just enough to glare at the dryad’s tree to the northwest and then look back at Macon with his resolve restored. “Sir,” he says with a nod. “I suggest we go north and west as the crow flies. Follow corridors when they lead in that direction, and burn through dead ends. The Queen should rest on the horse.” Soon Josleen, who doesn’t train or engage in much physical activity, will slow them down. Although there is tantalizing fruit all around them, no one dares suggest they pick it. Moving north and west, the group passes through haze, returns to the hedges, eventually burns through hedges, back to haze, hedges, haze, hedges, over and over, always adjusting their course then they can see the tree, and guessing when they cannot. The sun sets. The moonless, cloudy sky provides no light and they’re moving in pitch darkness. To burn torches would exhaust what little fuel they have, which they need for the tree. “Maybe we should camp,” Josleen says when they reach a T-junction dead end. “We would need to keep watch in shifts, but have the hedge to our flank in here.” In the darkness they can’t even see their hands before their noses. They can only keep track of each other by their breaths and paces, both of which are drowned out by the horse’s which are much louder. Josleen lowers herself off the horse and fumbles in the darkness for Macon’s arm. Down the corridor, to the right, and down a ways more, a faint pale light glows. “Roald?” Josleen whispers to see if perhaps it is him. “I’m right here,” Roald responds from behind Macon and Josleen. “Then who is that?” There’s not steps coming from the direction of the light, but the light grows stronger as it approaches.

Holy Cow

Macon’s goal was perhaps not to reassure Josleen and Roald, but to reassure himself. This maze has claimed the life of at least on Larketian, so now he is going to claim the life of the maze. He cleans the Larketian blood off of his face and that cloth goes into one of the torches being put together. The Rage Knight doesn't believe that Roald requires as much coddling as Josleen seems to think he does, but the brief ceremony is welcomed at face value to pay tribute to the fallen Royal Guard. Macon’s role in the short funeral invariably contains the words ‘Hard Larketian Stone’, The King showing gratitude in his speech, shooting a fiery glare at the Greg bush the entire time. ‘They -are- getting out of here,’ he tells the bush defiantly. The thinned group follows Roald’s suggested path and find themselves standing off with an approaching light in the dead of night. Macon places himself between Josleen and the light more so than he already was, and steps forwards, the handle of the Rage Axe held in both hands, at the ready. “Who’s there?” The King growls out, threatening. He is in the mindset currently of ‘axe first, ask questions later’ should the light and anything accompanying it get too close.


A large glowing white moth rounds the corner hedge, emitting a pale gray light. It floats towards Macon’s face, illuminating it briefly as it glides past his ear, and towards Josleen, illuminating her features as it tries to land on her forehead. She swats it away frantically, mostly taken by surprise and the natural fear of the unknown. The moth floats upwards, then dives back towards her face, trying again and again to land on her forehead. The moth’s insistence gives rise to panic, and Roald and Josleen both try to swat and kill this thing before it lands on her forehead. “My Queen! Get down, let me handle it!” But Josleen, shouting monosyllabic distress calls (“Aah!” “Noo!” “Auurrhh!”), is too panicked to follow instructions. From the dark corridor from whence the moth came there comes a deep bass sniggering and mocking wheeze, growing louder as whatever laughs at them approaches. “Heeeeheheheheheeeeeee. Hoohoo, hooo, huehue.” It steps into the furthest reaches of the moth’s light: a misshapen and skinny bovine nose that curves forward like a toucan’s beak, deep set, long-lashed cow eyes, on a neck so skinny the flesh sags on the bone like old rags. “Ha-ha-haaaa!! Hahahahahahoooo.” The creature’s hunched back is so skinny that every vertebrae is visible to the naked eyes. A loincloch made of leaves and vines hangs on its skinny hips. Although its chest, arms, and hands are human (albeit malnourished and sickly), the creature holds its fingers togethers like hooves. There’s no visible reason why the fingers should be clamped together like pinching salt, permanently, never opening. The pinched fingers points at Josleen and the creature says in a mocking tone, “The grave moth says you will die next! The moth knows who death will claim, and it is you! Ha-ha! Not me! Still not me! Never me! Hoooo!” The moth leaves Josleen be and perches on the outstretched, closed hand like a falcon returning to its falconer.


Macon lowers the great axe in his hands only slightly when he realizes that the light is a moth. The Rage Axe is overkill, no matter how you look at it, for an insect of this size. In a vacuum, the queen and Roald’s reaction would be comedic. ‘It's just a bug, ’ The king would have thought at the sight of this. Now that they are in a maze where -a bench- has just turned a (carefully selected) member of the Kingsguard into a Corpse shrubbery. Anyway, the moth is too close to Josleen now to strike at it with the Rage Axe, so Larket’s King sits this one out, somewhat, after his first swat with his right hand misses the moth. Then the laughing comes and the King’s weapon is raised again, this time towards the sound. Slate eyes narrow towards the minotaur-esque man, and The Fury Knight takes a threatening step towards the seemingly crazed newcomer, cutting off the line of sight between his wife and the laughing man. The thing speaks of Josleen’s predicted demise and Macon growls before looking back towards her, unable to hide the look of concern in that moment. He has heard of Vakmatharas priestesses able to predict the impending deaths of those around them, but has not seen such a thing done in practice, now has he ever heard of an insect able to do this. One more forward step is taken, the King standing tall as he levels the large axe head towards the man, again a silent threat. “The ‘ell are you talkin’ about?” More questions are sure to come, along the lines of how to get out of here or how to reach the tree.


Josleen, a bard predisposed to believing in magical legends and creatures, pales when the moth is explained as lethal omen. Makes sense, to a bard. She swallows hard, trying to convince herself that the creature is lying, but the story appeals to her sense of drama and fiction and shakes her to her core. The mad minotaur eagerly watches Macon’s (and Roald’s) concerned expression, a smile splitting his bovine face. Then he registers Josleen’s panic and begins to snicker. The king’s serious grilling and threat pushes him over the edge. “Haaaa!!!” he brays in the King’s face. Putrid breath billows past crooked, sparse teeth. Horseflies buzz around the skeletal cow in a thin swarm. His hair is patchy and brittle, and head completely bald. “Haaaa!!!! Your faces!” He brays again, pointing at all their faces with his clenched fingers. “You should see your faces!!! Haaa!!!” He jumps forward onto his pinched fingers and kicks his back hooves into the air delightedly. “Grave moth!!! Hahaheehooo! Hoo! Hooo!!!! You believed me! I got you!” He rocks onto his curved back and kicks his hooves into the air in time with his braying laugh. Josleen steps forward to get a better look at the cow and his moth, though she’s still behind Macon. “So… the moth can’t see who will die next?” “HAA-HAAA!!!” The cow laughs so hard he starts wheezing. “No! There’s no such thing as a grave moth! Huehue! Hoo! I got you good!” He says as he slowly starts to compose himself and stand. “Say I got you good. Say it. I got you good, right?” Josleen glances sidelong at Macon then back at the mad minotaur, speechless. “Say it, say I got you good! It was a good prank, right? It was good?” Josleen nods reluctantly, “Y-yes. You got me. Good.” The cow slaps his skeletal knee triumphantly like ‘I knew it’. Then he turns to Macon. “And you? I got you good, right? I got you? You believed me, right? I got you?”


Macon shifts the Rage Axe into one hand, still holding it out towards the madman when he brays. The King turns his head away from the halitosis onslaught while it is revealed that there is no such thing as a grave moth and the Larketian party has been had. He is a mix of relief and fury at the revelation that a bug is not predicting Josleen’s demise. This is not a good prank, cow. The Fury Knight also -hates- this guy’s variety of laughs. Finding a minotaur, even this particular one, in this maze should be an event that gives the party just a bit of hope. There were minotaurs in the legend Josleen told, so maybe this cow knows something that can help them get through this maze. It is for this reason, and this reason only that The Rage Axe is not put to use here against this infuriating mad cow. When The Queen of Larket admits reluctantly that she’s been gotten, she earns a glance from The Fury Knight, like ‘what the heck is this guy?’ Macon raises a brow and shoots a sideways look at the madman when he demands that the king admit that he fell for the prank as well. A low growl is as much of an admission that the minotaur is going to get from the former sheriff, take it or leave it. Roald, doing his job, joins the royal couple, standing beside the king and drawing the attention of the minotaur away from them. He introduces himself, and then the king and queen as Larketian Royalty, trying to impress upon the madman that they are very important and -must- escape this maze. The Kingsguard goes on to ask the important questions. ‘Does know the maze? The Green haze? How to get to the tree? How to get out? How long has he been here? Etc.’


Josleen returns Macon’s glance with a wide-eyed expression of disbelief. This is nuts. And it’s dark, and the only light by which she can even see her husband, or this insane creature, is by the pale glow of the moth. Upon Roald’s introductions, the skeletal minotaur bows deeply until his forehead grazes the grass underhoof. “Your majesties,” he says, one arm extended up over and behind his head as if holding the hem of an invisible cape. He holds the pose uncomfortably long, not saying a word. Just as the silence begs disruption, he farts! Toot! “HaaaaAAAA!!!” He flops onto his side, kicks his legs into the air, and bray laughs. As he laughs he watches them expectantly through the periphery of his large cow eye. Josleen recognizes the performers’ search for an audience, for the rookie comedian’s nervous desperation to land a joke. And so, she forces a laugh that wouldn’t convince Macon, but is good enough for a stranger. She strokes Macon’s back to indicate he should laugh too. Roald receives a more forceful nudge. “Ha-ha!” Roald manages to belt out two syllables, entirely put off by this creature and his need for approval. Josleen steps forward, still fake laughing, and then sighs wistfully as if charmed by this too-skinny cow freak. “Oh, you’re quite something! What did you say your name was?” “Headley, your grace,” he snickers. “Well, Headley, it’s so lovely to meet you. We’re trying to reach that great tree to the north, do you know the one?” Headley snickers some more, “Does Headley know the tree? Yes, yes. The Lady of the Maze’s tree. Yes. Many years tried to reach the tree, found it, then many more years staying far away from the tree. It’s dangerous. She’s dangerous.” “But you know how to get there? You know the way?” “Yes yes! Headley knows all the ways! Many years, many years learning the maze, and now know all the ways. But, very dangerous. Best not go. No go.” “Why do you say it’s dangerous? Because of the Lady of the Maze?” “Yes yes. Except when she sleeps. When she sleeps you can draw the sap from her tree, then drink this sap and you can pass through the green haze. But when does she sleep? How to make her sleep? Only Oheth knows.” He shrugs, clenched hands lifting towards the sky and moth. Josleen looks a bit confused and glances at Macon. “Surely when you try to draw the sap the lady of the maze wakes? Is it a spell that puts her to sleep?” The minotaur scoffs, “Only Oheth knows!” He glances up at the moth and shakes his head as if saying ‘these idiots, they don’t listen’.


Macon ’s eye twitches and he growls long before he takes Josleen’s silent suggestion that he laugh along with the rest of them. There is no pause between the angry noise coming from the back of his throat and the eventual, short laugh, but there is a definite, insincere ‘heh’ in there somewhere. The King listens to the mad cow rant about his knowledge of the maze, the tree, and what is assumed by The Fury Knight to be the dryad from the legend; ‘The Lady of The Maze’. The name ‘Oheth’ is also newly familiar to the former sheriff. The servant of Hind from The Queen’s telling of the legend. This earns a raise of the brow from Macon, as it would seem there is even more truth to that tale than they previously knew, as long as this isn't another prank by Headley. The King sends a knowing look towards Josleen and Roald before responding to the seemingly frustrated, scrawny minotaur. “Where is Oheth now?” Macon asks, though he keeps his stone stare on the glowing moth rather than the cow while speaking. It may not be a grave moth, because there is no such thing, but The Rage Knight does still feel curious about it nonetheless. “Is he in the maze? Can you take us t’im?” According to Josleen’s telling of the legend, the Wild Monk is the true key to getting out of here, but with the tree being the only reliable landmark to head towards, finding him had not been an option until now.


Headley is surprised by Macon’s question. “Where is Oheth?” His brows settle over a mocking grin. “Where is Oheth, he asks,” Headley says to the moth. He snickers into the crook of his elbow. His eyes shift left and right as he conceives a new, delightful scheme. “Alright!” he finally announces far too loudly given the short space between them. There’s no need to shout. “Alright! I will take you to Oheth’s tomb. Headley knows the way! But not now. Too dangerous. Only with the sun. At night the lost spirits walk the maze and the nymphs hunt. Poor poor man. The wizard. He was dressed like you.” Headley points at Roald, “But no sword. And fat. Very fat.” Roald gasps, “Wendell?” “No, Headley,” the cow says pointing at himself with his clenched fingers. Josleen says to Roald, “Must be Wendell.” “Sir,” Roald says looking at the King, “We should find him now.” Josleen speaks up, “In the dark? We’ll be vulnerable. Besides, who knows how far he is.” Headley giggles, “Not far. Fat man, not far.” On the distance, perhaps 300 meters away (but behind who knows how many hedges and turns) a fireball shoots into the sky. Shortly after, bright blue light glows directly beneath where they saw the fireball. “Sir, that could be Wendell. He could be in trouble.” “Or it could be anything else. We don't know what lurks here,” Josleen counters.


Macon has no reason to trust Headley as far as he can throw him, and he probably trusts him even less than that. It does not help that every time the minotaur says that he will help them, he also laughs. Also, he's weird. This instills no confidence in The King. “Wha’ d’you mean ‘poor man?’ Is he alrigh’?” he asks when the missing Kingsguard mage is described. The debate between Roald and The Queen over whether or not to go look for Wendell in the dark puts The Rage Knight in a difficult position. Normally he would default to siding with the bard, and he is reluctantly leaning that way up until the point that the fireball lights the dark sky like a flare. Macon makes his decision, clutching the handle of the Rage Axe in one hand while taking one of Josleen’s in his free hand. He speaks directly to her, “We should go. Wendell can ‘elp us get out of ‘ere.” The guy can fly, Josleen. Come on. One more time, The King of Larket levels the head of his great axe towards Headley, commanding him as he does any Larketian subject he comes across, “Take us there. Now.” He says, tilting his head in the direction of the fireball that has since faded away.


Josleen is exhausted from a near full day of hiking, while fighting off full blown panic, all on just a single early meal and snacks after that. Roald fares only slightly better than the Queen due to his training, but he too needs fuel and rest, and is beginning to feel the effects of the lack of both. Still, Roald will obey his King without question, and Josleen won’t question him in front of Roald without a good alternative plan on offer. Gigi (who is totally here and totally not forgotten by the players) would question the King if he could speak. {Dad, please, let me sleep. I’m hungry and my paw hurts.} When the party starts moving again, Gigi whines loudly in protest but follows the Queen. She strokes his head and coos, “I know, Gigi. This will be over soon.” She holds onto Macon to not lose him in the dark, and frequently touches Gigi’s head to make sure he is still there. Headley scampers ahead with the moth in tow. After a few twists and turns they can hear a mage’s incantations echoing supernaturally, in the way magic words often boom and echo even without walls. “That sounds like Wendell,” Roald whispers. As they near the voice, the hedges around them are bereft of their leaves and their branches are scorched. The air thickens with smoke and heat. Finally they reach an archway that leads to yet another garden, this one smaller with flowering shrubs and wooden fountains as tall as giants. Wendell is at the center of it, lit by an orb of light over his head, floating a few feet above--is that a hill? The hill suddenly reaches up to grab Wendell’s foot! He evades the hand-shaped vines, and shoots another fireball with his left hand, his non-dominant spell-casting hand. His right arm’s forearm is now twin branches braided like a fishtail braid that end in a rose. The fireball bursts at the center of the rotten heap of vegetation, and yet it doesn’t slow it down. The shambling mound is as big as a dire bear and shrugs off the fireball the way a man shrugs off a match. The mound’s ‘face’ is only discernible by the gaping black holes in the vegetation with pinpricks of light at the center. Another flurry of vines extends from its back to grab Wendell’s foot, and this time Wendell flies even higher to evade it. Higher, higher, higher, until Wendell disappears! He suddenly reappears through the ground below! His head pokes out the grass just beneath the mound’s face. The creature flattens its body on Wendell and slowly begins to absorb the mage completely within it, vines snaking around his body like a straitjacket, sucking him into the creature’s core. Wendell quickly tries to cast another spell but the intelligent beast worms a vine into his mouth to silence him.


Macon is tired too, you guys, and he didn't get to ride on a horse for much of the way up to this point. While the others take their fatigue in stride with varying degrees of complaints, The Rage Knight is defiant towards it. The maze is challenging him and he flat out refuses to back down. This mentality has gotten him into hot water (a war, specifically) before, and surely clouds his judgement here, but one thing is for sure, they are better off with Wendell than without him. One imagines that Josleen does not sound very convinced when she tells her poodle that ‘this will all be over soon’. This causes his resolve to waver somewhat as the fact that she has not been trained for anything remotely resembling this ordeal is forced upon him. He glares forward into the light coming from the moth that is half of their guide. When they find Wendell in combat and witness what appears to be some kind of looped space effect that must be the reason behind the mage’s inability to fly around the maze and find the rest of the group, Macon releases his wife while shooting her a look that says ‘stay out of harm's way’ and moves into action, calling to the young kingsguard, “Roald! Free ‘em!” The swordsman’s weapon of choice is better suited to try and cut the vines that are constricting around the mage, and he moves towards the enemy hill to fulfill his king’s command. Towards Headley, Macon barks, “‘Ow d’we stop tha’ thin’!?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, as he is already closing the distance towards Wendell’s captor. Roald and finesse try to free the spell weaver while The Fury Knight and brute force bring the blade of a great axe towards the hill’s ‘eyes’.


Josleen doesn’t need to be told twice to stay out of harm’s way. She stands helplessly near the archway watching her husband rush headlong at a monster, and grows faint. Her stomach drops and she crouches beside Gigi, clinging onto his neck to keep him from rushing at the monster, and watches in horror as the man she loves charges a shambling mound, which she recognizes from her bard’s literature. Headley laughs at the absurdity of the question. What do you mean how do you kill that thing?! Josleen shouts a response to her King and his guard, aided by bardic magic to ensure it reaches their ears. “You must pierce its black heart that animates it. The heart is at its center. It’s cold and does not beat.” Roald’s sword and the Rage Axe rip through vines and wood that do not regenerate. For once a damn tree can be cut! The trouble is that the hide of vines is so thick and the creature so large that it’s simply exhausting to cut to its core while also not getting engulfed in the mound while also not accidentally slicing Wendell who grows bluer by the second as a vine constricts around his throat. It’s a problem of scale, not magic, and Macon and Roald are only two. Thus, Roald prioritizes cutting into the shambler’s side to free Wendell as the creature is distracted by Macon’s axe coming for its face (as the King planned!). Roald re-sheathes his sword and grabs the vine around Wendell;s throat and yanks on it so Wendell can, and does, gulp down breaths. Roald then grabs a dagger from his belt and surgically cuts the vines on Wendell’s throat and mouth. Macon’s axe slices into the shambler’s face and it roars back in his. A giant rotten foliage arm swats at Macon’s head to topple him over, and if successful, add him to the mound’s body just like he did Wendell. Meanwhile, the mage, still trapped, at least has his mouth and immediately starts reciting another spell. Roald continues cutting more surgically with the dagger to free Wendell’s entire body.


Macon roars right back at the rotten mound like the Royal Beast he is. The next swing of the Rage Axe is simultaneous with the shambler’s own retaliation. As if Muzo has never done anything to subdue it, The King’s inherited furious aura bursts onto the scene. The great axe even trembles in his hands, as if recalling the magical stone that once made it whole. It would have been here even without Macon wanting it to be, but in this moment he has called this maddening effect forth with a purpose. Does it even affect the shambling mound? It is hard to say, but the thing is certainly focused enough on the king that Roald can fully free the somewhat gassed Wendell. (In reality the wizard’s incantation was enfeebling the vines that were constricting him, making them easier to cut.) Gigi is -definitely- affected, the animal pulling even harder against Josleen’s grasp and growling and barking at the scene. The axehead digs into the monster’s face again, harder and deeper this time while Macon is indeed swatted down, losing his grip on the axe in the process. The weapon remains stuck partially in the rotten creature while The Rage Knight, a bit more nimble than he usually is in combat thanks to leaving the Rage Armor in Venturil(?), rolls on the ground just enough to void being immediately swallowed up by the shambler. Instead it is just his ankles at first that it can get a hold of. Having freed Wendell, Roald swings around the living hill to start to do the same for the king while Wendell starts flinging fire spells again, this time in more of a flamethrower type technique than the balls of flame he was flinging earlier. Maybe if the king wasn’t so exhausted from his day in this maze he would have come up with the very plan that the party accidentally puts into action now, but he is, so it is through a stroke of luck or two that the thing that happens next happens. Wendell’s magic flame spreads over the shambler and, through the thing’s movements also onto the Rage Axe that is embedded in the monster’s face, specifically into the socket crafted to house the Rage Stone. The weapon is designed to act as a magical conduit. The apparently sentient Angry Artifact was able to ‘pilot’ the great axe while inside the socket, and extend its magic throughout the body of the weapon. When this decidedly ‘dumber’ magic is poured into the socket it immediately spreads over the entire weapon and becomes amplified. In this case, ‘amplified’ means an -explosion-. The pitch black night covering the garden is illuminated in a burst of flame. Roald is blown backwards a few feet, landing on his backside, and Macon is signed and forced down, hard, against the ground. The limb of the shambler that has a hold on him is completely separated from the rest of the creature and stops becoming a creeping threat to The Rage Knight’s life. With its face completely blown off, the cold heart (now lukewarm) is exposed for the group to see, a smouldering Rage Axe lying on the ground a foot or two away…


The Queen’s Gone

Furious Gigi runs at the shambler in full sprint, ignoring the pain in his paw, snarling and barking at the King’s enemy. He’s just ensnared a vine in his teeth when suddenly he is blown away, much further than Roald as he weighs a lot less, his fur a bit singed in places. It seems he escaped Josleen’s grip, who is, given the drama of the moment, eerily silent. She doesn’t shout, not when Macon falls, not when Gigi runs, not when the creature explodes. Curiously, her own furious infection, which normally signals back to Macon like a beacon, is muted and fuzzy, its exact location unclear. The flames and embers die down and Wendell illuminates the fighting trio with a magical light, rushing to Macon’s side to ensure the King is alright and whole. “Sir, are you alright? Can you stand?” The mage will help him stand, then offer the same for Roald. Looking towards the archway there is no moth, and thus no pale light glowing on Headley or Josleen.


Macon grits his teeth as Wendell helps him up. He’s tweaked his back sometime during the struggle against the shambler, and it’s possible he’s suffered a partial tear of his right lat muscle, but he’ll never let anyone examine him to find that out. The Rage Knight tries to stretch, but that only ends up hurting more. He limps over to Roald with the mage, taking one of the kingsguard’s swords while Wendell helps the young swordsman up. The King of Larket drags himself past his weapon of choice, the thing clearly needs a few more moments to cool down, on his way to the exposed heart of the shambler, which he anticlimactically sticks with the end of Roald’s blade, ending any possibility of a ‘we thought it was dead, but it was just pretending’ twist. Probably. Macon tells Gigi to “Calm down,” while looking down at the dog and knowing full well he is the one that set the royal pooch off. All the lights are out aside from a few scattered embers and smouldering half-flames scattered around from the explosion, so The King squints into the darkness in the direction he thinks he left Josleen. “Jos-?” Poor Wendell hasn’t even gotten the chance for people to ask about his new plant arm before a new -urgent issue- comes up. “Find ‘er. Now!” The Rage Knight barks while heading as quickly as he can (not very fast at the moment) towards the archway, and the returned-to-his-feet Roald and Wendell fan out in search, the mage lifting himself off the ground just low enough that he doesn’t go through the high-low loop again… “Your Majesty? Headley?!” Roald’s voice sounds through the garden while Gigi puts his nose to the ground and helps the search party.


Gigi follows Josleen’s scent from the archway to a massive, thick, gnarled and twisted tree, then the scent abruptly ends. He circles the tree, whining, then sniffs in every direction, including up, but losing the scent altogether. Macon may feel her rage infection’s signal coming from ...everywhere. Every hedge, every tree, every bush. Wendell’s light sweeps over the garden in search of the Queen but nothing turns up. “Macon!” Josleen’s voice calls from down the corridor outside the garden. “Someone!” At the end of the corridor is the glowing moth perched still in the hedge. It’s light just barely illuminates the shoulders of a person below, hunched over, on their side, struggling to stand. “Macon!”


Macon follows Gigi to start, who appears to be onto something, but it turns out Josleen is not a tree… Probably. The omnidirectional presence of the rage aura causes The King of Larket to raise a brow, and he cannot understand just why it is present in this way. The very fact that she appears to be outputting the infuriating magic is cause for concern and Macon is ready to bark a demand for haste towards the Kingsguard before the bard’s voice calls his name. He runs, with Gigi, towards the corridor and down it to reach the moth’s glow and the figure beneath it. He kneels to bring (???) back to their feet. Roald and Wendell are close behind.


Macon brings up none other than…. Headley!!! On some level Macon must have known there was a high probability of this. “Ooooh~! Macon!” the mad minotaur coos in perfect imitation of Josleen’s voice. The cow dramatically swoons in Macon’s arms before halitosis bray-laughing in his face-- again. “Got you good! Got you so good!” The glowing moth begins to drift westward down a new corridor. Gigi, who was definitely got good by Headley, looks back towards the garden where the corpse of the shambler still smolders and whines. Wendell and Roald stay back, letting the King handle this however His Fury pleases.


Macon can tell the difference between his wife and an annoying cow person even in dim moth light. The Rage Knight grits his teeth at the flawless vocal imitation Headley has pulled off, and he has had enough of this minotaur’s pranks. The prospect of the cow getting them out of this maze alive is no longer enough to earn the king’s patience. “You got me,” he growls before holding Headley by both shoulders and delivering a nasty headbutt to the creature as punishment. “Now where the ‘ell is she!?” Roald cringes, wondering how wise it is to headbutt a minotaur, who sometimes ram their heads into things on purpose, but continues to keep quiet beside Wendell, who has landed silently next to his fellow royal guard.


Headley screams girlishly as the headbutt flattens him on the grass. He cradles the tender spot on his forehead, hissing through his teeth at the pain, crying ‘Ow’ and ‘why!’ though it’s clear that even in his malnourished, easily-beaten state his skull and hide is quite thick thanks to his ‘original’ race. According to Josleen’s legend, the last known minotaur mission to the maze, happened several centuries ago, and yet the even oldest minotaur never reaches the age of 200 years. This fact dawns on Wendell, who despite not hearing the legend from the Queen, knew the lore thanks to his own fancy schooling. “Sir…” he speaks up, his voice drowned out by Macon’s growled-out question. Headley snickers into his knuckles, hands still pincered. “Oheth’s tomb,” he replies to Macon. Wendell speaks up louder, “Headley, how long have you been in this maze?” Headley counts on four ‘hoofs’, “Five hundred years.” Wendell grimaces then informs the King of his realization. This creature is certainly related to the minotaur, but Wendell isn’t quite sure what they’re dealing with. Headley speaks again, “Oh Sir, oh King, the Queen waits in the tomb.” He bows deeply, fly-bitten tail up, hand extended behind him like before. “Only Oheth can open the tomb. Must ask Oheth.” Roald’s patience for the cow has fully exhausted, and he shouts, “The Queen could not have gotten far. You lie! Where did you take her?” Headley blinks slowly at Roald, as if puzzling through the question then smiles, “Like promised, in the tomb.”


Macon looks towards Wendell out of the corner of his eye while the fat mage questions Headley. The King places no value on the malnourished looking cow-man’s answers. Everything that he says is either nonsense or lies to advance a stupid practical joke. While Headley is bowing again and Roald loses his patience, Macon leaves them, causing the Kingsguard to turn and watch him go, perplexed. He moves around the bend in the maze, back into the garden for a short time. The Rage Aura is emitting from him at an increasing rate as he moves, and while he is moving away, its increased intensity counteracts the fact that he is putting distance between himself and those feeling the effects. When he returns to the group, that furious aura provides an added sense of dread, as one can see, when he comes back around the corner, that he only left to retrieve the cooled down Rage Axe. “-You- ask Oheth,” he issues the gruff sounding command towards Headley before following up, “and take us all to Josleen, now.”


Roald reacts strongest to the King’s rage, as as the King returns he pounces on Headley, his expression swollen and tomato red. He grabs Headley by the skinny throat, chokes and rattles him. “You take us to the Queen now!” He slams the minotaur’s face against the ground then kicks his side as he rights himself, contemplating whether or not to spit on this beast. Wendell, also enraged but more resistant to the aura thanks to his own magical defenses, opts instead to create a magical tether. He puts the cow on a leash and holds onto one end with his one good hand, his other rendered useless as it is still a rose. Headley grows furious too, rubbing his throat and glaring at Roald then the King. So this is how it’s going to be? He thought he had made new friends, but no, he sees now they’re not friends. Well, well, well, Headley doesn’t have to be friends back. Wordlessly he leads them down the corridor the moth chose. Without snickering once he guides the men eastward. As the night grows long the clouds overhead are blown back like a curtain and starlight falls on the maze. Soon enough the air smells like rotten eggs and the corridor abruptly ends at the end of a bog. Wooden planks from walkways over the surface. At the center is a stone structure that resembles a well, or possibly a small tomb. Headley points at the stone structure at the center but doesn’t dare walk on the planks himself.


Macon glances at Roald, knowing full well that he is the cause of the kingsguard’s short temper. He makes no effort to dampen the effects of his own Rage Aura and instead lets the young swordsman do as he will. Headley deserves it, as far as The King of Larket is concerned. The tether is placed by Wendell and the four of them and the moth travel down the corridor. The Rage Knight makes use of his great axe like a walking stick, both his legs still tender from the tussle with the shambler and the explosion that incapacitated it. He is wrinkling his nose, making his expression look even more sour, at the smell of the bog even before they reach it. Roald is wary of the fact that Headley does not seem to want to walk onto the planks, and gives the skinny creature a shove in the back to try and force him along. The King hasn’t the patience to wait for the cow to be forced into the courage of stepping on the planks and moves first, walking atop the bog on the floating wooden path towards the stone structure. As he gets closer he’ll start to call out for the missing bard again...


Wendell floats above the planks alongside the King. “Sir, I suspect this may be a trap. The minotaur looked none too pleased, and thus has reason to entrap us, and I sincerely doubt the Queen got this far on her own. What more, help may be on the way. It was before entering the maze that I was knocked unconscious and forced off the carriage. I flew up high to take a reconnaissance of the situation and saw the maze. I sent word to Venturil via arcane pigeon to the rest of the men warning them of what has happened. Our best bet may be to sit tight. I know you worry for the Queen, but we’re no good to her maimed... or worse...And...” He stops himself before saying that they aren’t even sure that Josleen is still alive. No one has heard her shout and as far as they can tell, she was simply snatched. Headley, meanwhile, grins as he touches his burst lip, dabbing blood onto his clenched fingers. Sneering at Roald, he dips the bloody fingers into the bog. “What the...” Roald mutters. He’s sharp enough to guess at what Headley is doing and shouts ahead to the King and Wendell, “Sir, we should turn back! This cow, there is a predator here.” To the group’s left, the murky water ripples.


Macon , while happy to hear that Wendell has sent for the rest of the royal guard in Venturil, is not pleased with his suggestion that he is walking into a trap. If the mage wants him to turn back now, he better have a better alternative than sitting and waiting while the queen is missing and probably in danger. The King shoots Wendell a sideways glare that says as much and continues on towards the stone structure where hopefully Josleen is. With each step, even before Roald calls out to him, Macon is feeling less and less confident about the validity of Headley’s claim that he has led them to the tomb and the bard. When Roald does give his warning, the Rage Knight turns 90 degrees and growls loudly to both him and Wendell, “We are findin’ Josleen. I am not waitin’ aroun’ while she's missin’. If I am in danger then do your jobs. Protect the king!” With that, he turns back towards his destination in the bog and starts moving again, ignoring the hints at whatever is being summoned by the skeletal cow.


Wendell and Roald exchange worried glances as Macon insists they do their job while also making it incredibly difficult for them to do so by charging head first into what they are sure is a trap. Wendell un-tethers Headley and takes to the sky to scout ahead, as high as the haze permits. He summons a searching ball of light and instructs it to sweep left and right over the surface of the bog. Roald continues to shove Headley forward. At Macon’s 2 o’clock, the curvature of a black spine rises and dives just beneath the bog’s surface. It dives under the planks and resurfaces on the other side. The creature turns on its side and a scaly black fin breaks the surface of the bog. It swims away from Macon then circles back, coming right at him from his 10 o’clock now. Once it has captured Macon’s attention, its sister rushes at the King from his 5 o’clock, ramming head first into the planks to throw the King off the wooden beams and into the bog! “SIR!” Roald shouts as he shoves Headley out of the way and into the swamp. The guard runs on the rocking planks towards the King, drawing his sword and searching by Wendell’s light for the creatures to stab them from above. The bog isn’t very deep. On the very tips of his toes, Macon can just reach his nose and mouth out for breath. Wendell fires a chain of lightning bolts at the first creature, the one who served as decoy. It leaps out of the bog in pain revealing a svelte, long, but narrow body shaped like a shark, but with the hide and snout of a crocodile. “I count three! Roald, behind you!” Wendell shouts. The one who toppled Macon off the planks circles back and keeps low to bite at the King’s tasty, gamey legs.


Macon is knocked off of his plank and into the putrid bog. He maintains a hold on his great axe during his short flight that culminates in a water landing. The weapon pulls him down to the shallow bottom, the butt of the handle is the first thing to touch the soft bed of the swamp. His feet don't reach the bottom as he treads water to keep his head above the surface with one hand remaining attached to the axe. While Roald is avoided by the swamp creatures for the most part by staying low, Wendell, after flinging his bolt of lightning towards one of the predators, hovers over to where the king is, watching silhouette of that monster beneath the water. With a few intricate waves of his hands that resemble what he does while smoothing out the road ahead on carriage rides, the mage raises a pillar of mud from the swamp bed, on the top of that pillar is the Rage Axe with Macon still hanging onto it. The beast must adjust abruptly to the sudden change in depth of its prey and does, just not quite in time. The long crocodile snout slams into the mud and the momentum of the creature carries the rest of its body around the new momentum that is snout in mud. The shark body flips over the top of the pillar of mud and slams into the king of Larket, taking him and the axe with it on the way, “Ouph” The Rage Knight is able to get a weak hack off against the rough skin of the creature during this collision and drop back into the water. It barely breaks the skin, and is useless in terms of damage dealt to deter another attack while The Fury Knight is lost beneath the surface briefly. What it does do, is transfer some of that infuriating aura to the presumably susceptible predator. As he has with the masses of Larket, The Rage Knight is able to direct this madness somewhat. At least enough to send the beast away from another attempt at taking a bite out of him, and instead sending it towards who Macon is most angry with, Headley, who has been shoved into the bog by Roald.


Roald grips the side of the plank as the third whale-croc** rams into it. He manages to maintain his crouched stance and stay topside. As the whale-croc circles away from him, Roald regains his footing and adjusts his stance and grip so that the sword it held in both hands over his shoulder, beside his ear. He waits for the creature to turn back towards him, and just as it charges at his feet, he leaps from the plank! With a roar borne of desperation and frustration entwined, he brings the sword down over his head and vertically through the whale-croc’s bumpy skull. He impales the creature in the bog floor, using his own weight to keep the creature in place until it stops thrashing and succumbs to death. Meanwhile, Headley has one furious whale-croc torpedoing in his direction. He reaches towards the moth that floats just beyond its reach. His arm’s too short, and he squeals a stuck calf as the bog blooms blood red around him. The crocodile head thrashes left and right, violently shaking Headley in the water. He screams for help, his free back hood kicking the whale-croc in the eyes. The moth floats just low enough to touch Headley and suddenly they both disappear, though the whale-croc keeps Headley’s leg as a souvenir. The third bog hunter comes at Macon from behind, opening its maw to crush the Royal skull.


Macon is still a royal sitting duck in the bog now that he has been knocked back into the water by the predator that now has Headley’s leg in its vice grip jaws. With Roald finishing off one of the beasts, and Wendell and Macon on the lookout for the third, none of them bear witness to the mad cow’s fate, but they can hear what they assume is his death throws, which are abruptly cut short, as if he died, you know? None of the three Larketians have the time to mourn the loss of their ‘guide’ (even if they would have), as the king gets the call from Wendell of where the third croc thing is coming from and desperately tries to maneuver so that he can place the Rage Axe, once again grounded on the swamp bed, between himself and the charging creature. The Royal Guard mage raises both hands, or rather one hand and one blooming branch, up towards the sky, and is forced to land on the closest plank to Macon while he performs his latest magical feat. (Normally he would be able to do this while flying, but he is either being hindered by his transformed limb, or he is tiring, or some combination of both.) The murky, putrid water of the swamp is lifted up into the air in two rippling spheres, one bigger than the other so that they can house the croc monster and Macon respectively. They are suspended in the water, in the air, with the Fury Knight maintaining a hold on his weapon and the bog hunter losing all momentum. The spheres of liquid start to move closer together, coaxed by the movement of Wendell’s arms, and begin to drain slowly, exposing more of those contained within. The King and mage exchange a look that confirms the plan and once the shark-croc is in range, the suspension of gravity is turned off and Macon begins to fall alongside the creature. While falling, he swings the great axe at an uppercutting angle into the bottom of the hunter’s throat. Blood splatters and a sad noise comes from the beast just before the pair of combatants splash into the bog again.


Roald moves from the now-dead whale-croc to the whale-croc feasting on (skinny) beef leg. He clambers onto the plank and repeats the leaping, impaling-from the air motion. With the three whale-crocs dead, Wendell zips over to the stone structure to retrieve the Queen and discovers, to his dismay, that’s a sundial. Well, maybe it’s Hollow? He casts a spell to detect springs, traps, openings, hinges. Nothing. It’s a damn sundial, with a moth engraved on its face, and Oheth’s name written beneath it. Wendell maintains more-than-arm’s-length distance from the King as he breaks the news. No Josleen, no Headley, just a bog and three dead whale-crocs. Now what?


Macon dislodges the Rage Axe head from the neck of the whale-croc he and Wendell took down and slowly drags the weapon with him toward a plank that was not taken out during the attack. He submerges completely to plant his feet on the swamp floor to gain enough leverage to lift the weapon up onto the plate K before pulling himself up onto it with a few somewhat pained, strong kicks of his legs. He rolls onto us back, dripping wet with bog water, and breathing heavily. With the adrenaline of the life and death struggle wearing off, his exhaustion from this whole ordeal is showing. He is back on his feet, leaning against the standing greataxe, when Wendell breaks the news; no Josleen. He hasn't the strength to snap at the mage and instead looks around the swamp, “Where is Headley?” The cow leg floating on the surface is disheartening coupled with the cries of pain they all heard, but there is no sign of the rest of him or the moth, which suspiciously appears on the sundial. He couldn't have been swallowed that quickly, right? Macon, Roald, and Wendell call out, “Josleen!” “Headley!” and “Oheth!?” respectively, the latter ‘just in case.’ Now what, indeed.


Wendell crosses his arms before his chest and thinks. There is no sign of the Queen, and frankly, given the rate of danger encountered, he’s already assuming the worst. Gently he suggests, “Sir, I suggest we head for the dryad’s tree. There is no sign of the Queen and we’ve lost our guide. Our only goal is that tree, and we should continue towards it.” Roald reluctantly nods in agreement, grimacing with a touch of self-loathing for having lost one of his charge.


Macon shoots Wendell a sideways stare, but without the fury that usually goes along with that look. The King moves forward and puts himself in range to grab the mage by the collar and get in his face for even suggesting that they abandon the search for the Queen and continue towards the tree, which he does. “He said she was ‘ere.” Even as he is saying this, the Rage Knight realizes how ridiculous of a thing it is to say. Headley was a liar and had led them into a trap as revenge for a headbutt. At least that is how the scenario appears to the group that has dwindled down to three. Macon looks towards Roald for the Kingsguard to back him up, but only finds that regretful look on the young swordsman’s face. The King’s shoulders slump and he releases the grip on Wendell. Their only guide is gone, Josleen’s location and condition is as much of a mystery as when she first went missing, and the only landmarks they know of are this sundial and the druid’s tree. Gigi is on solid ground, only mostly forgotten, at the edge of the bog, having stayed out of danger during the ordeal of the whale-crocs. Macon wants to stay here. He wants to at least feel like there is some hope, and that they are looking for the queen. So he does not give the go ahead to head directly for the tree. “We'll retrace our steps.” He begins in a hollow voice, “‘Ed back t’the garden where we found Wendell… Then we can head for the tree.” The King does not look at either of the royal guardsmen when he gives this command so solemnly.


Wendell makes his face neutral as the King grabs him, not giving away his thoughts which are very briefly disloyal. Roald has a good sense of direction and guides them back by Wendell’s ball of light. After several hundred paces they come across fresh blood stains on the ground. The blood stains are smeared in the direction they are heading, back to the garden where they first found Wendell. Roald follows his memory back, but may as well have followed the blood. In the garden they find the shambler’s corpse, the horse that stayed behind, and Headley and the glowing moth sitting among the flowering bushes. Headley chews herbs and then stuffs the cud into his bloody stump. The moth sits in a bush motionless. The only sign of Josleen here is that which only Gigi can detect: her scent. The poodle follows the scent once again to the gnarled, twisted tree at the center of the garden. He circles it, finding nothing once again.


Macon ’s mind is on the Queen, and not Headley. With a more level head he would have been able to come up with the theory that the Kingsguard do; that this blood is from the cow man. Instead, this sanguine trail tugs at his fear that Josleen is in danger or hurt and that he can do nothing to prevent it. When they near the garden, the King moves quickly ahead of the rest of the group, and is the first to enter and see the wounded former minotaur. Of course he would prefer it if Headley was Josleen, but will take this as just a glimmer of hope. He rushes towards Headley as best he can with the injuries to his legs, using the Rage Axe on the ground to pull him forward. He reaches the cow, and while he is glad to see him, he still growls at him immediately. Maybe losing his leg after leading them into a trap will have sobered him up enough to give the king a straight answer, “Where is she!?” Roald and Wendell come up behind the Rage Knight, looking down at the one legged creature and his moth. Wendell glances towards Gigi and the tree, but Headley is the more promising lead in his, and the rest of the group’s opinion.


Headley glares at Macon. He over enunciates each syllable as if talking to an imbecile. “In Oheth’s tomb. Headley told you this. In. Oheth’s. Tomb. Only Oheth can open the tomb. Headley cannot open the tomb. Now leaves Headley alone, you are not friend.” The minotaur turns away from Macon and resumes tending to his stumpy, bloody thigh. He winces and lows out in pain from time to time. The moth lands on the stump and the whimpering subsides each time, as if the moth helps the minotaur manage pain. Gigi starts feverishly scratching at the tree.


Macon glares right back at Headley while he speaks slowly. He tilts his head in a familiar mannerism that The Queen of Larket herself has adapted for her own use on a few occasions. The Rage Knight’s eye twitches when the cow turns away and, after seeing that the moth appears to be easing his pain, decides to take that away from Headley. He bends at the knees, still holding onto the great axe in his left hand for balance and grabs the glowing moth by the wing between his thumb and forefinger. He levels the strange insect between his own face and Headley’s, growling out, “Take. Me. To. Josleen.” Enunciating each syllable in an imitation of how the mad cow had just spoken to him. Headley has not responded well to threats before now, but maybe the moth will. Meanwhile Roald looms, the active rage aura having worn off, but the young swordsman can still feel the hatred he felt before for Headley. It is about that time in Roald’s career as a guardian of the Furious King, that the maddening effect is still somewhat present in him, even while it is not being actively put off by Macon’s Rage infection. Wendell silently moves around the tree towards Gigi. “What is it?” He asks, while placing his one hand against the trunk of the tree, “What’s there?”


Wendell feels the magic in the tree, but isn’t quite sure what to make of it. Just about every damn plant in this maze is magical. Frankly, he feels lucky it hasn’t attacked him yet just for daring to touch it. Gigi flops onto his side at the base of the tree and whines incessantly. Oheth, the moth, struggles to free itself of Macon’s grip. It zaps him, a small, electric zap that wouldn’t hurt him but certainly make the moth’s point. Once freed, it floats over to Gigi to relieve the poor poodle of his pain (emotional, physical, (hungry-cal?) the pooch has it rough). Gigi sniffs at the moth, then begins whining but with purpose, as if trying to speak. The moth lingers as if listening, then descends on Gigi’s sprained paw. The dog stands on it with his full weight for the first time since he sprained it. Then the moth perches on the twisted tree. The twists of wood untwist and separate, splitting an oval doorway right at the center of its truck. Inside is Josleen, pinched between a skeleton and a wooden staff crowned with a jewel and ever-bloom moonflowers. She blinks slowly as if waking from a trance. A rash has blossomed on her cheeks and neck, and her eyes are watery. “...Gigi?” she mumbles as she looks around the garden, trying to get her bearings. She grips the wooden portal and steps through it, stumbling forward off balance for she hadn’t expected gravity’s pull.


Macon shakes his hand after releasing the moth, the shock having gotten the message across. The Fury Knight had been suspicious of the way that Headley had spoken to the insect from the beginning, but it still takes a few moments for him to fully grasp what is happening. During that time, where the moth is tending to Gigi, the King remains in his crouched position, glaring at the cow man. He's obviously been toying with the Larketians if he knew the true nature of the moth all along, and it will be hard to convince Macon that Headley did not get what he deserved from that massive whale-croc. Wendell steps back from the moth and Gigi, his eyes widening slightly when he comes to understand that the moth -is- the monk from the legend, somehow. Silently he wonders if that moth can restore a hand that has been turned into twisted branches as well, just before the big reveal. Macon leaves Headley to see what Oheth is up to and is standing in front of the opening in the tree in time to catch the dazed Queen of Larket. He drops the precious Rage Axe when he sees her, Gigi and Wendell both avoiding the weapon as it falls backwards away from the tree and lands with a thud, and steps forward for Josleen to fall against him. His arms envelop her and he lifts her off the ground almost incidentally due to their difference in height and how tightly he holds the bard now. The Rage Knight is silent for a few moments, allowing the relief to set in that she is alive. Eventually, after a short barrage of kisses to her neck, he pulls his head back slightly to get a better look at Josleen, “Are you alrigh’?” Hopefully none of her limbs have been turned to tree branches during her absence from the rest of the group.


Josleen moves with the dumb confusion of a coma patient who has returned to the realm of the waking for the first time in weeks. She feels the way a baby must feel when born--having known only the swaddle of it’s mother womb, the very air feels foreign and alien to a newborn. For a few seconds she doesn’t understand the simplest things, from the way her dress feels on her skin, to the birdsong announcing dawn, Gigi’s wet tongue lapping her fingers, and Macon’s five o’clock shadow brushing up against her neck and jaw. For a moment Macon hugs a woman who looks at him as if observing a kindly stranger. Hello? But, slowly, she remembers where she is, who she is, what all this is, who Macon is. She recognizes him by the way he squeezes her, and only then remembers what happened to her, and why he’s so overcome with joy and relief. She returns the embrace and presses a lingering kiss to his cheek. “I think I’m alright,” she says dreamily. She can’t be sure. It’s difficult to put in words what she just experienced, and the memory of it is fading as quickly as her grip on reality tightens. Afraid that if she lets go of Macon again they’ll be separated, she holds his hand tightly as she pets Gigi’s head. “Gigi,” she coos, “worried about me?” Thinking quick on his feet, Wendell quickly grabs the staff from inside the tree before the portal closes. Josleen looks towards Wendell, takes a second to remember him, then Roald, then finally Headley. Her stare darkens as she remembers him. “You,” she glares. “You put me in there.” She scowls and her body (rose bush free!) tenses as if she’s ready to charge at the minotaur and strike him. “I could have gotten lost in there!” Remembering the way Headley forced her into the tree, all the while snickering, telling her he won’t be long, don’t worry, she won’t get lost in the tree, it’s a good prank, hahahee!, and recalling how he made her feel powerless and weak, and how she fought back and that’s why she now has these bruises and scratches on her hands, and he’s sitting over there grinning, still satisfied with his dumb ‘prank’ that could have driven her as mad at the damn dryad, oh her fury spikes. She snarls loudly, wanting to intimidate him but failing to do so as she’s too soft and femme to scare anything fiercer than a kitten, but beneath that fair-faced visage is a supernatural rage that beckons her husband to finish the threat she started. “Put him in the tree.”


Macon might usually be thanking some God or gods for this reunion with his wife, but the petty God of death has abandoned him as he abandoned it, putting him into this position in the first place. Or at least further into it. His initial instinct is to not let go of Josleen for any reason whatsoever, but with her accusation towards Headley triggering his hatred of the cow man once again, along with the amplifying effect coming from the bard, Macon does leave her side and move towards the annoying trickster that has put them all in grave danger multiple times. The Rage Knight bends and grabs onto both of Headley’s shoulders and pushes him up so that his back slides against the trunk of the tree and up onto his similar hoof-like foot. Roald continues to loom close by, the effects of the Rage Aura means he is ready to intervene violently should Headley resist or lash out against the king while Macon forces him towards the opening in the tree and the skeleton within. The former sheriff is also not opposed to throwing a gut punch should the cow man not cooperate with the carrying out of his sentence.


Josleen crosses her arms before her chest and watches with cruel indifference as Headley screams and begs for mercy. The cow does resist, but without a foot and without a protein-rich diet, he’s no match for the Rage Knight, even in his hungry and exhausted state. Once Headley has been gut punched into the tree, Josleen plucks the moth off the bark and the tree’s portal closes. Headley’s screams abruptly snuff out. Josleen hands the moth to Roald and says, “Release it in the corridor.” Sure, eventually the moth will float back to the tree and release Headley, but the Queen is satisfied knowing the trickster will suffer, and perhaps lose just a little bit more of his mind before the moth remembers to free him. Looking at her husband, she is suddenly flooded with gratitude and admiration for his confidence, action, temperament (yes, angry as it may be) and skill. This ordeal would have been made worse if she were with anyone but him, or so she believes, and things are finally starting to look up. There’s Wendell, a bonafide mage, with the Staff of Hind from the legend, and the group sans Greg has survived a day and a night in this murderous maze and somehow killed that shambling beast (and then some, though she has no way of knowing that). Impulsively she embraces Macon again and kisses him, rejoicing briefly in the fact that he is who he is and she loves him, even under tense circumstances. “Let’s get out of here.” She notices his slight limp and the bog smell and asks, “What happened, love?” Wendell gives the couple a moment to regroup and joins Roald in the corridor. There he asks the moth for help with his hand, but the moth ignores him. Instead Wendell experiments with the staff, divining its secrets for use against the dryad. Roald gripes about how damn hungry, and how it will still take them hours, even a day, to find the dryad’s tree. They still don’t have a map and their guide is now in a tree-tomb! Then it hits him, an idea: he asks the moth to lead them to the tree. The moth lifts off a hedge and begins to float down the corridor to the west. “Sir! Your majesties! The moth is leading us to the dryad’s tree.”


Macon finds this call for vengeance and the cold stoicism with which Josleen sees it carried out appealing. While his punishment for the cow man might have been more severe and immediate, he can see the merit to this ‘eye for an eye’ approach. It is clear he would have seen Headley dead before leaving the maze without his queen, but what is not completely transparent is that it would have been over his own dead body that the Larketians escape before finding her. Considering the king and Queen’s romantic relationship was born from, and maintains as a base, a series of lies that most all of Larket now believes as historical facts, this realization is heavy on the Rage Knight. He now -knows- that he would risk starving to death in a magical hedge maze rather than return to The Hard City without her. He is vulnerable in this way, and doesn't care for that feeling, but cannot shake it from being the truth. She removes the moth, shutting the portal on Headley, and beats him to the punch when they face each other, though that doesn't deter him from kissing her like he hasn't seen his lover in weeks or months rather than the matter of hours it has actually been. They are given their moment and then Macon collects the Rage Axe and they are soon off towards the tree. The King remains very close to Josleen, using her as much for balance as he is using the great axe in his opposite hand, compensating for his pronounced limp. Along the way he will tell her, in a Veratoakan accent, about Headley leading them into a trap, and how the three Larketian men each killed a shark-croc. Wendell’s pessimism and strong idea to stop looking for Josleen following the bog incident is left out, and the fat mage is allowed to seem every bit as strong and valorous in this tale as the two melee fighters. “One of them ate Headley’s leg.” He adds with a smirk somewhere in the retelling. Surely what it was like in Oheth’s ‘tomb’ comes up as they traverse the maze and the great tree grows ever closer. Finally, after countless turns in the maze, along with some secret green haze travel tricks, the party reaches the tree, their conversation going quiet as they near it, the realization that they are not quite out of this yet settling in…


The Lady of the Maze

Josleen looks grim as she listens to the story of the whale-crocs, which is ultimately a story of survival narrowly achieved. It could have easily gone the other way, and now Macon has a limp which will surely affect them moving forward. She smooths a hand over his broad back, happy he didn’t suffer anything worse. “I still don’t understand how we ended up here in the first place…” She tries to explain what being in the tomb was like, but struggles. She lost consciousness, and was somewhere completely new--it wasn’t like a dream. It was a place that was -felt-, not heard or seen. And it just made her feel… crazy? She started losing her memory of… the world? Life? Hard to explain. But it was terrifying, she felt fear, mostly. But now she feels fine, normal, back to herself. The dryad’s tree is at the center of a square field about 50 yards long on each side. A curved stone wall encircles the massive tree in 270 degrees, and the tree’s trunk bends towards the breach in the wall, almost as if spilling out of it, roots growing over the rubble. The tree’s branches are as thick as most tree trunks and extend far enough to shade the entire field, and then some. They bear fruits that look like engorged pomegranates but smell like vanilla. The air feels thick and heady. Although everyone’s adrenaline should be spiking, Josleen yawns into the back of her hand and looks ready to nap in the shade of the tree. Macon may feel his eyes grow heavy too, but will be nowhere near as affected as his wife who suffers from a peculiar vulnerability to this type of magic in particular. Gigi curls up into a ball and naps. Roald whispers to Wendell, “Where is she?” The two guards take the lead. The mage holds the staff in both hands in front of him. “There!” Wendell points at the breach in the stone wall, at the shadows between the tree trunk and the stones from where bright, springtime green eyes peer at them. As the dryad steps forward the sunlight that filters through the branches highlights her beguiling womanly shape in sun-kissed patches. She giggles as she watches Wendell fumble with the Staff of Hind, holding it up to her, whispering this spell then that, trying to figure out how to use it to the best of his arcane knowledge, but he’s a mage, not a druid! Nothing works. Once the dryad realizes this dumb mage doesn’t know how to use the staff, she chucks a pomegranate right at his head. It cracks open, but instead of revealing hundreds of seeds it erupts into a pissed hive of hundreds of red wasps. The buzzing swarm instantly descends on Wendell’s head, turning their stingers to his flesh and eyes and nose. Each sting erupts in a blister about half the size of a Larketian gold coin, squirting out what looks like...pomegranate juice? Wendell screams in pain, dropping the staff as he tries to swat the wasps away and cast a spell to dispel them, but he can’t stop screaming long enough to form words or work his blistering fingers in the necessary shapes. The wasps fly up his nose and in his ear, stabbing at ear drums and wriggling through his sinuses. They’re lightning fast, and narrowly focused on him. None turn to Roald, even as he tries to start a fire to smoke them out. “Wendell! Keep still!” Instead of springing into action, Josleen is uncharacteristically still. Her expression oscillates between terrified and sleepy, and she even yawns again. Macon wouldn’t be this affected, and indeed Roald is not. She’s almost as vulnerable as Gigi, who is still, despite the screaming, fast asleep. During a period in which Josleen is able to resist the magic enough to be alarmed and act, she manages to say to Macon in a sleepy voice, “Oheth was a -monk-. A mooo-ooonk.” A third yawn splits the final word.


Macon growls slightly when Josleen brings up the mystery of how they became trapped in this maze in the first place. The Rage Knight, while he has this short amount of time to dwell on that unanswered question, blames the Venturilians. Maybe when he gets more time to think about it, he will become paranoid about the attack that left them with a single carriage for their trip and plan for vengeance against those responsible for putting Larketian Royalty through this ordeal. Only time will tell. The Queen tells of her time in the tree trunk as best she can and Macon seethes once again when she says that she felt fear. He regrets not hitting Headley harder or more times before putting him in the tree and shoots a glare towards the moth leading them. The insect monk can perhaps feel the slate stare that is sentencing the cow man to a further extended stay in the tree, but there is no way for the Rage Knight to realistically enforce this. They reach the druid tree and Macon amps up his protective stance over Josleen while she starts to grow drowsy. The dryad appears and the king, rage axe in hand, stands between it and his wife. Wendell is attacked but Macon does not leave the bard until Roald is sparking his fire to dispel the seed wasps and he catches the meaning of Josleen’s words. Wendell was trying to use the staff incorrectly. The Rage Knight moves, reluctantly still, away from the Queen, dropping his precious weapon to the ground once again as he approaches the writhing mage. The swarming pomegranate hive ignores him, focused on their singular target while the king retrieves the dropped staff. It is tremendously lighter than his usual weapon of choice, but the length is similar and he has trained in enough means of physical combat that he does not look out of place using the monk’s weapon. Perhaps finally the fact that he is no longer a practicing death knight will benefit him and whatever natural forces are at play in Hind’s staff will respond to him using it. Whatever the case may be, Macon begins his approach on the dryad while Roald smokes out the hive of wasps, though Wendell does not look good even as the insects start to drop to the ground and off of him. The King, without his cumbersome armor and the weight of his usual weapon is appreciably fast in his onslaught of the dryad. A barrage of thrusts and wide swings are sent the lady of the maze’s way once The Fury Knight reaches her. Counterproductively, Macon keeps glancing over his shoulder to make sure Josleen has not disappeared again.


Josleen pinches her arm and forces herself to stand in a colossal struggle against the dryad’s sleep charm and her peculiar vulnerability to it. One would think it’s an easy task, given Wendell’s screams, the wasps’ loud buzzing, and Macon’s charge headlong into danger, and yet the spell is powerful. Focusing on Macon helps her stay awake, but only just. The dryad, too, watches Macon’s advance, or more accurately, she watches the staff, for which, judging by her cat-eyed smirk and lustful stare, she has her own designs. She dodges a swing, ducks beneath a whack, then climbs the tree and quickly camouflages among the leaves so that the only signal of her location is the unnatural movements over Macon’s head, along a broad branch that extends nearly across the garden. The drone of wasps and Wendell’s shouting mask any audible clues to her whereabouts. When Macon looks back towards Josleen, the dryad drops a noose-knotted vine above him to ensnare him by the head, yank him up til his neck gives and he drops the staff. “Look up!” Josleen shouts with the aid of her bardic magic so that her voice resonates right beside Macon’s head. Josleen wakes up a little when she casts her own minor, weak spell and realizes that spellcasting, even at such a pathetic level, helps her stay awake. She closes her eyes and focuses on something yet harder to pull off. She hums deep in her throat. The sound of Wendell, Roald, and the wasps absorb into her voice so that, to third parties, they seem muted. She also absorbs and re-releases with amplification the faint footfalls of the dryad, the rustle of leaves overhead, so that to Macon the dryad sounds like a lumbering giant, her location as obvious as a titan taking a stroll on gravel. The trouble is she uses height and agility to her advantage, sticking to the branches where she can’t be reached, for just one whack would render her submissive to the staff wielder’s will. Once the wasps has been dispelled, Roald leaves Wendell to join his King. Wendell’s face is swollen to the point that he cannot see of feel or speak. He’s survived the attack, but only just. Blinded and muted, he’s of little use.


Macon takes a step back and pants after the dryad avoids his strikes and retreats to her tree. He gives one more glance towards Josleen before squinting up at the branches to try and find the labyrinth master in their midst, but fails. He makes a move then towards the tree to give attacking it directly with the staff a shot, still unclear on how well the magical properties of the monk’s weapon works. Before he can make it more than a few steps though, the queen shouts and the noose falls. He reacts well enough to keep from getting strangled, but not ideally. He’s able to slip the staff between the vines and his neck so that when the noose is pulled back up, the pressure presses the staff against his cheek and applies no threat of crushing his throat, though he and the mythical weapon are still lifted up off the ground. With Wendell ‘safe’ and sound, Roald moves to rescue his king and calls up to the struggling monarch once he is positioned directly beneath him. “Sir!” Deftly, the royal guardsman tosses one of his swords upward with an underhand throw (Josleen could have done this better), so that the hilt remains facing Macon during the entire flight and the king needs only reach out and grab it with his free hand. After a couple deep breaths while he guages what needs to be done, the Rage Knight swings his arm and the sword in an arc up above his head, severing the vine and sending him crashing back down to the ground, seat first. After a long grimace he pushes himself back up to his feet with the support of Oheth’s staff, giving the swordsman back his weapon in the process. Thanks to Josleen’s ability, The Fury Knight can glare right up at where the dryad is while he commands Roald to aid him in the plan he had before he was nearly hanged. The fire that the kingsguard had used to eliminate the wasp threat to Wendell is applied to the roots reaching out over the break in the wall surrounding the great tree in an attempt to figuratively smoke out the dryad from her safe spot among the branches. The king keeps tabs on her while the tree is set ablaze, watching for any counterattack she might send their way.


Josleen starts towards Macon when he is lifted off the ground, but Roald beats her too it, and a good thing too as she’s still struggling to keep it together. She focuses on her spell and keeps the auditory environment in Macon and Roald’s favor. The trouble with setting thick, live trees ablaze is they don’t catch quick. They’re too wet, too hearty, but they do still singe. The dryad shrieks in pain and runs across the branches towards the opposite side of the massive tree trunk, away from Macon and Roald. Roald gives chase, shouting, “We need to bring her down, sir!” He nearly trips over the fallen vine that moments ago lifted the king off the ground. It gives him an idea. He coils the vine around his shoulder like rope and signals to get the Queen’s attention. Once he has it, he gestures towards his feet, then shushes his finger against his lips. Josleen catches on and silences Roald’s steps and light armor. Roald gestures for Macon to distract the dryad while he stealthily climbs the tree with the vine coiled like rope around his shoulder. He moves slowly so as to not give away his position via vibrations on the branches. Can dryad’s feel creatures moving benignly in her tree? He’ll have to find out the hard way. He climbs above where the dryad was last seen and creeps in her direction. Meanwhile, the dryad focuses on Macon and grabs another pomegranate from her tree. She whispers an incantation into its navel then chucks it at Macon’s head. This time the fruit cracks open before making contact with the target, just a foot away from the King’s head still midair. Instead of releasing wasps, the fruit spits out a bright green and yellow spider that unfurls in the air from the size of a peach to the size of Macon’s head, hairy legs extended to grip the King’s face and stabs its stinger into his neck and instantly paralyze him. If thwarted, it’ll landed on its legs and relentlessly jump back in the direction of its prey. Its powerful legs can leap over the full height of the Rage Knight with ease, and its none too proud to attack the King from his flank. Meanwhile, Roald seizes and opportunity to loop the vine over an overhead branch and Tarzan-kick that dryad straight out of the tree, heels knocking into her chest to send the breath out of her. He steadies himself on the return swing and quickly descends the tree to attack the dryad and keep her grounded.


Macon continues Roald’s work of singeing the tree roots while the kingsguard puts his plan into action. It is likely that the Rage Axe would be more useful in attacking a tree of this size than fire, but The Fury Knight decides against retracing his steps to go and pick the thing up yet. He does his best to keep an eye on the dryad, but when she retreats further away he becomes just a tiny bit lax and focuses further on setting the flame to the tree, the staff still held in one of his hands. So he reacts just a fraction of a second slower when she hurls her latest bug bomb at him. He drops his makeshift torch and swings the staff of Hind at the incoming spider, but doesn’t hit the pitch squarely, instead knocking the creature straight down to the ground while the king side steps awkwardly. Both king and eight legged assassin recover in the same moment and repeat the process of swinging and being launched respectively, though this time the spider’s legs do the launching. The outcome this time around is the same, with the spider being knocked aside by the staff before it can reach the king and use its stinger to immobilize him. This process repeats several more times with the predator seemingly hesitating more and more before each repetition. On what happens to be the final go around, Macon’s swing breaks one of the creature’s legs off and it lands on its back. The Rage Knight glares and growls at the spider as it rights itself and a pulse of that Furious Aura can be felt by those in tune with it. When the spider is up on seven legs it does not face the king, and instead turns towards the knocked down dryad and starts scurrying towards it, followed by the Rage Knight, both of them launching themselves towards the mistress of the maze, Macon leading with the staff.


Macon’s fury helps Josleen fight sleep, and snaps Gigi awake. The poodle leaps onto all four and runs at full speed towards the dryad. As for the spider, it obeys Macon for two reasons: first, the staff can be used to control the druidic-creatures upon contact if only the user wills it, and second, Macon wills it unwittingly by virtue of his rage. The rage is the command, and the spider turns on the dryad with a single leap and stabs its stinger into her neck. The stinger then splits open like a grapple hook and prolapses into a fleshy shaft that engorges and collapses as it deposits egg after egg directly into the dryad’s ear. Scrambling to her feet, she shrieks and with a single touch and word paralyzes the spider and knocks it aside, just like Macon soon after knocks the dryad onto her side with the staff. From the ground, she thrusts her hands at the King and Roald. Each finger extends into vines that whip forward to coil around each man’s legs and, with a yank, trip them. Roald swings his sword to cut himself loose before he can help the King. Josleen shouts, “Command her!” Once commanded, Macon can, through the staff, feel the dryad’s resistance. She snarls and spits as she tries to break free of the staffs command, but its initial hold is powerful as she’s powerless to resist initial orders.


Macon takes zero time to consider the mechanics of him gaining control over the previously hostile spider. So, once the dryad grabs hold of Roald and his legs, he requires that shout from Josleen to understand what he is currently capable of after striking the bug flinging master of the maze. His legs are pulled out from under him and he winds up on his back once again before he roars out, “Release us!” It works as Roald is hacking away at the vines, sending her elongated fingers wriggling back towards the dryad. The Rage Knight stands once again and narrows his slate stare towards the resisting plot woman. He takes a cautious, limping step or two forward. His intention is to beat the sap out of his captor while issuing a more demanding command, “Destroy. This. Maze!”


Josleen, once it is clear that the dryad is under Macon’s control, springs forward to join him, squeezing Wendell’s shoulder in passing to remind him that he is not forgotten. Gigi is already with Macon, snarling at the dryad. The dryad begins the slow process of piece by piece collapsing the hedges in a straight shot west as per Macon’s command. This will take a while, given the labyrinth’s scale. Josleen, meanwhile, instructs Roald to pierce the trunk and collect sap in his empty canteen (to the background tune of dryad screams), just in case. According to legend, drinking the sap will allow them to pass through the green haze, and who knows what other properties it may possess, or for how long Macon will control the dryad who has disappeared into the hedges even as she destroys them. Josleen’s sap-procuring precaution proves unnecessary as soon the sleep-inducing charm lifts, and the green haze overheard clears. A gryphon some distance to the south screeches and its rider shouts “I found them!” Roald waves with both hands up at the rider, and what comes next happens so quickly it hardly seems real to Josleen. The gryphon rider calls two more riders--all three soldiers wear the Venturili insignia. Macon and Josleen ride on the largest (with Staff of Hind and Dryad Sap in tow), Wendell (still blinded) is strapped onto the back of the second gryphon while its rider holds a terrified Gigi, and the third takes Roald. Josleen holds on tightly to Macon’s middle and rests her forehead between his shoulder blades and feels him breathe. Just outside the maze’s southern entrance is a caravan of carriages and a company of both Venturili and Larketian soldiers and guards who were up until recently waiting for mages to crack the mystery of the maze so that they may storm in and rescue the King and Queen. The Royals are flown directly back to Venturil Castle where they are waited upon by staff who bring them food (Gigi forgets to chew). Josleen wants desperately to bathe and change clothes, but the Berendebyrg Ealdorman, Nikolic Provenay, who is especially apologetic and sheepish, hovers near them and keeps using the word ‘misunderstanding’ and ‘coup’. He’s too flustered to form sentences, but one Larketian guard who remained at the castle explains: It is he, this guard, who realized that the Larketian carriages were sabotaged. After some sleuthing, he discovered the plot. The Denubyrg ealdorman, Juraj Devic, the one who lives nearest to the minotaurs, was looking to overthrow Nikolic and claim the throne, but wanted the Venturili people to turn on Nikolic for a perceived failiure. To accomplish this, he staged an incident in which a foreign King and Queen (Macon and Josleen) were killed in such a way that could be blamed on the Berendebyrg Ealdorman who invited them to Venturil in the first place, and then failed to take care of them! In order to avoid war with Larket, Juraj would advise that Nikolic be given up to the Larketian’s bloodlust. Well, this Larketian Guard discovered the truth. Juraj is currently behind bars in this very castle (arrested by this Larketian guard, maybe Greg #2?) Nikolic chimes in several times to reiterate his innocence and announce that Juraj’s fate is in Macon’s hands--whatever Macon wishes to do.

Pillow Talk

After eating, Macon and Josleen are shown back to the room they inhabited two nights ago to discuss things in private and bathe. Josleen is too outraged to enjoy her bath and new clothes. She repeats the story incredulously, shaking her head in several places. “What will you do, Macon?”


Macon has half a mind to chase after the dryad and keep beating it with the staff, but the other half of his mind sees an end to this endless trek through the maze and reminds him that he hates Headley more than he hates that dryad anyway. Speaking of… where did that moth get to? The Larketians do not stick around near long enough to answer that question. During the flight Macon fights successfully to stay awake. It is only when they are in castle Venturil, long after the drowsy magic has disappeared and worn off, that the king can barely keep his eyes open while eating. Nikolic’s vague explanation is barely heard, with the Rage Knight merely growling where he feels growls are warranted, which is often apparently. It cannot be understated how little Macon cares for being used as a pawn in some political coup. He very nearly gives his decision immediately after it is stated that Juraj’s fate is in his hands, but waits when it is clear that a bath and a bed awaits him sooner if he needs time deliberate. He is furious all over again while Josleen retells the plot that led them into the dryad’s clutches and gives the simple answer that he had prepared earlier when he first heard this told, “I will ‘ave ‘em executed.” In his mind there is no other option as punishment for attempted regicide by labyrinth.


Josleen nods her approval of the King’s decision, not that he needs it. Freshly bathed, she crawls into bed and beckons that Macon (also freshly bathed!) follow. Gigi curls up on the floor on the Josleen side of the bed and immediately dozes off. Josleen snuggles up against Macon’s side for a little pillow talk. “Who and where?” She gently smoothes a hand over his arm. “I think it should be you, in public. Here, not Larket.” She absorbed her monarch education mostly by watching Hildegarde, who famously and publicly and brutally executed a traitor during the war with the drow. Studying under the (indirect) tutelage of the War Queen has shaped the bard into a hawkish enforcer of law, hierarchy, respect. “You’re still a relatively new king, and it would be useful to impress upon the Venturili people a certain reputation.” And what reputation is that? To fear him? Maybe. “I mean no offense when I state that Juraj would never have attempted this on Hildegarde, and not!” she’s quick to cut off what she perceives to be a growl, “Not because she is more fearsome than you,” [she’s a dragon, of course she is, but that’s not Josleen’s point], “but because she’s been in power long enough to have formed a reputation abroad.” Although she is sure Macon is already convinced of her argument, she still adds on for emphasis, and given the venom with which she speaks it would seem this is the –real- reason for her dabbling in bloodlust, “And besides. We could have died.” To Josleen this is more personal than ‘regicide’, an impersonal word for crimes that happen to others. –They- could have died.


Macon, perhaps because of how tired he is, has not considered the implications of personally executing what is essentially another foreign leader. What a power play! And it is being handed to him in a silver platter, although the price he paid up front was he and his queen nearly dying. Where moments ago it did not matter how their would-be murderer died, now, after Josleen suggests that he do it himself, there can be no other way. She stops his growl before it can begin and has convinced him. “I will do it.” he agrees before kissing her and turning to press his body against hers. He is more tender with her now than he perhaps ever has been before. Exhaustion might play a small part in that. For sure she is right that -they- could have died in the maze, but he realized during that ordeal a more terrible fate was possible, that -she- could have died and left him to rule Larket alone. If that had been the outcome then one could bet that Venturil would be suffering a much more drastic punishment than the one the king and queen of Larket have laid out for it tonight.


Josleen is pleasantly surprised by the tenderness and returns it in kind. She can only assume their brush with death has inspired this, and has an inkling that it’s -her- near death that plays a larger role. Her heart swells as she feels his love for her expressed in the best way he knows how. They kiss and stroke each other until they fall asleep, which is very, very quickly. The maze exhausted them both. They wake in the afternoon after a restorative nap and again she wraps herself up in him, grateful they’re still alive and together. A note was slipped under their door informing them that the Larketian carriages are ready and Nikolic is eager to carry out Macon’s wishes with respect to Juraj, and perhaps meet any other demands His Majesty may deem fit to impose on Venturil for this slight. Josleen opines that they should get this over with quickly. “Just before the sun sets, so everyone can see it in daylight, but late enough that Nikolic has time to make an announcement and ensure a big crowd.” Josleen, bard, queen, public execution planner. She reflects on this after she hears herself. “Strange to think that at the outset of all of this I had no plans more sinister than getting you alone on a beach...” She grins at the thought, but the grin quickly fades because they are not on a beach, “And now...” As soon as Macon is ready and sends word back to Nikolic, Josleen dresses for the occasion. She too will be seen by the Venturili public at this event, which will take place in the heart of the town square.


Macon gives Josleen a look when she reflects on how ‘innocently’ this trip began that says ‘there is still time,’ but there isn’t really, is there? They have been gone from Larket for some time and still have the trip back to contend with. He is sure that the Rage Armor is appropriate for this event to complete that foreign warlord motif. While the Royals are still in possession of The Staff of Hind, The Rage Axe is much more suitable for an execution such as this and is growing in renown in its own right, befitting of the ruler of The Hard City. When the time comes for the execution four kingsguard (Wendell and Greg absent, obviously) escort Macon and Josleen to the town square. Once the royal party has arrived, Nikolic takes his place in the spotlight and addresses the crowd with a prepared speech that The Rage Knight believes could have been better and more imposing given that the orator’s main rival is about to be executed (a position similar to one that Macon himself had been in almost a year prior.) He publicly apologizes to the Larketians for allowing this to happen and believes that this act of justice will bring the two nations closer together than ever before. Juraj is given the opportunity for last words while Macon hands the marble crown of Larket over to Roald. Can’t have that thing slipping off during the execution swing. The Rage Knight plays the role of executioner well, having no words to deliver to the crowd, he stomps up to where Juraj is laid out with his neck on the line and levels the head of the Rage Axe over him, lining up the strike with one hand. He moves his free hand onto the long handle and raises the weapon above his head before swiftly bringing it back down on the ealdorman’s neck. The execution is clean, as expected from the Fury Knight’s practiced hand and he looks out over the silenced crowd while Juraj’s head rolls. Again without a word, he returns to Josleen and is stoic and silent while the stone crown is placed back on his head.


Josleen dresses to impress in the colors and style of Larket (which is still chesty). Represent. She watches Macon step onto the ‘stage’ with pride. For the bard, the performance is everything and he intuitively understands presence. It’s part of what she finds so attractive about him. She watches him line up the axe, lift it overhead, then closes her eyes when the final blows severs Juraj’s neck cleanly. She has a cool head for power games and war, but she herself has never taken a life, or so much as held a sword. She needs him to the bite to her bark, as she needed those before him, from Hildegarde to Kelovath to Eliason. Her eyes are closed only briefly, and when Macon turns back to her she meets his gaze with acceptance and a little admiration for this man who to others may look too rough, or scary, or cruel, but to her appears shrewd, confident and capable. He’s gotten so far on his own, and she’s sure that together they’ll go further.