Cleric Journal: Day Seventy-Three
Originally published at J.A. Pitts. You can comment here or there.
Cold rat for breakfast: not the best thing in the world. Ranks with vomiting, rat bites and anything to do with Brother Durham - in that order. Not happy making.
Still, I ate the cold rat just to keep Bob from being upset. Seems like Bob was a person who spent a lot of time disappointed at others.
Case in point. He was shocked. Shocked, I tell you, that I would insist we made for the surface without mapping a single cavern, corridor, river, or collapsed tunnel. Bob’s estimation of “a few days” apparently was related to the painstaking care with which he expected us to map every nook and cranny we traveled through. Caution before speed was his motto.
I explained that if spent one more hour in the cold and dark bowels of the earth for no good reason that I was going to stop being his friend. I would’ve loved to see the look on his face, but the fire was gone and I couldn’t even see my own hand in front of my face. I was cranky and in no mood. At his feeble protests I stood (careful not to smash my head) and demanded he take me to the surface in the quickest and most efficient method possible.
It was a novel concept. The idea that we’d never return to these warrens nearly brought us to blows. Good thing my arm was in a sling and my head throbbed. With the mood I was in, I thought I had a fairly good chance of kicking his arse. That may have proven to be delirium and bravado. Truth to tell, he is quite a stout fellow. His entire body was ripped: muscles on top of muscles. Sister Agnes would be drooling at the thought of him. I wonder if she’d ever worshipped with a dwarf before. She wasn’t that tall herself .
Bob was in no way comfortable with us moving through the tunnels without mapping them, but he acquiesced in the end. Which is why we trudged out of the darkness today.
The last climb to the surface was up a muddy cut in the earth where the swamp had broken through the rocky caverns beneath. By the time we reached the full light of day again, I was so caked with mud that I couldn’t tell where my robe ended and the mud started. I welcomed the light. Of course we found we were in a fairly horrid part of the swamp. All around us were quagmires, boiling hot springs, acidic pools and death - everywhere death. The plants were dead an decaying. Pools were littered with bones and rotting flesh of animals.
Bob did NOT like this place. I agreed with him but for one thing. Once we broached the surface I could feel a trickle of the divine. Not enough to heal myself or anything, but a tiny sprinkle of hope. I closed my eyes and turned slowly, feeling outward for the strongest connection and opened my eyes. If we skirted around the nastiest, bubbling pools, avoiding the rotting things that looked like horse or cows, we would find the strength of the divine increasing.
I led the way, my shield over my back on top of my pack, my right arm in a sling, and my left held the mace. I agreed with Bob, there was something really not happy about this place, but we needed to move. Standing around here would not get us anywhere.
This place was hellish. I realized we were likely near the dragon’s lair, but we saw nothing that the beast would use for a lair. The amount of death and decay spoke of a spreading plague. Made Bob nervous. I had gone stoic.
There were ruins here as well. Sunken buildings, broken walls and shattered towers. I know we were nowhere near the city of my dreams, so this must’ve been a sister city. How far did this swamp go? How much of the world was falling to the decay. Was that my ultimate mission? To turn back the tide of decay? I hoped not. All I knew was I needed to get to that city and everything would be revealed to me.
In the meantime, we began to search for a place to camp. One of the broken towers looked promising, but Bob said it was not structurally sound. Apparently he knew anything made from or in stone. Useful skills to have. In the end we passed seven likely camping spots before he would allow us to enter one building that rose a full story above the wrack and ruin of the land around us.
We climbed to the roof, as the interior was flooded, but found good dry ground. There was nothing to burn, and we had no food, but we were alive. I began to explain to Bob about the precepts of our faith and he proved an eager audience.
Later, as the last rays of the sun fell over the horizon Bob told me of his family and how he came to be out in this part of the world, away from the mountains holds of his clans. It is not a new tale, I can assure you. Younger son of a merchant, off in the world to make his way while the older sibling inherited the family trade. He wasn’t bitter, but I could see a longing in him. He wanted a place to fit in. There was a need in him I had not seen before, except maybe in myself. A kindred spirit.
Maybe it was the exhaustion, or the head wound, but I was starting to like Bob more and more. Now that I had a chance to look at him without demon gates and battling Trogs, I could see how young he was. Forty by his own words, but a young one, like myself.
I took first watch and he slept hard. I watched the way his face relaxed and wondered at the pain in this young dwarf.