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Nametag:rook
DUNGEONS OR DRAGONS
If one heads up the Broken Coast from South to North leaving
the sand swallowed cites of the Barren Lands you will,
eventually, come across the small City State of Balamore.
More properly known by it's residence as Bel l'amour. But
shown as Balamore upon the Merchant's Guild Atlas.
The southern approach winds along the coast with the Raging
Sea to the west and the Iron Hills to the east. Until you
reach a spur of rock that juts out into the sea on top of
which the walled keep of Bel l'amour rests.
Continuing past this the road winds on until you reach the
broad but shallow Silver River. Beyond the Silver River lays
the Great Forest which spans over a dozen small City States
who seem to be at perpetual war with each other and thus is
labeled upon the Merchant's Guild Atlas collectively as The
Challenged Lands.
Betwixt the Keep of Bel l'amour and the Silver River lay
fertile fields of farm lands and the quaint pastoral cluster
of small houses that made up the majority of the population
of Bel l'amour proper.
It was here, from the north approach, that the road lead up
to the front of the keep and its walls and was the true
entrance to the walled part of the city above the plains.
However, as Red Sonja made her approach from the south along
the King's Highway she astonished to see that a section of
the back wall of the Keep had been pulled down and that large
cranes had been established here.
These cranes were busy rasing and lowering a mass of humanity
and cargo from the keep up on the spur of rock and the shore
line below.
There were four cranes clacking away. The largest operated by
teams of oxen which raised and lowered a large flat bed big
enough to place an entire wagon on. This was a laborious task
for the oxen had to be unhitched and re-hitched to lower the
wooden flat bed as they could not be made to walk backwards.
The other three cranes were powered by men in large wooden
wheels who ran side by side to raise much smaller cargo nets
full of wares and then, after the device was blocked to
prevent slipping, simply turned around and walked the other
way to lower the same cargo net.
A fifth crane lay in ruins nearby.
All the cranes ran ceaselessly at the top of the dismantled
wall pulling up stores and then lowering people. For despite
the great amount of food and fodder being brought up for
provision an even greater exodus of people were fleeing the
walled keep before disappearing like a trail of ants into the
Iron Hills themselves.
The roads through the mining camps of the Iron Hills were
treacherous and that the people should be disappearing into
them carrying their belongings upon their backs or in dog
carts before them had the young red headed teen perplexed.
The girl with curly bright red hair that fell in a cascading
mane down to her bubble butt backside made her way to the mob
at the base of the cliff side where the business end of the
cranes paused only to unload people and load up freight and
after ascertaining from the gruff response of the sweating
men and happy merchants who were selling their wares in bulk
at double prices; that there was no plague and no pestilence
driving the people away. Quickly boarded one of the cargo
nets and sailed spinning up to the walled keep of Bel
l'amour.
Red Sonja had been making her way to the Challenged Lands to
ply her mercenary trade of a sellsword. But here seemed the
potential of a profitable adventure much closer at hand, and
she entered the vast confusion of the crowded keep with a
smile on her beautiful face and a flash in her large gray
wolfish eyes.
The top of the spur of rock held the stone keep. And a large
horse shoe shaped wall which in turn was both made of natural
stone formations and man-made cut and mortar. A second stone
wall sat at the sloping base of the rock spur to its north.
Most of the eastern or sea side of the keep was left exposed
and without wall as the breakers and lack of landing made any
attack from that direction unlikely.
The keep was the seat of government for the lands of Bel l
amour and was meant to house the people who lived in the
sprawling farmlands below in times of war; a bet for short
periods of time. But it was not designed for any kind of
comfortable habitation for more than a few hundred for any
extended period of time.
Now, it looked like everyone from the surrounding country
side had climbed up its walls and made a transits camp within
those self same walls. There must have been well over a
thousand people crammed shoulder to shoulder in their
makeshift tents and bed roll communities inside both pair of
stone walls.
Red Sonja giddily smelled war. And the money it meant for a
skilled swordswoman such as her self.
If not war, for she was beginning to have some puzzlement at
the lack of every able body man being kitted out in
habiliments and arms, then surely she could fill her empty
purse before she left with gold enough from picking the
pockets being almost thrust into her hands with each hustle
and bustle of the loud crowd.
A group of guards escorted the Master of Revels about as he
saw to it that every few hundred yards had some quaint manner
of entertainment and food. So one stumbled from one elbowing
shoving mob into a small circle of jugglers and acrobats or
bards or dancing girls.
There was an astonishing lack of drink to be had. Plenty of
water and soft cider but no ale or wine anywhere to be seen,
smelt, quaffed. That had the young girl's nose wrinkled in
distaste.
For all the merriment the faces of the people were gritty and
grim. They were an unwashed mob who looked like refuges;
sullen and dazed and too tired to cry any more. Few of the
children were playing as their mothers kept them constantly
at arm reach. Like a dame chicken sweeping her chicks under
wing in almost rhythmic regularity.
Any sudden loud bang or an unexpected noise had the entire
mob cringing and looking skyward in mute alarm.
'This was not war, this was something else,' the thin busty
teen thought and her pulse quickened with curiosity of the
forest cat.
She was still trying to find someone who would speak with her
and tell her what was going on; when they came for her. The
guard. When you are a head and a half taller than most men
and you have a shock of bright red crimson hair that hangs
down to the tops of your full round bubble butt ass and you
have long slender limbs and a thin lithe torso build that is
crowned with huge tits the size of prize winning melons and
you have a round oval face sprinkled in freckles with wide
large gray eyes and a small nose and large thick lips in a
perpetual long pout and a small chin with a tiny scar and a
long slender neck and you dress yourself in a scale mail
bikini with thigh high boots and slap a sword and harness to
your narrow waist... WELL! People are going to notice you.
You tend to stand out. Which is fine. But they also tend to
remember you. And if you tend to see the world as your own
personal safety withdrawal box. Then that is not so fine.
As the heavily armed and armored guard drew up in a circle
around her the young girl began to slightly remember that she
had been here before and as they placed her under arrest and
took at spear point through the crowd to the towering keep
its self she desperately wished she could remember a bit
more.
The Master of the City and the Council of Elders met her in
the keep cordially enough. Which was never a good sign. And
they let her keep her sword on her person. Which was always a
worse sign.
After some of the usual whispering and ignoring her as the
rich elite in power always do. The Master of Bel l'amour
himself lead her on a long and lengthy tour of the dungeons
of the keep and its torture rooms. All of which were rather
full and busy as the crowd outside the keep and in its double
ringed walls had been there for several weeks now.
He then escorted her to the outermost wall which meant a
strong contingent of guards to shove their way through the
throng. Here on the outer gate, which was fashioned in the
manner of a small tower much in and of the larger keep's
design; he brought her to the battlements and swept his arm
across the vistaed before them.
He spoke. It was the only time anyone had actually spoke 'to'
her since she had entered the city. He said simply, "make
your choice."
Red Sonja cleared her throat and said as equally simply, "I
choose the dragons."
*************************************************************
The large gate had been barricaded so she had to be lowered
by a slip knot line around her boot toe which she clung to as
four guards slipped her to the charred ground below.
It was hell. A landscape of black smoldering ruin. All the
farm lands and small clusters of hamlets were charred and
scorched and burnt to ash and cinder.
The rather ostentatious great stone bridge that spanned the
river that could have been easily forded in a dozen places
had been burnt so black that the great stones of it had
cracked and shattered.
It was upon this bridge in the middle of its shallow spanning
arch that the dragons sat. Perhaps sleeping under the cloudy
mid-day sun. Perhaps dreaming of more fat things to eat. For
the river bed all around it was cluttered with the bones of
oxen and sheep and the roasted cadavers of men in blackened
armor.
Red Sonja crunched along the blackened earth. In places still
so hot that it wimpled and warped the air above it.
She could almost bolt and flee. For the dragon was just out
of crossbow range by a good dozen feet. But what was dragon
range.
The outer wall that circled in a crescent the lower half of
the sloping spur of rock before it joined into the naturally
rising rock cliff its self; was burnt black by dragon fire.
Shattered lances and swords and shields and the bodies of
hundreds of brave or foolish knights littered the no-man's
land between the castle and the bridge.
Over turned carts, the carcass of every farm beast and
domesticated bird imaginable lay strung about amidst once
glorious chargers still saddled and armored. All gutted and
eaten or burnt to blackened bone.
The young teen moved warily forward. It was a short distance
to the bridge, but she spent it divided in thought. 'Why did
the dragons not simply attack the walled keep its self? It
seemed more than capable of taking it rather easily
considering there was nothing more in its defence than it had
already met and defeated and ate here about them.'
The second thought she had was roughly variations on; 'how
the fuck am I going to get my sexy ass out of this one?!'
The first thought was complex and layered and confusing. But
it was the second thought that took up almost all of her
mental acuity.
She had no resolve of either thought when she drew up short
as one of the dragons raised its head and gave her that
infamous inscrutable look which only dragons could give.
There are as many different kinds of dragons as there are
dragons which is a roundabout way of saying no one who had
met a dragon lived to tell about it. Leaving the widows and
orphans guessing at shadows.
She remembered now one of the elder council members in their
forehead touching whispers saying a touch too loud as she was
a touch too deaf; "But I heard she took care of that Ogre up
north. So maybe she can?"
Just the thought of it made the young girl instinctively
clutch at her backside and wince in pain. Whatever was going
to happen she was NOT going to resolve things 'THAT' way!
She stood there half crouched not drawing her sword and
wondered if she would see some telltale sign before it blew
out a blast of furnace breath or if she would be mercifully
dead before she even knew or more importantly felt it?
Feeling a need to do something before the pee started running
down her legs the young girl forced herself somewhat with a
jerky motion as fear tends to stiffen the joints when one is
heading toward the threat of death instead of away from it.
She managed to shuffle forward kicking up small plumes of ash
a few more steps when she froze as the second dragon raised
its head.
For some reason she could tell the second dragon had indeed
been really asleep and that the first had been playing cat
and mouse.
Both dragons were now looking at her and as she could do
nothing to make her legs move a step more in their direction
they rose up a little from their perch upon the center arch
of the broad stone bridge and pulled themselves a little
closer.
In this action, the red headed teen saw that it was not 'two'
dragons at all but rather a single dragon with two heads.
Somehow, this made her feel much worse about the prospects of
the whole situation, than the idea of facing two separate
dragons.
The second head, which had just woken up, leaned its long
serpentine neck down toward her and turned its head to use
its right eye to get a good look at her; as the teen could
see that its left eye was milky and had obviously been
damaged and blinded at some distant time.
While it did this the first head rose up on its long neck and
looked past her at the outer wall of the keep behind her,
where indeed, several people had clustered about to watch her
imminent demise.
The half blinded head spoke, "are you an offering? Or a
challenge?"
The first head, which was slightly slimmer and more pointed
in over all shape, looked down at her and spoke, "an offering
does not come armed."
"I am neither, oh great serpent of fire and death. I am but a
herald of the city." The young teen tossed an arm in the
direction of the fire blasted wall and then bowed low.
"A herald?" The first dragon head hummed in thought.
"It has been a long time since any city of man has sought to
parley with us," the second head spoke in a voice dripping in
wicked derision.
"Speak voice of the city!" The second dragon head spoke in a
sneer tinged with aloof boredom.
"Speak and we might hear," the first head smiled like a
python just before the strike to swallow. "Or we might get
hungry... for your screams."
Red Sonja swallowed dryly and decided to hold her knee to
ground formal bow with her right arm touching her chest and
her left arm spread wide to her side. "Glorious worm.
Magnificent monster. The humble people of this fair city wish
only to know your pleasure."
"Our pleasure?!" The first smaller head snarled and recoiled
back in a threat to strike.
'The smaller head is female the larger one male. The smaller
head loves complements and praise while professing to disdain
them and the larger one is simply bored and is sleepy.' As
she thought this in her racing mind the teen felt a thrill go
through her, 'I might survive this after all!' She thought
and quickly continued her exaggerated abasement and honeyed
words.
"Oh, beautiful beast. Let not my simple words offend thee.
These pitiful creatures within simply wish to know what
unknown offense they have done to you. So they might quickly
amend it and make a deliverance of offerings of appeasement
to you. That this accidental breach should be mended and all
made well."
The larger head had already dropped down and was half asleep
again. But it muttered, "appeasement." As if that was
something it liked to hear more about.
This cut off the angry smaller head from whatever it was
going to say or do and had it glancing back and forth from
the larger dragon head and the young girl bowed in its
shadow.
Red Sonja leapt at this moment of confusion and rushed on in
her words. "Surely, great worm, you have seen and heard and
scented the huge supplies that have been brought into the
keep all for your offering. These wretches wish to make peace
with your absolute mastery. They simply ask what they have
done and what they can do to serve you better?"
"They can all die! And feed our belly!" The smaller head
hissed and was certainly about to strike.
When the larger head murmured in almost sleep now, "it does
not matter what they do or offer. They have done us no
personal offense and thus can not stave off their deaths. For
we were sent to plague them so and so we shall. Drop by drop,
day by day, until nothing of them remains."
The smaller head seemed much confused that this should have
been so readily revealed and told and seemed caught between a
need to slay the girl and a need to attack her sleeping other
head.
Red Sonja took her cue, "so I shall discharge my duty to you
and tell them in the city what you have decreed." And she
quickly returned to the city as the smaller head fumed and
flustered.
At the keep outer wall a rather confused guard and group of
citizens who had witnessed this odd exchange once again
lowered the rope with its single loop and slipping her foot
into it and grabbing on to the rope they pulled her up,
having not expected to see her alive again.
To the surprised and shocked guards, and in a voice she made
sure would carry to the packed wall of murmuring people, she
quickly said in her most authoritative voice, "I have spoken
with the dragons and now must speak to the Master of Bel
l'amour and its council of Elders."
*************************************************************
"The dragons made it clear that they were sent here at
another's bequest. And that they will remain here until you
have been completely destroyed." Red Sonja stood wide legged
and defiant before the Master and the Council.
"What city could summon and send under its command dragons to
conquer us?" The Master half turned in his seat in perplexity
to the muttering head shakes all around him.
"But that destruction is meant to be slow and agonizing," Red
Sonja reminded them. "Whoever sent these monsters to your
gate did not send them to take your lands from you, but to
slaughter you in a slow and torturous manner. This does not
speak of a collective mind of conquest but a single mind of
revenge. These dragons were not sent as an army but as an
executioner."
This raised the volume of the muttering to an almost open
argument amongst the seated council and the room full of
peers and guards.
The Master called for order but this was the baker's dozen of
such calls and little real quiet was achieved by it.
Red Sonja stood quietly with arms crossed under her huge
round firm breasts and waited. She was a woman who considered
her self very patient, even prided herself on the fact, but
situational reality kept showing she was nothing of the sort.
She was just about to say some rather rude unpleasant things
about the people in general in the room; when a man in the
crowd blurted out, "the witch! The witch of the forest!"
This caused a pause and then everyone was buzzing about this
witch.
"Who is this witch?" The young girl asked. "And more
importantly where can I get something to drink that one
wouldn't bathe in?"
They all ignored her and she was just about to draw her sword
and start banging the hilt of it on the heads of the council,
which she instantly realized brought back dim memories of
perhaps doing just that some time before, when the Master
spoke again.
"The witch was driven form our lands years ago. She escaped
being burned by the stake and escaped into the forest beyond
the Silver River. She has promised revenge time and again and
in fact sent a small army of empty suits of army against us
once; but the seasonal rains rusted them solid before they
could breach the outer wall. We melted them down for scrap.
It 'is' possible she could be behind the dragons. Still, we
have no proof. She tends to show up and strut about shouting
when she unleashes one of her attacks upon us. So it is odd
that she has not been seen."
"Well, if I were you I would send some of these armed men of
yours into that wood and finish that witch burning." Red
Sonja gave the table of seated officials a firm nod of her
young head and continued. "Now, if you will give me back the
rest of my belongings; my backpack, my purse, and perhaps
feel free to fill them slightly for my troubles. I will be on
my way."
"To the dungeons?" The Master asked with a raised eyebrow.
"To the-?!" The long red haired teenager fumed. "I dealt with
your dragons for you!" She snapped a pointed finger at the
end of a well shaped arm behind her in the general direction
of the charred bridge. That is, if the charred bridge had in
fact been located somewhere out in the sea off the Broken
Coast; which unfortunately it wasn't. This utter lack of a
sense of direction may have been why Red Sonja's wanderings
were truly wanderings. And why so many of her fled from
problems seemed to have a tendency to catch up to her as she
stumbled face first back into them.
"You were sent out there to slay those dragons and they are
still there!" The Master pulled at his pointed black beard
before adding. "You were told if you did not slay the dragons
then it was to the dungeons with you!"
"However," he continued in a less threatening voice. "If you
go into the forest and find the witch and dispatch HER and
that takes care of the dragons then your debt to this city
will be considered well and clear."
He thought for a second about her simply leaving once again
outside the keep walls and added, "and for doing this. You
will upon your successful return, be given a horse and as
much of the treasure we had gathered to woo the dragons as
you can carry and with all, safely depart our lands."
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Red Sonja scowled as she tramped through the underbrush of
the woods. "How do I always end up in these situations?" She
paused to whip the sweat off her brow with the back of her
gloved hand.
The wood was thick and heavy and animal paths led from one
dappled glade to the next. The speckled light played off her
bikini armor and her snow white skin so that she seemed to
shimmer like an apparition of the forest rather than an
intruder. Perhaps that is why the heavy boughs and animals
did not seem to mind her presence.
They had returned her backpack to her and filled it with
provisions and water. Not wine, just water. That was enough
to piss anyone off right there, but they had also kept her
purse and what little coin she had in it.
Still she could have just followed the main roads and made
her way to the Challenged Lands. Begging and stealing until
she got there. But they had amassed quiet a pile of goodies
back in that keep and she certainly wouldn't mind a horse
with its saddle bags laden with the shinny stuff; to ride
with some style, into the Challenge Lands. Rather then
arriving foot sore and hungry and a pauper begging for a job.
You always got the better jobs when you didn't need a job at
all.
Still a witch. And a witch who could summon up dragons or at
least a two headed dragon and then command it; it did give
one more than the usual pause upon the forest paths.
A plan of dealing with the witch would have been nice right
about now.
Finding her wouldn't be too hard. As the Master of Bel
l'amour had told her, 'all she had to do was follow the
heads.'
At every branching point of the animal trail starting from
the point where it jutted off from the main road there was
the head of a guard still wearing his Bel l'amour crested
helmet piked upon a wooden stake.
It was rather a long twisting path with many branching off
points and the red headed teen began to wonder how their
could be any soldiers left in Bel l'amour between the witch
and the dragon?
Finally the path widened out into yet another glade but this
glade was made most singular in that it had a small thatch
hut set next to a brook in its center.
After the long trail of grisly heads the hut seemed almost
quaint and peaceful and pleasant. It looked more like a
woodcutters hut than the abode of a fearsome witch.
As if keeping with that thought there was the sound of an axe
splitting logs for a fire coming from the back of the small
shelter and not knowing what else to do the teen sucked in a
lung full of air and took the plunge of boldly walking around
to the back of the hut to confront the witch.
The person cutting the fire wood was a young girl. She was
very attractive and very naked.
She seemed more amused than startled or alarmed and she gave
the busty red head a once over before hefting her axe to her
small shoulder and waiting for Red Sonja to make some sort of
explanation of herself.
Red Sonja was momentarily stricken mute by the naked young
girl, who gave her more than a run for her money in the bust
department. The blonde haired, freckled face, lass eventually
walked past her and around to the front of the cabin where
she disappeared inside.
Red Sonja was trying to make up her mind if she follow the
girl inside when the blue eyed lass came out again caring two
mugs and a large pitcher of wine. She set these down upon the
stump in back where she had been cutting wood and pulled up a
log to sit upon.
Red Sonja did the same and soon they were drinking together
while silently looking about the dappled glade with its
nodding boughs and singing larks.
It was afternoon and the whole put a spell of peace and
sleepiness upon both young girls.
Before she knew it, Red Sonja was naked too, and the two
girls were rubbing and kissing and licking and touching and
probing and sweating and grunting and moaning until
nightfall.
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Red Sonja stood before the two headed dragon with her bloody
sword in one hand and the severed head of the blonde haired
blue eyed witch in the other.
The dragon looked at the face of its dead master and with
something between a shrug of indifference and a sigh of
relief it turned and sprang up into the air and flew off.
Red Sonja then approached the gate and showed the head of the
dead witch to the astonished guard ringing its blackened
walls.
She once more found herself back in the keep's council room
before the Master and the Elders. She tossed the head upon
their table.
"Both dragon and witch are gone," she said simply and waited
for a reply.
The reply came from the severed head of the witch. Which
promptly told the tale of her seduction by the current Master
to help murder her father the former Master and her then
betrayal and escape from death at his, her lovers hands.
Red Sonja then sliced off the Master's head where it fell
upon the table next to the now lifeless head of the witch and
then pointing her bloody sword at the shocked Elder's she
said, "you owe me a horse and treasure. Or would you like to
face a wrath far worse than a dragon and a witch."
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Script created with Final Draft by Final Draft, Inc.