Fire and Water

The last few days travel pass uneventfully and the Party finally get to within sight of the doubly-dead; Zephir’s oasis. It’s withered and browned a fair bit since they were first here but, considering it contains their way back home to Fissa, it’s still a very welcome sight.

Scattered prone around the outer periphery are several tall, multi-limbed bodies though. Several dead, tall, multi-limbed bodies. The corpses of about a score of the nomadic, insectoid Tri-Kreen. The skilled Liga Bur initially suspects another zombie trap but, after ‘careful’ inspection with a ten foot pole, he’s relieved to find them merely mundanely dead. Probably innocent desert travellers exploiting the free water supply here and killed needlessly and mercilessly by Sir Briefadel, his Mother and the dark horse they rode in on.

Scouting ahead and grateful to find no opposition guarding the inner oasis, Liga Bur cautiously approaches the top of the central stone well. Once there though, the fiery Dijonn on realising what’s happening, suddenly flares wildly atop his torch perch.

“Oh No, Oh No, Oh No! Please Master, don’t put me down the well! Leave me here; I can guard the oasis for you. I can easily survive on just the dead, dried out bushes and trees. I promise I won’t burn the living green stuff!”

Rifkin’s slightly-almond eyes also flair, but far more subtly as he hears Dijonn’s terrified hisses and crackles. Why hadn’t he thought about this before now? There’s no way that the flame-bodied Dijonn could survive for even a second underwater and there’s no way to protect him from it for anything more than a few moments.

Arowe immediately comes to the little elementals defence and Liga Bur has no interest in extinguishing his spluttering servant. The canny Halfling had noticed that Dijonn always shrank to his smallest, unnoticeable flame whenever Ghostly Pardrik was on guard or when the Hag had visited. The fire elemental was definitely hiding something, but what?

Still, whatever that ‘what’ is, it’s no reason to kill him. The rough Halfling had begun to question his own cynicism of late. He hadn’t trusted Fortu, Arowe or Rifkin when he’d first met them on the road to Scar Borough, and now he’d trust them with his life. He had been trusting them to protect him from the protracted attacks from the Hag and they’d not let him down. Considering his past losses, it’s hard to have faith in people but perhaps it’s time to change that mindset. Perhaps he could have faith in something bigger than himself. Something deeper. Perhaps he should choose to believe that Henshaw and Doberman weren’t secretly plotting against him… Barbella would be more of a stretch though.

After making Dijonn swear on his favourite fire gods not to burn down the entire oasis, Liga Bur frees the tiny elemental by gently transferring it from his torch to a dried out bush on the dead outskirts of deader Zephir’s oasis garden.

Immediately growing larger, as he consumes the dry and brittle bush, Dijonn smirks as he wavers the Party goodbye.

“Good luck skin-wearers!.”