Continued from Digest #245

From: Frank & Stacie Giles <fsgiles_at_pixi.com>
Date: Sat, 2 Dec 1995 12:37:28 -1000


A crack, a thud, the door burst open below. Accompanied by cries of outrage and mourning, Tinglet scuttled to the barred window and lifted his friends to the sill. Much commotion in the garden below. He must leave at once. The gallery ended at the north wall of the garden, the wall to the master s apartment. A chimney running up the wall about an arm s length out from the railing offered some cover for the climb to the roof. Tinglet hoped to get up quickly enough to avoid missles and spells, even if he were seen in the twilight. He moved. At the end of the gallery he stuck the tip of his snout through the ballustrade to scan the garden below. It was alive with humans. Many sounded like metal, weapons and armor. One, with a large cloth headdress was probably the family priestess.

     A flicker of motion above him caught his eye. He scanned nothing. It was a light projected onto the awning through the vent left open between the roof beams and the top of the wall. A strange light, like firelight but more evil, coming from the room within. Tinglet guessed the room to be part of the Master s apartments. The vent scanned as about three handbreaths high and two paces long, with no bars. It offered another way off the gallery, but one leading in, not out. Tinglet salivated, fate called him to a new, dangerous path. The floor vibrated beneath him, warriors were searching the gallery. In a few heartbeats they would round the corner to his left. Tinglet smiled. He slipped across the gallery and lept up, hooking his right arm through the vent. Then he walked his legs up the corner to the vent and kicked the right one through. Twisting until he was face down he pushed his leg back, feeling along a crossbeam. After a few heartbeats he could hook his foot over the crossbeam. Scanning and looking over his right shoulder as best he could, Tinglet slid backwards. Ai! the opening narrowed at its inner edge, too tight! The human warriors were nearly beneath him. With one hand Tinglet untied his leather harness so his equipment and weapons would slide up over his head instead of blocking his way. Genitals were already retracted from his recent fight. Tinglet exhaled, sucked in his gut as hard as he could, and writhed through the vent.

     Made it! He lay balanced atop a large beam above a half completed shrine. Below him lay an enormous altar, four paces long, and nearly as wide. Lazy flames burnt in two braziers mounted at the head and foot of a sacrificial platform at its far end. A mosaic of stone, metal and wooden shapes inlaid in gold sloped gently down from the platform to the foot of the altar beneath him. A warm trickle ran down the side of his snout. By the Left Upper! Intent on catching his harness as he slipped through the wall vent, he d torn his ear. Still plenty of time to heal it before the damage became real. A red drop fell from the tip of his snout. He scanned it as it fell, startling as it leaped from its straight path two handsbreadths above the altar to land sizzling on a metal patch an arm s length away. The metal was lead, the metal of darkness, the metal of his people. The drop dissappeared within a few heartbeats.



End of Glorantha Digest V2 #247


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