Chapter 11: To Burle

Written by Skarth Diem to Dronaet Klingstone

I rose before dawn and made my way out of the settlement. I returned to the same tree I had sat under the night before and began my usual ceremony. I sang the song to farewell the stars and welcome the sun. Then I sang the song of wellbeing and growth and let my magic seep out into the tree before me.

Feeling refreshed and invigorated, I returned to the Inn and joined my colleagues for breakfast.

We set out with the wagons as soon as we were ready. Plesko was once more tied securely into the back of the second wagon. He seemed to alternate between being fearful for his future and resigned to whatever the Fates had in store for him. Despite his actions, I felt some sympathy for him. The Fates are rarely kind.

The morning was warmer and there was no sign of rain as the wagons trundled down to the shore of the Dread River. Three halflings were waiting for us by the ferry. Eskur handed them a handful of coins and they swung into action to ready the ferry for the crossing. The ferry was only large enough for a single wagon and its horses so the halflings had to shuffle the ferry back and forth to get us all across.

We said our farewells to the halflings and headed off down the track. From this point, the Kingfisher River swung to the west and the road stayed in the river valley with the river out to our left. Low hills rose on each side of the shallow valley. The land was mostly wild grassland with a scattering of trees. We noticed that the wagoneers were even more alert and suspicious than they’d been the day before. As a result, we also maintained a careful watch and tried to keep ourselves ready for anything.

At around midmorning, we passed a small hamlet just off the road to our right. There was a little cluster of buildings surrounded by cultivated fields. Out in the fields, we could see farmers – humans – doing the work that farmers do in their fields. Prinn told me that the hamlet was called Yarrick. The farmers waved at us cheerily as we rolled past.

We stopped for lunch at a place where a small stream trickled across the road. We watered the horses and lunched on sliced roast beef and lettuce leaves wrapped in flatbread that the halfling chef at the Howling Goat inn had supplied for us. The beef had been marinated in some sort of herbal concoction that gave it an unusual flavour. I found it to be very tasty but Jenny Fisher grumbled about preferring the traditional way of cooking beef.

Perhaps an hour after lunch, we drew near a second settlement. O’Felling consisted of just one farm, operated by the Felling family. As we drew closer, we saw a clump of people gathered on the road. When they saw us they held their arms up and waved for us to stop. We could see a couple, an older woman, two youths and a child. They appeared to be distressed so we all immediately went on full alert and scanned the surrounding area for threats. I once more stood up on the back of the wagon to give me a better view as I looked around.

None of us could see any immediate danger but we stopped the wagons well short of the family and Wrack and Riellian walked up to them to find out what the problem was. I found out later that the family seemed nervous at first when they didn’t recognise us but were reassured when Wrack explained that we were from Saltmarsh and had been hired to escort the trading wagons to Burle.

Lars, the father, did most of the talking despite frequent excited interjections from the child – Juniper. Apparently, a black thing had burst through their door and into the house, though Juniper insisted that it was black and shadowy and slimy and horrible and that it had eaten its way in. Then it had seemed to expand until it filled the room. The older woman mentioned the Dread River – “A lot of bad things come down the river,” she said. Then Juniper repeated something that she said several times during her father’s story. “It ate our goats.”

We agreed to investigate and try to put a stop to whatever it was that had attacked them. I suggested to the wagoneers that they move a little past the farm so that nothing would be between them and Burle if whatever it was got past us. Then we got our weapons ready and walked up the little track to the farm buildings.

Riellian snuck ahead to scout out the farmhouse. Now that she’s wearing those elven-made boots, she seems to glide over the ground without making a sound. She peered inside the farmhouse for a moment and then waved us forward. There was no sign of any creature inside. The front door hung open, swaying in the slight breeze, and the bottom half of it seemed to have been eaten away. There were patches on the floor and sections of furniture where cloth, fur, wood and even metal had been eaten away, though the stone paving and the stonework around the fireplace appeared untouched.

Riellian pointed out to us some disturbance in the grass and dirt around the doorway where the grass was brown as if it were burnt. She told us that the thing appeared to have come out of the stream and made its way to the goat pen beside the house. There was a gap in the fence and all that was left of the goats was a single foreleg that was completely intact up to the point where a charred end appeared where the rest of the goat should’ve been. There was no blood, no mess, just part of the leg of a goat.

Having entered the house, and scared the daylights out of the family, the creature then appeared to have left the house and crossed the small bridge over the stream as it made its way towards the barn and the fields. The bridge looked as if it had once been sturdy, but the passage of the creature had left the surface damaged almost to the point where it couldn’t be used.

It was at this moment that Jenny spoke up to tell us a story she’d been told as a child. The Tale of Black Bob tells of a horrible black thing made of nothingness that appears out of nowhere and eats everything in sight. What we were seeing here seemed to match the story. Unfortunately, as far as Jenny could recall, the story did not include any directions on how to destroy such a creature or drive it away.

To cross the bridge we had to walk along the still solid beams rather than the rotted planks that had formed the surface. Once safely across, we approached the barn. Again the door swung open, hanging loosely off its hinges, and the bottom half of the door looked like it had rotted away.

Again, Riellian crept forward to have a look. She came back and said she could see a dead cow lying on its side on the floor and surrounded by a dark and oozing mass. Jenny Fisher returned to the farmhouse and grabbed some oil and a bucket which she filled with hot coals. Riellian took some rags which she coated with oil and then wrapped them around several arrows.

Jenny then stepped to the doorway and threw the remainder of the oil so that it spread across the floor of the barn near the dead cow. Then she threw the hot coals onto the oil which immediately caught fire. There was an awful, cloying smell in the smoke that poured up from the boiling oil.

The oil burnt out very quickly and when it was gone, we realised that it had been burning on the dirt floor. In addition, we now saw that what we thought had been a dead cow submerged in the black blob was actually half a cow lying on the dirt. The underneath of the cow had been completely eaten away.

We looked around and, despite the limited amount of light, we spotted a black mass up in the rafters of the barn. I activated my star form which shed more light into the area and allowed us to see the creature more clearly. It hung from a rafter – an oozing slimy black thing with no limbs or features of any kind.

My archer fired an arrow of starlight at the blob and it appeared to shudder as it was hit. Then I sang the song of lightning and sent a bolt of lightning spearing straight into its centre. It shivered and broke into two smaller blobs but appeared to take no damage from the strike. Now we had two blobs to deal with instead of one. I decided not to do that again.

Kelshann stepped forward and roared, sending a huge stream of icy breath flooding over the two blobs. Little crystals of ice formed around the surface of the blobs and then fell away, leaving the two blobs unharmed.

Riellian lit one of the arrows she’d wrapped with oil-soaked rags and then shot the burning arrow straight into the centre of one of the two blobs. The arrow speared straight through the blob and thudded into the wooden beam it was wrapped around. The fire seemed to wrap around the blob and it keened in agony. The blob seemed to burst apart into a thousand pieces of ash that slowly drifted down to the floor. All that was left was the burnt and blackened arrow jutting out of the rotted wooden beam.

The remaining blob slid along the beam and sent a long thin tentacle of itself whipping towards Kelshann, but she was able to duck out of the way and the tentacle dropped and then withdrew into the body of the blob without having done any damage.

Wrack stepped forward and stabbed at the blob with his trident. The trident glowed with magic as he struck and the magic seemed to burn into the blob, but there was also a hissing sound as the metal prongs of the trident seemed to rust and corrode almost instantly. The blob responded by spitting a noxious stream of acid at Wrack which forced him to dodge frantically and left him gasping for breath.

My archer fired another arrow of starlight which slid past the blob and disappeared into the darkness of the rafters. Then I lashed out with my thorn whip. The magical thorns bit into the flesh of the blob but even those thorns formed from my magic started to sizzle and steam before I released the magic and the whip faded into nothing.

Then Riellian fired another flaming arrow into the centre of the blob and that was the last straw for the blob. It burst apart into a haze of ash which slowly drifted to the ground to join the remnants of its other half.

We all searched carefully around the barn and the surrounding area and we were able to confirm that there were no more of these things in the area. We walked back to the family to let them know the black blob was destroyed. Sadly, we also had to tell them that their cow and goats were gone and that there was some serious damage to their house and barn and the little bridge between them.

They were grateful for our help and seemed determined to rebuild, though Lars acknowledged that the loss of their livestock would hurt. We wished them all the best and left them to examine the damage for themselves as we resumed our journey.