Vignette - Chameleon Cats

Chameleon cats are 150 to 200 lbs of cruelty in an adaptive camouflage pelt. Like their distantly related domestic counterparts they seem to delight in killing small creatures in excess of their needs. This odd state is exacerbated by their primary diet being feral hogs. They don’t need to kill smaller creatures for food. They just enjoy it.

Their tools for achieving this goal are quite impressive. A magical ability to fade into the background, saliva that contained a numbing agent, sharp hooked claws that it would lick before applying and an incredibly powerful pair of vise like jaws.

Their preferred method of hunting involved abusing all of these. They would jump lightly onto the back of a hog, hooking their claws in for stability before applying their oversized jaws to the pigs spine. Rather than a quick bite they used a ratcheting pressure that neatly slid through the hogs magical impact defenses.

-From the species tablets at Runehold

Chapter 23

The Nellie skated through the waves, leaving white water in a wake behind it. The image came through the scrying pool crystal clear for a moment, before fading away.

“We don't have the charge to watch it the entire distance, it’s on you Regi, unless it gets hairy.”

“Not a problem, just stay close in case we need directions. Running your pool at this range, it is a real strain for anyone else.”

“Sure Sure, later, you shouldn't need me before the swamp anyway. I think there are some things in the bath house that still need doing. Switching topics, isn’t it a bit creepy that you can look through the eyes of anyone in your Brotherhood. Seems pretty intrusive.”

“Loyalty requires trust, Timothy. I trust that they’ll let me know when I’m needed, so I don’t look unless asked. That and the fact that my presence is obvious too whoever I am looking through. Still, you're not entirely wrong. It’s creepy looking through Da’s eyes and even worse with Ma.”

“♪Nobody knows what it's like, to be the bad man...♪” Timothy crooned.

“Fred Durst or The Who?”

“You are ok with being the bad man as long as it's in the right voice?”

“You take the wins where you can.”

Timothy smiled, glad to get some good humor out of him. It might have been the first such bit in two days. In his head, Regi was standing on the prow of that galley with good oars, but reality had disagreed. He was the linchpin of the entire brotherhood and had to value his life accordingly. Getting him to accept a more protected position had been, is and would continue to be, a slog.

That bit of good humor warmed him up inside all the way down to the bath house. After a considerable amount of contention it had been placed a level below the living quarters. The access ramp came from just off the atrium and led down a significant distance.

It was yet another example of how magic turned the usual rules on their head. Building downwards with people still walking around above with no issues at all. The construction method was an expansion of how he had made the houses. Plan out the entire space, columns, ceiling, floor, pools, everything. Then design it as a series of spells all locked together to get the proper spacing.

For instance: A pillar was a standard enchantment. The size was variable. It would condense the surrounding rock into an essence rock pillar that was stronger than any old world concrete mix. Hell it was probably stronger than an equivalent amount of solid iron. Not having any iron or concrete it was hard to prove, but Timothy thought it was very likely. Anyway, pillars are a standard enchant. Condensing the ceiling above the pillars was a standard enchant. The floor a standard enchant. Only the pool areas needed a bit of a change up.

So the first bit of work involved carefully cutting a tunnel into the area in question, then using direction runes with a dial to place each pillar. One enchant per pillar till they were all finished. Then enchant the ceiling to make sure the weight would hold. Then carefully condense the remaining floor into sections of different heights to form the pools.

When given tools with dials the artistic genius of the guardians had really exploded out and best of all, Timothy had not had to get involved at all for the base level construction. The results, even unfinished, were all that he could ask for.

Opposite the landing at the base of the ramp was another airlock check point. As the baths were unfinished it was open and unmanned, but that would change. As deep in the fortress as this was it might be more useful as an age filter than as a monster stopper. Maybe set it up for everyone in the middle of the day, an elderly quiet hour in the morning and adults only in the late evenings.

Don’t get him wrong. Timothy thought kids were great. Just, like many bachelors, not all the time! Besides, having roughhousing encouraged hours would probably make the kids happy as well.

It was a good idea, he wrote it down to put before the council later.

Beyond the gate the forest of twenty five feet tall columns loomed in pleasing regularity. The standard ribbed vault ceiling above even provided the illusion that this was not underground. Tall, light and airy while still feeling somewhat intimate with small spaces between columns cutting down on the sight lines.

Circular flat protuberances turned the bases of the columns in the pool area into bench seats beneath the soon to be waterline. Timothy nodded in satisfaction. They really had done a fine job with the basic design. From here on it would be down to how they decorated it.

Already the ubiquitous ferns surrounded the edges of the pool to cleanse the air. In time each column would in turn be carved and colored into individual pieces of art. That was for later. For now he had a few more important jobs to do.

He carefully carved in a remove material specific enchantment for each pool. Into the specific slots, he carved two of them with x’s this time, he placed a sample of the stone essence that made up the room and a bit of boiled clean water. A few careful experiments had revealed the rock essence to be homogenous enough to qualify and removing everything but clean water would insure the cleanliness of the pool. It would also clean up people. Not a desirable outcome! So next to it he placed a detect human species enchantment. A very careful bit of linking insured that the removal could not be activated while the other enchantment detected a human.

He did add a refuse bin behind the cleaning runes. All that removed dirt and other gunk had to go somewhere. He did not envy whoever had to clean all that mess out. He might have to treat it like sewage and have a rune dump it to the composter. He made another quick note for himself. Damn list was long.

Still, he was satisfied. More things came off the list then were added to it. He couldn't ask for much more. To celebrate that rare event he pulled out and triggered a water summoning enchantment. Its entire charge wasn’t a patch on the water needed to fill this pool, much less the two cleaning pools, but he had to start somewhere. In time they would fill them all, and with regular cleanings to keep it fresh they would only have to do it once.

Just a few more enchantments and he would call it a day. He had been too busy to create a rune for heat yet. It was on the list! In the meantime he had the same trick he used to make glass and to cook. Concentrate light on top of the material. Since it was underground they would need to bring in stored light. It was the equivalent of firing a very weak ELR underwater to bring up the heat… Ya he would need to work on that heat rune eventually.

That was all he had time for today anyway, it was time to head back to the scrying pool.

Ma and Da should be getting close to the swamp by now.

He trooped back up the ramps, through the check points and three stories up a ladder. “Bwahh,” He blew out, straggling over to the side board for a cup of water. “We are not going to have any trouble with obesity around here!”

Arthur snorted his agreement while Regi merely gave him a courtesy chuckle.

“How we doing?”

“It’s still early, probably another half hour or so.” Regi responded.

Dragging his feet, he made his way over and plopped down on a cushion before the pool. A quick glance at Regi gave him the mile marker so with a few small adjustments the pool bloomed to life at a decent altitude looking downward on the wide river below. Moving merily with the current was the Nellie significantly off center considering his rough and ready approach, but then he didn't actually want to see her up close. A quick check of the various landmarks validated Regi’s assumed position so he let the pool die again.

He fidgeted on the pillow for a few more minutes, idly doodling on a note pad of solid wood before abruptly standing up and heading for the ladder. “Forget this, call me if you need me. I have a lot of projects to work on.”

“Pay up Regi.” Arthur chuckled and held out his hand. Shaking his head Regi dropped a couple stone chits into it.

“Come on Timothy! You couldn’t last even five minutes?”

“The two of you bet that I wouldn’t wait?”

“No no, we bet on WHEN you would leave.” Arthur smiled calmly as he pocketed the coins.

Regi spoke, “Timothy, you don’t sit and wait, forget well, you don’t do it at all. Neither of us bet you would stay, merely how long before you left.” At least he was smiling when he said it.

“Not being able to wait is a real liability for a military man. It’s pretty nice on the guy who is making us all the amenities. Go on, Regi and I will keep an eye on them,” His tone became sour as he held up a miniature Nellie, “Might play with dolls on the map table while we are at it.”

That image kept Timothy smiling long after he finished climbing down the ladder.

He spent the half our in a pleasant enough manner. Digging into a possible species rune for hogs. Sure the snakes and cats were probably more important, but he already knew a lot more about the hogs. He was going to pick off the low hanging fruit first.

Still, all things must end.

“Timothy, game time.” Regi’s voice echoed down through the hatch.

With a sigh he put down the test piece and climbed up.

“Gareth, when did you come by?” Timothy was surprised to see the bard calmly sitting beside the pool.

“Maybe twenty minutes ago. I want to see this swamp for myself. Surely you lot were pulling my leg.”

“Ahh?” He had not noticed him climb by. He really needed to add some doors gates, being that oblivious wasn’t safe. Then the second portion of Gareth's statement trickled through to him. “Any chance you want to bet on that?”

Gareth looked at him somewhat suspiciously, “Depends on the bet I guess.”

“I might need a soundtrack for what we are seeing. An hour of being my boom box if you lose.”

“And if I win? I’ll take an enchantment to empty my toilet from my house.” Timothy didn’t actually know how to do that yet. Thankfully this was a sucker bet, but if he lost it wasn’t like he couldn't figure it out with time.

“Deal!” He said.

“Deal!” Gareth agreed.

“Sucker,” Regi voiced out under his breath with a head shake.

“Yep.” Arthur didn’t even pretend, his voice was loud and clear.

Timothy grinned, “Gareth, do you have any instruments working yet?” Timothy asked as he activated the pool, he glanced at his notes for the coordinates of the swamps entrance.

With a wry grimace Gareth responded, “Sort of, I have a drum and a proto guitar. It’s proto because the strings are a bit dodgy. Animal gut and sinew are not what I am used to. Why?”

“I feel like we should have a banjo for this leg of the trip.”

Regi spoke “You want them to paddle faster?” He hummed the famous refrain.

“You're damn right, and hope Ma doesn’t pray for Deliverance!”

Small chuckles lingered in the room, although Gareths were decidedly skeptical, as they swooped down just inside the entrance, giving full attention to the black mangroves clothed in drooping vines and surrounded by algae and reeds.

“I think you are getting your stories mixed up brother, the Nellie is after Kurtz not Ned Beatty.”

The jokes and small talk helped him to relax and let go some of the worry, who told both his parents to take an untested boat through the nastiest terrain he could find?

Thankfully he had work to do, “You stick with the Nellie Regi, I am going to sweep the proposed route for new obstructions.”

The view point dropped beneath the waves and shot downriver with considerable speed. The blackened water of the bayou like swamp did not reduce the visibility of the pool. The eye enchantment in his pool had ripped off the old masons symbol, it was called the all seeing eye after all. There was too much darkness beneath the jungle tree cover. He needed to be able to clearly see what he was looking at, in darkness or in light.

The pool was alive with a multitude of various creatures. The occasional tentacle-sturgeon fed on the near-piranha's while turtles the size of a kitchen table snapped up fish and leeches. An occasional hovercroc flickered through the view, too quick to keep in sight for more than a moments. The circle of life writ small and by Stephen King. He even paused the view to show Gareth a mosquito swarm.

Gareth had to kneel to the throne at that point. He ardentently worshiped until his stomach was empty and then some. That was probably the most decisive way to win a bet Timothy had ever heard of!

“Other than the hover crocs I don’t see any major new obstructions. How are they doing Regi?”

“Da says they are getting significant strain put on the hull protection runes. Not sure what is doing it but if you can come back and take a look it would be helpful.”

“You got a map mile marker close to them?”

“Ya, number 223 is coming up quickly.”

A couple quick adjustments to had the pool looking down from a hundred feet up at the mile marker location. A ten second wait had the Nellie skating into view on a cloud of white water.

“This is gonna be tricky with the speed they are moving at.” The view dived down to the water and flashed past the boat. He repeatedly moved the view back and forth through the boat attempting to hold it steady at similar speeds to no avail.

“Sorry, I am not going to be able to get a look, I can’t adjust the view fast enough at these speeds.” Frustrated, Timothy backed the view out for a more general underwater view of the nellie from a distance. It was not smoothly following the boat, but rather a quick jump forward then a delay as the boat shot by.

“I see, well Da says they can hold the protection runes through the swamp. Apparently it’s just two out of the ten protection rune segments that are under stress. With thirty guardians on the boat they can sub out on the stressed sections for the return trip.”

“That boat takes a considerable number of people to man it… four motion wards, ten protection runes and a driver who also supplies propulsion.” Arthur mused, “Could we reduce that number?”

“You could, I set the protection runes up like that in order to make them easy to keep active. One person could protect the entire hull if they only kept it active for a short amount of time. If you want constant protection it takes a toll on the user. But if you can wait, then activate it only when you need it, that could reduce the crew requirements by a considerable amount.”

“I suspect this way has more stored magic as well.” Timothy shrugged before continuing. “Markus should have some measurable results to prove it, but my guess is that the amount of mana an enchantment can hold is determined by the number or runes. So ten separate rune chains should hold ten times the mana.”

“But it doesn't cost any mana unless something tries to damage the hull right?” Regi chimed in.

“Usually that's the case, not this time though. The hull is constantly hitting the water, it’s not really damaging, but it acts like a constant attack, especially at higher speeds. Still it's a very small drain.”

A floating stick, merely a couple inches in diameter sailed off the bow wave suddenly exploded, fragments flying everywhere with massive speed.

“What the fuck was that?” Regi’s eyes were large and round “They heard it inside the boat!”

Timothy's mind raced as he tried to understand… It floated off the bow wave and hit the left motion ward… It also made contact with the hull… Fuck, I compleatly missed it.

“I screwed up, I thought a motion ward was acting on relative motion…” His mind was racing trying to flesh out theory.

“English brother, english please”

Frustrated Timothy took a deep breath and started again. “When you are on a fast moving boat it looks to you like the land is moving. That's relative motion. I assumed that the motion ward would try to equalize the speeds of the two objects in relation to each other. It’s not doing that. It is attempting to absorb motion. Not relative motion, any motion.” he paused for a second “Scratch that, if it was any motion it would try to stop the earth from spinning. Any motion relative to the planet maybe, or relative to the magic field. “ I will have to figure that out later...

He shook his head and continued “That stick hit an object going fifteen miles an hour while its other end was in a field that won’t let it move even a single mile in an hour. Predictably it exploded under the competing forces. I am so very glad I thought a forward facing motion ward was a bad idea.”

Arthur got it immediately “You would anchor whatever you hit a couple inches from the bow… Jesus that could get messy.”

“On the plus side it just gave me an idea for an absolutely nasty weapon. If I can tinker with the concept of motion and get it to be an absolute reference, applying it to a person or creature would turn them into toothpaste. The earth is spinning along pretty fast after all…”

Looking up Timothy saw 12 sets of eyes staring at him in Horror. “What? It might work.”

Sven spoke into the ensuing silence “We all believe you, Timothy, we just wish we didn’t. The idea is horrifying. I won’t ask you not to make it, survival comes first, but please don’t use it unless we really need it.”

Grunts and nods of agreement volleyed from the room's inhabitants.

How is that any more terrifying than a full power blast from an ELR? People are confusing…

Small talk began to fill the room as the Nellie continued on her merry way. Timothy didn’t participate in it, he had too much on his mind. First understand what the current motion ward is referencing. Then make sure that won’t hurt anything if it’s carried around the jungle.

He deactivated the pool as the Nellie at last moved beyond the swamp and slowed to a more manageable ten miles an hour.

Another two miles, ten to twelve minutes and the real hot times would begin.

Reaching over, Timothy knocked on the wooden chair by the map table. Please don’t let the name Nellie be an omen.

“Please let these people be sane! I enjoyed Lord of the Flies as a kid, but I really don’t want to see it acted out in real life.” Timothy muttered aloud.

“Can I get an Amen!” Arthur chimed in fervently. He had been there, done that already and had the scar’s to prove it.

“AMEN!” rattled back, heartfelt, from fourteen throats in unison.