<HTML> Storytime. The children are gathered around on the floor in front of the front counter in the bakery. They're seated in a semicircular fan arrangement, very close in so they can hear him (he will still have to whisper), yet still all positioned in a way such that they can all see the storyteller and whatever or whomever he might employ for assistance. This is all which occupies their focus (excepting, of course, the promise of pie, which reminds them to whisper only); there are no thoughts of Bad Guys, or the cold, or whatever else might interfere. After all, it's Storytime. At the center of all these lines of sight is a Storyteller. Jono, of course. He's leaning easily against the counter, waiting for the focus to come completely on him, and also waiting to gather his thoughts together for the telling of the tale. He has to be sure he can tell the story absolutely right, so that it will inspire and invigorate rather than depress and disturb. But he knows what he's doing - he's done this hundreds upon hundreds of times before, and he's sure he can handle it. He can also catch sights of the others around the place, watching through various spots to make sure that nothing interrupts. Thankfully, they didn't need to be convinced of the value of Storytime. The morale of their charges has to stay high. He's picked a story that he normally doesn't tell kids, but for these circumstances he thinks it very appropriate. So here he is, preparing himself for the Story, turned mostly away from the kids, while the kids sit and watch, already transfixed. It's time to listen, for that's what you do when you have a Story. Then Jono turns back around, and spreads his hands wide. He clears his throat, then speaks, his voice not quite at a whisper, but still largely quieted. "It is said by many in this World that no matter what Story you Tell, you will always be telling a twice-told tale. What this means to say is that Whatever is happening to you" - he points a finger and sweeps it back and forth, indicating All of the children - "is almost certainly not unique; that it has happened to persons Before. Thus, if a person Knows of these tales, said person can apply them to their Own lives, and Learn from them!" He brings his paw up as he says this; this is a Lesson To Be Learned. "And, indeed, the situation we have before us has occurred before, long ago in a land far, far to the south of where we live here." The children are still listening. Some of them are a bit puzzled; this isn't like the normal stories Uncle Jono tells! But most aren't caring - it's Uncle Jono, and he's telling a story! And it's a New one, which is going to be so very cool!" Jono is currently facing a small challenge; he has to retell this story from a different perspective. The facts of what happened to Sarcomand are well known, but most of them aren't things he wants to dwell on. He's going to have to re-embellish so that things will involve the kids more. Fortunately, any good tavern bard can re-embellish. "So, once upon this time, there was a village named Sarcomand, on the border of the Southern Midlands and Outer Midlands, in between Three Mighty and Fast Rivers!" He spreads his hands outward as he says the last - these are Big Things! They really Are big things; a child would easily be impressed to see it, but he has to Show it to them without actually going there. A collection of "oooooh"s and looks of awe seem to communicate that he's gotten the message across. "Now, Sarcomand was this amazing place to live. All the kids there got to do all sorts of things! Snow would come down from the mountains and so they could have snowball fights; the rivers were heated from hot springs and so you could swim when you were tired of snow, and all the Mommies and Daddies had things to do like farming, making bread, telling each other stories, all sorts of things!" Jono spreads his paws wide as he says this, to convey the awesome number of just Fun Stuff To Do. So many things! One child asks quietly, "Did they get to play 'Tag'?" Jono chuckles as softly as he can manage. "Of course they got to play 'Tag.' The place in general was nice and flat for running, and there were All sorts of good hiding places in the buildings and along the riverside." He grins widely, giving the child a conspiratorial wink. You could have the game of your *life* there! the wink seems to say. The child gets a very happy grin on her face. "So, Sarcomand was a very neat and a very happy place, where Everyone got to do stuff they loved to do. But" - and he drops his voice lower; we're about to get bad stuff here - "not everyone liked things the way they were with Sarcomand." One child blurts out "Bu-", then he catches himself and starts whispering again. "But why? Isn't there all that stuff to do?" Jono smiles. "Ah, that is a Big and Complex thing, but I will tell you. You see, Sarcomand was a place that lived with all the other people of the Southern Midlands, much like how Lorland and Glen Avery and other villages here live with Metamor. And they liked it that way; they had all sorts of friends in Kelewair - those're the people in charge of Southern Midlands" he says quickly as one child starts to raise his hand; the hand goes down. "and they could go over to visit friends in Lanton nearby, where they could trade food and other things for wood and such to make more homes and more toys for the kids!" Everyone's face brightens up at the prospect of more toys, and Jono smiles briefly, then drops his voice low. This is the bad part... "But other people in the Outer Midlands wanted Sarcomand for themselves. They liked where it was, but they didn't want that spot to be with Southern Midlands. So they wanted to take it! Take it without asking, without doing any helpful chores to pay back!" A collective series of gasps come from the children. That's means you're ALWAYS supposed to ask permission! One of the younger children raises his hand. "Uncle Jono? Did they get in trouble with their moms and dads?" Jono has to resist the urge to chuckle; he doesn't want this to go into their heads as something funny. Yet he can't resist smiling inwardly. "Ah, I'm afraid they didn't; that's a problem when you start working with whole Countries. You see" - he puts a hand back up now; this is another Lesson - "sometimes when someone gets to looking like they're grown up enough to be in charge of all those people, they start deciding they don't want to be grown up anymore, and start being like kids again. But since they look like they're grown up, their Mommies and Daddies are letting them live all by themselves. And so they can get in trouble, and the only people that can tell them No are other people who are in charge of other big groups of people who are deciding to stay grown up. And sometimes the not-grownup says he doesn't Want to, and then" - voice drops again - "Very, very bad things happen." All of the children go quiet at that, and some tremble a little as their imaginations try to think up what kind of very, very, bad things might be happening. Then another child - he realizes with a bit of a start that it's Jeremy - raises his hand. "Are those very, very bad things kinda like the bad things that are happening here?" Kevin is suddenly looking immensely proud of his son. Jono is very much inclined towards the same opinion. "Exactly right!" he says, beaming. "With us right now, there's a big bad guy wizard called Nasoj" - everyone seems to look up or nod at the mention of that name; evidently they all know about him - "who wants to take the Keep without asking, and this is the sort of very, very bad things that happen when someone is being that way. With Sarcomand, there was a Big Bad Guy in Outer Midlands named Kelewin who was in charge of Outer Midlands at the time, and he wanted to take Sarcomand without asking. This is why you always have to ask for things!" He raises his paw again; he wants them to remember this very clearly. It seems to register in many of their eyes, thankfully. "So, Kelewin decided one day he was going to just up and take Sarcomand. He didn't even think to ask the people in charge of Southern Midlands, he didn't even talk to Sarcomand people. He decided to be a bad guy and just take it." Emphasis on the last few words - it has to be absolutely clear that this is an Incredibly Bad Thing. There's a few nods from the children. "So that day Kelewin gets a whole bunch of good guys and forces them to become bad guys, and makes them go over to either make Sarcomand belong to him, or" - he lowers his voice - "destroy it entirely." There's a collection of gasps again. Now that's really bad. One child, evidently confused, raises his hand. "But how could he force good guys to be bad guys?" Oh dear. This is going to be a tough one... "Kelewin was a very, big bad guy, and so he was able to do things that made it such that people had to do what he said. He'd do things, like, threaten to send you to bed without supper, only much worse, and just because you were a good guy! So to keep from getting unfairly punished, the good guys had to do things that only bad guys would do, and so many people thought they were bad guys." The children are looking very frightened now. Clearly the thought on their mind is what if I end up around a bad guy like that? "So with the good guys doing bad guy things for him, Kelewin went over to try and take Sarcomand. But the folks at Sarcomand wanted to keep their homes. They liked their baking, and their snowball fields, and all the good hiding places in the river. And so they were going to fight back, and they did!" "Di-" one kid starts to shout, but another puts his hand over his lips and says "Shh!" before removing the hand. The kid restarts, a little chastised, "Did they beat the big bad guy?" Jono grins. This is the cool part. "Yes they did. They found out that what they thought were bad guys were actually good guys, and so they got those good guys to help them out!" He spreads his paws very, very wide; this is about to be a very big thing. "And when all the other good guys in the Outer Midlands found out about that, they Also decided to go help out Sarcomand, and pretty soon Kelewin wasn't able to be in charge anymore, because EVERYONE was now a good guy, and good guys don't do what bad guys tell them to!" The kids manage not to cheer only because they're all still waiting for a slice of pie. The Sarcomand folks did win! The big bad guy who punished good guys unfairly got beat! Kirk, all throughout the storytelling, is shaking his head in wonderment at Jono's ability. His first thought when he heard the name Sarcomand was along the lines of Oh dear Gods, Jono's gone insane. Sarcomand was one of the most horrifying events in Midlands history. Kelewin had been trying to get into the fertile river valleys that crisscrossed along the area, and he'd been petty enough to send in an army, and what had followed was the bloodiest massacre in the history of the Midlands, directly by Kelewin's orders. A few of the solders had had the morality to object to that, the villagers had pleaded with them, and before long a few small objections had grown to the point at which there was a full-on rebellion up and down the Outer Midlands. Kelewin had woken up that morning to find himself surrounded by mutineers whose kindest thought towards him would have been swift regicide. They'd tortured him for days, then dropped him somewhere in the middle of the Great Barrier Range, completely naked, and left him to die. Of course, there were rumors that he'd survived and become one of Nasoj's nobles, but nobody thought that likely. And yet Jono was taking the story of a massacre and a resulting revolution, a story usually told as a lesson in defeating evil early to protect the weak, and had turned it into a story of the Good Underdogs beating the Big Bad Guy. And the kids were enthralled. Kirk is simply amazed. "And thus it came to pass that the people of Sarcomand did manage to stop a very, very bad guy and make him go away forever and thus preserve their home, and here this story ends." And with that Jono drops his paws to his sides, to show that the story is over. Thirty seconds later the Lutins start trying to break down the door. *** *** 12/25 - 11am "I still think this is a stupid idea." Jacob grunted and pulled away another charred board. "What is it you soldiers say? If it works, then it's not a stupid idea?" Snorting, Rickkter tossed his own board out of the way. "It still has to work." "Are you always such a pessimist?" said Jacob as he hauled away another board. Finally they could see the frame of the door. Good, it was never sealed up properly. "Or is it just when you're trying to impress people you've just met?" "I like being a pessimist," Rickkter told him as he kicked aside a crate. "You're either always being proven right or pleasantly surprised." Rick moved the last of the boards from in front of the door. Thankfully they didn't have to worry about breaking into the warehouse. The place was a smoking ruin when they found it. It must have been a hell of a blaze, too, reflected the raccoon, for the ruin was still mostly bare of snow. He just hoped that it would remain bare of Lutins as well. The door itself was made from thick oak boards with iron bands across them and a lock on the outside that looked somewhere close to fifteen years old. And, while it would probably stop a curious child, the mechanism sprang open with just a few hits from a stout piece of timber that Jacob had picked up. From there they just had to remove the lock and latch. Jacob dropped the board and brushed some ashen snow from his muzzle. "Okay, let's get out of this miserable cold once and for all." That proved easier said than done, for when he tried to pull on the iron ring, the door refused to budge. Frowning, he tried again with both paws. "Oh, no. You're kidding me!" Rickkter exclaimed. He shouldered his way beside the fox and added his own strength and paws to the stubborn door. Even with the two of them grunting and pulling, the door barely moved an inch. "Figures it would have to happen now," cursed the raccoon through his clenched muzzle as he added a foot to the doorframe for added leverage. "Don't tell me you're bitching about the cold again," Jacob cursed, his own muzzle set in a snarl as the door moved about a half inch. Whether it was warped in the frame from years of neglect or just the metal hinges having rusted shut he couldn't say. "No, I'm not bitching about the cold. I'm bitching about the rather large patrol of Lutins that are coming this way." "You serious?" "Very" "Bloody hell!' "Yup." Jacob changed position, trying to wedge his shoulder between the door and frame and push outwards. He managed half his arm. "Are you sure they'll see us?" "Do you want to risk it?" "We'd better hurry then." Rickkter grunted and strained against the iron ring while the blue fox attempted to force the thick door open further. The door cracked and shuddered under their combined efforts, eventually giving way. It gave way in a method neither would have preferred, however. The entire handle assembly came free of the apparently rotted wood and pulled right out in Rick's paw, almost sending the raccoon down on his tail in the process. "That's it, back up. We're doing this the easy way," growled the raccoon before whipping the now useless handle into a pile of rubble and backing up several paces. The expression on his face was one of pure murder and the fox quickly sought to remove himself from it. He had barely made it clear before Rickkter threw up his paws and sent a shimmering silver ball of magic hurtling at the door. What would not budge before for mortal hands shattered like fine crystal under a little magical coercion. Jacob looked back at the now gapping back doorway to the underworld of his childhood. "Come on, let's get going," Rickkter said to him, slapping him on the back as he jogged past. The fox was quick to find his feet once more and follow. At least the way down had not changed. The stone steps were frozen over slightly with their normal film of slimy water, so both had to be careful as they went down. At least the wall was of pretty uneven stone and provided something to grip. But of course the tunnel didn't provide any way to see. Night vision works at night, not in pitch darkness. He was just about to call that fact out to the raccoon ahead of him when a feather of witchlight burst into being above the mage's head. The sudden illumination was blinding, though, and almost caused the fox to lose his precarious balance on the slippery steps. At least it lessened to bearable levels when Rickkter moved past the first turn. Jacob stood in the weaker glow of the witchlight and tried to blink away the afterimages. And that was when he heard the first of the Lutin war cries echoing down the steps from above. That got him moving again. "Rick, we got company coming!" He hit the flat level of the switchback and braved a look back. Sure enough, the silhouette of several Lutin warriors could be seen bounding down the steps. "Rick?" he called out again down the second flight while still watching the Lutins. No answer. "Rick?!" he yelled louder. The little green horrors were making excellent progress, getting far too close for his comfort. Plunging down what he long remembered to be the final flight, he saw Rickkter standing there under the unearthly halo of his witchlight. "Gods, what are you waiting for? They're right behind me!" "I know they're right behind you! Now get out of my way!" Jacob quickly skidded to a halt, his toe claws scraping the stone floor before he threw himself to the side. It was a rather ungraceful landing, a sharp corner from a stone poking him in the ribs as he rolled onto his side and looked back at the stairway. He was just in time to see the mage reach out and wave his paw in an arch mimicking the shape of the stairway roof. Then to see that roof collapsing in on itself and hear the death screams as the falling blocks caught the Lutin pursers. Well, all but one of them. The lone lead Lutin just cleared the falling stone before becoming engulfed in the ensuing dust cloud. Jacob was able to make out the silhouette of the Lutin against the glow of Rickkter's witchlight, and able to see that glow shift behind the Lutin, followed by a wet thunk. The Lutin silhouette promptly disappeared. "Okay, what did you do?" Jacob demanded as he got to his feet after the dust had cleared. "The only thing I could. We couldn't have fought them off, they were too many." "So you sealed us in here?" "Good motivation," Rickkter explained as he returned his drawn sword to its wooden scabbard. "Now we seriously need to find another way out of here. So which way?" Jacob licked at some dust that had settled on his muzzle. "Left. That tunnel turns towards the Keep itself, it should take us where we want to go." The mage nodded and headed off in that direction. The blue fox started to follow, then paused to look at the Lutin corpse. Its head had been cleanly severed at the shoulders. "What is with you, Rickkter? Don't you have any qualms about killing someone?" Rickkter's reply was an eerie echo in the tunnels. "An entire person or just parts of a person?" He never broke his forward stride. Jacob could only shake his head and draw his cloak tighter about himself, wondering just what kind of person he had met up with and when he was going to turn on him. *** End part 33</HTML>