(Author’s note – if you experience giantism for more than six rounds please consult your potion brewer)

Once I explained to my scabby new friend where I wanted to go her interest increased by the same factor the interest of the Daga in taking me anywhere decreased.  Turns out they have a major “thing” about not trampling over burial grounds and messing with dead bodies.  Go figure huh?  Crinna, that’s scabby, seemed to be getting increasingly frantic about making this happen which I found off-putting.  Why was she all of a sudden so excited about going to an ancient tomb?  Is she one of those death-obsessed freaks?  Or a tomb raider?  Or worse, an adventurer?  I was about to ask her what he deal was but she was pacing around talking at a rapid pace, her everfull tankard forgotten for once.

“Okay, okay, here’s what we do.  This is what we need to do.  What we’ll do is we’ll go to the tavern.  Yes, to the tavern, but not to drink.  No, not to drink.  What we’ll do is we’ll ask Had.  We won’t drink we’ll ask Had.  Well we’ll drink a little.  Had knows what’s going on around here.  Had is fence but he knows the score.  He’s like an information merchant.  Yes, we’ll go and ask Had, at the tavern.  We may have a couple of drinks while we’re there but that’s not why we’re going.  We’re going to talk to Had.  To ask him.  Had knows.  He’ll know someone like me who knows the ways but isn’t all stuck in the past like those superstitious . . .” it was at this point that an arrow slammed into her chest, causing her to look down “. . . hey!”

I turned my Ring for invisibility and hit the dirt as more arrows started flying seemingly from every direction.  Crinna grabbed the arrow in her flesh and angrily tried to pull it to no avail as more arrows clattered around her.  Another hit her in the shin and at that she yelped and ran for cover – of which there was very little, there seemed to be archers on every “street”.  She solved that problem by leaping head-first into the door of a hut/shack and smashing her way in and through.  The archers themselves looked to be disparate collection of local thugs with mismatched and dilapidated arms and armor, although clearly effective nonetheless.  They continued to fire arrows for a moment, either out of pure excitement or trying to hit me with blind shots.  One with a greased-up mohawk and the head of some dead animal attached to his armor was shouting excitedly.

“I got her!  I got her right in the neck!”

A wide-bodied fellow with one of those stupid cooking pot looking helmets came up beside him “You hit her in the chest fool not the throat.”

I woman with a red jacket and tattoos around one eye twitched up to them as well “I think I shot her in the leg.  I was just trying to aim, I accidentally let go.”

Pot-helmet smiled indulgently “That happens.”

I heard a fourth voice shouting from a distance “Where did she go?!”

Mohawk yelled back “I got her!”

Pot-helmet scowled and looked like he wanted to swat him “No one got anyone!  She hid in one of these houses, start looking for the one with the bashed in door.”

Another distant voice came shouting “What happened to the other one?”

The first voice replied “Who cares?  Concentrate on the target.”

While they were searching I invisi-crawled into hiding myself since the invisibility only lasts a short while.  Also while they were searching in listening to them shouting back and forth I realized that they thought Crinna was me!  How could they make that mistake?!  They clearly were after the person who had turned down their immortal (although I’m going to kill her so I guess not) ghost mistress from the distant past and they thought that was Crinna!  I’m not sure I’ve ever been more insulted in my life.  If nothing else I’m like a foot taller than her!  Not to mention our different hair color and the fact that she’s a scruffy mangy little shrimp who’s about as attractive as a multi-limbed crustacean whereas I am one of the Kingdom’s top five beauties!  Top ten at least.  I mean sure my clothing is a little ragged right now and I have this scar and I haven’t done anything with me hair lately, but come on people!  I was so insulted that I smeared the shadow essence I took off that sleeping assassin and shot mohawk in the back, quickly hiding again.

Mohawk threw his bow up in the air hysterically “I’m hit!”

Pot-helmet cursed at him “Get some cover damn it!”

Mohawk leaned against a building as the poison started sapping his strength “I don’t feel so good.”

He felt even less good when Crinna popped out the window of that building and hacked into his neck with her sword.  He sagged to the ground like a deflated wineskin as she ducked back inside.  It probably felt good to strike back but it marked her position.  Pot-helmet and Tattoo kept scanning the area, probably for me, as six other bowmen (and women) converged on the hut and prepared to storm the place.  I smeared my oil of Fire Trap onto the door of another hut and used my voice abilities to mimic Crinna’s voice coming from inside that building calling to me for help.  Half of them looked at each other in confusion but the other three run to the new hut and were blasted by a massively disappointing amount of fire from the magical trap.  It was less than a small campfire’s worth of magic fire.  Why would you even waste your time making that!  Magic is the worst.

That tiny puff of smoke did result in the occupants of the shack coming out hopping mad, or at least hopping because of pants around the ankles.  One fella I didn’t get a good look at because he lit out for the hills bare ass naked, an expression people often used incorrectly to mean completely nude – I literally mean that his ass was bare, he did have a grungy shirt on.  The other fella looked like a man-sized wolverine that had been shaved and fitted for a pair of spectacles.  How anyone in this dirtwater town can afford spectacles with a silver rim is beyond my ken.  Once he kicked away the pants around his ankles he was naked as the day he was born – which is the proper way to say that someone wasn’t wearing a stitch.  He wasn’t covered with blood like the day someone is born at first but he changed that quickly on account of he was swinging a hammer that was taller than me.  I don’t know if it was a weapon or a tool but the difference was lost on the archer whose head he cracked like an egg.

He was a little but upset about being interrupted I gather.  As the archers regrouped to fill his naked body with arrows I downed a potion for increased size and battle rage and then changed my appearance to that of a vicious cave giant.  I dropped my invisibility and laid into them with my sword – if you were observant and thinking clearly you would have realized that a fancy mithril short blade is an unlikely weapon for a brutish cave giant but that’s generally not the kind of thing people notice when they’re fighting for their lives.  With a roar naked hammer man dashed another archer to the ground before falling with a good dozen arrows in him.  Crinna dashed out for a backstab on another and they decided that running away screaming was the better part of valor.  By this point the townsfolk were turning up with a hodgepodge of weapons to confront the giant attacking their town and I dropped that illusion ad held up my hands.

“No, no, no need for any of that.  Not a real giant, just a very talented lady.  I’m not even this big really, it just takes a moment for the potion to run out.  Just give me a minute here . . . any moment I’m going to shrink down . . . I swear, just a minute and I’ll be normal.”

Half of them looked like they wanted to skewer me anyway but I was able keep things from escalating out of hand.  It did help once the potion wore off and I returned to my usual, but still impressive, height.  Crinna wouldn’t stop bellyaching about her wounds until I gave her half my healing potions and even then she was whining about getting an infection.

I looked around “Do we need to get out of here before the law shows up?  I assume there has to be some kind of law even out here.”

Crinna rubbed at her now non-existent leg wound “That was the law.”

“The mob?”

“No, the people trying to kill me.”

“Well, that changes things.  And for the record they were after me, they just thought you were me.”  She laughed and I grinned “I know hilarious right?  Wait a minute, why are you laughing?  You should be flattered.”

“Oh, I am, I’ve always wanted to be a undernourished stork.”

“I will kick you right in the chest.”

She gingerly got to her feet “That would be something to worry about too with those ridiculously long stork legs.  So much momentum.”

“Can you actually help me find this tomb or is all you have to offer inaccurate insults?”

She waved me forward “Like I said we need to talk to Had.  He knows all the ways.”

“We should watch out for more attacks.”

She unhooked her tankard from her belt and took a long quaff “Well that was the whole of the lawmen in town, I doubt they’re be wanting to go another round with half of them dead.” She looked over at the dead naked man, laying ass-up on the ground riddled with arrows “Although we’ve lost out back-up so maybe we should keep an eye out.”

Funds: 6919 gold

XP: 1,277,751

Inventory: Bag of Holding, +2 Distance Light Crossbow, traveling outfit, Ring of Invisibility, potion case, potions (Protection from Evil, Cure Moderate Wounds x4, Invisibility x2) Blessed Robes, Vampire Hunter’s Cloak, +1 Mithril Holy Undead Bane Sword-Cane

Revenge List: Duke Eaglevane, Piltis Swine, Rince Electrum, watchman Gridley, White-Muzzle the worg, Percy Ringle the butler, Alice Kinsey , “Patch”, Heroes of the Lost Sword, Claire Conrad, Erist priest of Strider, Riselda owner of the Sage Mirror, Eedraxis,  Skin-Taker tribe, Kartak, Królewna & Bonifacja Trading Company, Hurmont Family, Androni Titus, Greasy dreadlocks woman, Lodestone Security, Kellgale Nickoslander, Beltian Kruin the Splithog Pauper, The King of Spiders, Auraluna Domiel, mother Hurk, Mazzmus Parmalee,  Helgan van Tankerstrum, Lightdancer, Bonder Greysmith, Pegwhistle Proudfoot, Lumbfoot Sheepskin, Lumber Consortium of Three Rivers, Hellerhad the Wizard, Forsaken Kin, Law Offices of Office of Glilcus and Stolo, Jey Rora, Colonel Tarl Ciarán, Mayor Baras Haldmeer, Rindol the Sage, Essa, eyeless hag, Baron Saltwheel, Baron Harmenkar, Colonel Tarl Ciarán’s wizard soldier, Victor, Beharri, Cebuano, Mayor Eryn, Chimera Trading Company, maker of the manacles, Calvados Eure, Law Offices of Lampblack and Brimstone, Peronell Missplitter, Nightmare Hag