I really hope Agaroth is alright. If he was truly dragged out of range of connected voice then this river must go on for quite a while. Until they get back, we should probably… ow… fuck… ribs… ribs… pretty sure that troll broke most of my ribs when she crushed me before… damn it.

  Farrow: “What do we do now?”

  Damecus and Phoenix are already out of range of connected voice… with Dietrich unconscious I guess that leaves me in charge.

  Dwynfel: “I guess we make a camp… try to keep warm until Dietrich wakes up.”

  Kiyui: “And you need to heal.”

  Dwynfel: “That would be nice, but our healer is missing.”

  Kiyui: “Use a potion then.”

  Dwynfel: “Pass my pack over.”

  My pack was still on the ground from when Damecus threw it to me earlier. I had just grabbed the short sword and left the pack as I didn’t have time to fasten it to myself. It does look as though it has been trodden on though… which isn’t good.

  Kiyui: “Sorry… don’t think these are going to be of any use.”

  Kiyui picked up the pack and various fluids started to leak out of it.

  Kiyui: “Think all your bottles got smashed.”

  Good thing I didn’t have an explosive flask in there. We really need to come up with some more resilient bottles. Glass ones smash far too easily. Then again… if the glass of an explosive flask doesn’t break then it won’t explode… maybe I just need to rethink the whole flask situation.

  Farrow: “I have some… void.”

  Farrow reached into the void and pulled out a healing potion, which she handed to me. And yup… that is absolutely the perfect way to store these things. I wish I could use that void spell that she has.

  I really dislike the taste of these healing potions. They aren’t as bad as that horrific hang-over remedy that Damecus made… they just have this horrid metallic after taste… still… better than being in immense pain every time I try to move.

  After drinking the potion, we started getting to work on setting up a little camp. I started a small fire and started heating up some soup that Damecus had prepared earlier. The incredibly handy thing about travelling anywhere with Farrow is the amount of camp supplies that we can keep in her void. Being able to bring enough soup to feed the entire party and not have to physically carry it is beyond helpful.

  Kiyui: “Svampe, honey. You coming over for some soup?”

  What is he doing? He’s been over there staring at that python corpse for ages.

  Svampe: “Coming.”

  He walked over, took a cup of soup, and sat down next to us. I do have to say… I do like Damecus’ cooking. The soup isn’t anything fancy… just a standard tomato soup. But he adds little things that just add a little something, you know what I mean. Like… if I made tomato soup it would be how my mum taught me… tomatoes, onion, cream, salt, and pepper. Damecus adds little things that just make it feel a little different and interesting. Such as bell peppers, paprika… even a hint of sugar which is apparently common in tomato dishes… which is news to me. He also added a hint of lemon juice.

  Despite all these additions, the primary taste is still very much tomato… it is odd… maybe this is just because my cooking skills are quite basic… but I can never seem to replicate his cooking, no matter how much I try. Maybe I should just accept that the basic cooking procedure of frying is pretty much where my skills lie in the kitchen.

  My mother has taught me how to do loads. But it never tastes like it does when she does it. Kiyui has picked up her cooking skills way better than I have… maybe things just taste better when they are made by other people… maybe I’m just too critical of what I cook because I made it… or maybe I’m just shit at it.

  Farrow: “How do we fix the water?”

  Shit, yes… that’s why we came here… I was so distracted by the whole troll fight situation that that had clean slipped my mind.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  Dwynfel: “We can’t… at least not until Agaroth gets back. And even then, it’s debatable.”

  Farrow: “How so?”

  Dwynfel: “Agaroth is the only one of us who knows the purify spell. And that will only work on the water… not on the remains of the malignant python. So, for it to work, we will need to remove all traces of the python from the water. And that current is far too strong for any of us to climb in and start removing it. We could ask Phoenix to levitate it out, but we have no way of making sure that she has removed all of it.”

  Farrow: “That is… a problem.”

  Dwynfel: “It certainly is.”

  Svampe quickly finished his soup before speaking in a slightly unsure manner.

  Svampe: “I think… I may be able to do something.”

  Dwynfel: “Are you sure?”

  Svampe: “It’ll take me some time… and I’ll need as many of the dead trolls by the python as possible… but yeah… I think I can.”

  Kiyui: “I don’t think I can move one of those trolls.”

  Dwynfel: “Yeah… I think we’ll at least need Dietrich before we can move any of them.”

  Dietrich: “Ears were burning, what do you need?”

  I jumped slightly… but I’m pretty sure nobody noticed. Wasn’t expecting her to wake up so soon. Then again… she was nowhere near as damaged as she was when we fought that crocodile.

  Dwynfel: “We need to move the troll corpses over next to the python.”

  Kiyui: “I’m afraid brute strength is neither mine nor Dwynfel’s strong suit.”

  Dietrich: “Fair play. We got this. Farrow, Svampe, let’s get this done.”

  I admire Farrow for helping… but even I can tell from here that it is mostly Dietrich and Svampe doing the heavy lifting. Mind you… she is still doing way more than Kiyui or I would be able to do. It is more that Dietrich and Svampe possess inhuman strength. Svampe’s strength is pretty much on par with Dietrich… and Svampe doesn’t work out or anything… that’s just the natural strength of his body. And Dietrich’s strength is certainly nothing to be sniffed at… anyone who can go toe to toe with Damecus in the strength department deserves admiration.

  By the time that they had moved the final troll into position… well, I say final troll, obviously one of the trolls in inaccessible as it fell in the river. So yeah, as they were placing the fourth troll in position, Phoenix and Damecus returned. Damecus was carrying Agaroth on his shoulder… which is a fairly impressive feat in itself… Agaroth isn’t exactly a halfling.

  Kiyui: “Is he alright? Where did you find him?”

  Damecus: “There is a large lake deeper down the cavern. It would seem that is where the village well is located.”

  Phoenix: “He was clinging to the rope from the well in the middle of the lake. He is lucky we reached him when we did.”

  Damecus: “The toxin in the water has sapped his strength… he passed out soon after we found him.”

  Phoenix: “After exclaiming a few choice words in our direction, that is.”

  Kiyui: “I would expect little else from him.”

  Damecus: “I have given him enough antivenom to allow some recovery, but he will need to use his magic on himself when he wakes to cleanse himself properly.”

  Thank the gods… he’s going to be okay.

  Damecus: “Why move the corpses?”

  Dietrich: “Good question, never did ask that. Why we doing this?”

  Svampe: “I think I can use them to cleanse the area of the toxin.”

  Dietrich: “Huh? Use infected corpses for cleansing purposes? You bump your head?”

  Damecus: “No… it makes sense. From what I know of Flora’s powers they are largely based around assisting natural processes. Promoting the decomposition of the corpses will provide nutrients which will seep into the environment and assist in the generation of life. Even toxins such as this decompose with time, although granted, the toxin won’t provide nutrients, it will simply cease to be a problem. If he can accelerate all of this, then the toxin will cease to spread into the water and Agaroth can cleanse the last of the water when he wakes.”

  Svampe gave a nervous nod… as if that was what he was drawn to do… but he didn’t fully understand why.

  Svampe: “This may take me some time.”

  Damecus: Take as long as you need. We shall be going nowhere.”

  Phoenix looked at Svampe as though in deep thought. She is clearly intrigued by his abilities. I imagine she found Flora quite an interesting person to have around as well… although she never openly stated that.

  Phoenix: “Creating life from death. It has an odd poetry to it.”

  Damecus: “All life survives from death in one form or another.”

  Dietrich: “I didn’t come here to learn of weird poetry or morbid survival theories. Who fancies some soup?”