“It is not,” Gastropé told him, shaking his head. “It makes Gizzor Del look like Freehold.”
Damien grimaced.
The orcs continued talking to Tal Gor, but Gastropé had no idea what they were saying.
Finally, Tal Gor said, “Vaselle, shamans say summon you demon.”
“Summon Estrebrius?” Vaselle asked, puzzled.
“That’s a thought,” Damien said. “When Tom was here, he was projecting an aura that allowed us to all communicate; maybe Estrebrius can do the same, or at the least he can be a reliable translator.”
“So demons project an aura that lets everyone around them speak the same language?” Gastropé asked.
Damien nodded. “It is not widely known, nor advertised, but they can if they want to. Wizards occasionally use lower-level demons as translators. The lower-level ones can project the aura, but do not have the power to intervene and cause mistranslations; which, one presumes, more powerful demons can do.”
“That’s a demon warg, right?” Gastropé pointed at Schwarzenfürze, who glared balefully back at him.
Damien nodded.
“Why doesn’t it project an aura?” Schwarzenfürze growled in Gastropé’s direction, causing him to drop his finger and swallow.
Damien shrugged. “Perhaps because wargs do not speak? Or perhaps because you referred to her as an it and she does not want to?”
Gastropé looked nervously at the D’Warg, who was still glaring at him. “Sorry?” Gastropé told Schwarzenfürze.
Vaselle shook his head. “Very well; assuming he isn’t busy fighting off those Chaos guys…” The warlock walked over to the fire and began chanting a summoning spell. Within moments, a small, ugly demon materialized in the flames and stepped out.
“What’s up?” the little demon asked rather loudly. He seemed to realize this and rubbed his ears; he had just come from a very loud environment.
“We need a translator,” Farsooth Gore Tusk said.
“I understood you!” Gastropé exclaimed.
“Excellent, that helps a lot!” Damien smiled in satisfaction.
“What are you talking about?” Estrebrius asked.
“When Tom and Antefalken returned to the Abyss, we were left with no one to translate our conversations to Universal, so we had communication issues,” Vaselle told his demon. “Trade Tongue is apparently different from plane to plane. Oddly, Orcish seems to be the same.”
“Orcus demanded that we standardize the language across the localverse,” Beya said. “Although given that all versions of Orcish are descended from Jötnmál, the language of the jötnar, it is not impossible to understand non-localverse dialects. If I had to, I could, for example, get by in the Four Lands.”
“The where?” Vaselle asked.
“A region of a non-localverse plane that does occasional commerce with people in our localverse,” Ragala-nargoloth responded. “It’s an example of a place where Orcish was not standardized.”
“Okay, we need to figure out what to do next,” Damien said. “I have no idea how long before Tom can get back, so we need to find a way to get these three back to their worlds, and get Vaselle and me back to Freehold.”
Gastropé grimaced. “Well, that should be simple. Not.”
“Yeah,” Vaselle said. “Aside from the issue of knowing a dimension-hopping spell, there’s the problem of knowing which plane to go to and then where to go on the plane. Unless you’re adventurous, it’s basically a roll of the dice as to where you end up.”
Damien nodded. “The Council has spells with very specific targeting language for known crossing points to the localverse. But it’s not my specialty and even if it was, I wouldn’t be carrying around spells that would get us somewhere reasonable.”
“Actually, if Lord Tommus was here, I could dream walk to another shaman I know well, and Tommus could follow me and open a gateway to him,” Beya said.
“Good idea,” Farsooth said. “I don’t have anyone strong enough in my immediate band, but we do have a couple in my horde.”
“Exactly,” Ragala-nargoloth stated. “The problem is opening a gateway without a lot of preparation and power on this side, and no target to lock onto on the other side.” She shook her head. “It’s actually pretty amazing how well powerful demons like Lord Tommus do this.”
“Well, when you have a lot of mana at your disposal, everything is easier,” Farsooth noted.
Gastropé shook his head. “I guess we just need to wait for Edwyrd to come back.”
“We are near some town — Murgatroy, was it?” Vaselle asked. “Maybe we should think about getting some rooms at an inn?”
Gastropé started to nod. Keeping these guys out of sight would be a good idea. His eyes drifted over to the cranky D’Warg behind Tal Gor, and his stomach started moving south. “Argh. That won’t work,” he said.
“Why not?” Damien asked.
Gastropé pointed to Schwarzenfürze. “Her.” He quickly dropped his finger as Schwarzenfürze’s eyes narrowed. She did not seem to like it when he pointed at her.
“She would need to be stabled in the wargtown,” Gastropé said.
Tal Gor shrugged, “That is what wargtowns are for. She’s been there before, just a few days ago.”
Gastropé nodded emphatically. “And that’s the problem.”
“What do you mean, wizard?” Beya asked.
“Your last visit here set off all sorts of alarm bells, and now there’s a large group of investigators combing the city and the wargtown in particular, trying to understand what you were up to.”
“Why?” Tal Gor asked, shaking his head. “We went shopping, like we said.”
“Yes, but the alvar freaked out when they saw D’Orcs and D’Wargs.” Gastropé gestured to Schwarzenfürze.
“How do you know all of this?” Ragala-nargoloth queried.
Gastropé grimaced. “Because I’m with them. I was having dinner in Murgandy when the alvaran rangers arrived, having ridden around the clock to bring the news.”
Farsooth shook his head. “Damn elves, they blow everything out of proportion. Everything is a war to them! Seriously unpleasant people.”
“They keep talking about going across some imaginary sea to some sort of Promised Land, I wish they would just hurry up and go already!” Beya said angrily.
“Well, why don’t we just go explain things to them?” Vaselle asked. The orcs all turned to stare at him as if he was crazy. Gastropé had to agree with them that the warlock was nuts.
“You haven’t met that many elves, have you?” Farsooth asked.
“They are a bunch of know-it-alls who prefer to lecture the ‘lesser races’ that they so ‘nobly shepherd.’ They do not take advice from the sheep,” Beya said angrily.
Gastropé shook his head. “I’m not sure they are that bad, but they definitely seem to have gotten bees in their plate armor when they learned of the D’Orcs.”
Ragala-nargoloth nodded. “That sounds like them. They don’t like things they can’t easily control.”
“Well,” Gastropé interrupted, “according to the alvar, the D’Orcs are supposed to be the most fearsome warriors in the multiverse, Knights of Chaos excepted, apparently.”
Farsooth chuckled. “Well, they do have a point on that. They are the best of the best of orc warriors, and they are even more immortal than the elves. You skewer an elf and it croaks; skewer a D’Orc and it returns to the Abyss for a rest and then comes back to hunt you down.”
Ragala-nargoloth and Beya chuckled at this as well. Gastropé was not sure, but he thought maybe the new and absolutely horrifying expression on Tal Gor’s monster might also be a grin. She seemed to be understanding them. Which was all the more reason to wonder why she did not project one of those translation auras.