Tom strode down the extremely quiet halls of Mount Doom. All the D’Orcs had loosened up considerably later in the evening. The D’Orcs and the few demons had all gone through a lot of x-glargh and x-other beverages, and Tizzy’s cookies had been a particular hit for some reason.
By the earliest hours of the morning, nearly everyone had been completely wasted and were sharing stories about how horrendous and awful Lilith was. They even had a new title for her: “The Jilted Bride.” Antefalken had shared it with people. Apparently, it was the worst possible insult for her. At one point when Tizzy had come to bring up more cookies, he happened to mention that Mount Doom was the only place in the Abyss where one could get away with insulting Lilith without fear of repercussion. Everywhere else, her spies would find out and one was likely simply to disappear for several centuries or more.
Overall, it was a good party and now the entire palace was quiet. The only sounds were those of the poor grunts who had to wake to take over at the shift change at dawn. They would certainly have a bad case of x-glarghvost; with luck, they had limited their intake enough to be alert this morning.
Tom entered Tizzy’s kitchen, where Tizzy and one other demon were washing bowls and large metal trays. “You still here?” Tom asked. He was surprised at the demon’s tenacity in the face of baking cookies. It had been a huge effort and Tizzy had really came through and kept his word.
“Just finishing up; my other assistants started eating the cookies as we baked them and then passed out, so I sent them to bed.” Tizzy shook his head, wiping down a large bowl with two of his hands and arranging cooking utensils in a crock on the counter with the other two. “Reliable help is so hard to get in the Abyss.”
Tizzy suddenly looked at him, puzzled. “You seem very sober. Did you not drink?”
Tom grinned. “Not much; I alternated between glargh and x-glargh. I was too paranoid about which of my enemies might want to do a surprise attack while all my people were getting wasted.”
Tizzy grinned brightly. “So, finally thinking like a demon lord!”
Tom grinned at Tizzy and said “Yes, and I need your help.”
Tizzy paused and grinned more malevolently. “Ye-eh-ss?” he drawled like a third-rate spy movie villain.
Tom shook his head. Just when he thought the demon was turning sane. “You have a link to Gastropé, yes? He summoned you to fight liches.”
Tizzy shrugged. “Yep. You need some liches?”
“No, thanks. I sort of screwed up and forgot to set up return gateways for the humans and orcs,” Tom said.
“Hmm, that could be a problem. Maybe they should just stay here?” Tizzy suggested.
“Or maybe you could have Gastropé help the two of us open a gateway to Astlan and we can send the Astlanians through it,” Tom suggested.
“And then we get to eat the others?” Tizzy asked hopefully.
“No. They are my people; I can’t very well and go around eating my own people!” Tom exclaimed.
“You really have not met Lilith, have you?” Tizzy asked.
“No. And at the moment I don’t want to. The other shamans are going to be trickier, however; from what I have read and heard, travel between the various planes of Midgard is easier than coming and going from the Abyss,” Tom said.
Tizzy shrugged with his upper shoulders. “I guess. Never really tried it. I always hub out of the Abyss. Not by choice, of course. My accursed masters are the ones booking the tickets. However, that is the advantage of living on a hub plane: direct routes to everywhere. Whether you want to go there or not.” Tizzy grimaced, apparently remembering some of his trips to visit accursed masters.
“Well, I figure that once we are in Astlan, Damien will know someone who can travel between the material planes,” Tom said.
Tizzy shrugged. “Probably. Did you ask him?”
“He’s asleep.”
“Which is where I want to be! This place is really wears one out,” Tizzy said. “I’ve been baking all night.” He shook his head. “This place encourages bad habits.” He pulled his pipe from behind him suddenly and lit up.
“So, can you check with Gastropé?” Tom asked. “I assume he’s going to want some time to get somewhere private.”
“Sure, he owes me one. When do you want to do it?” Tizzy asked.
“Well, everyone needs to get up yet, so maybe early afternoon in Astlan?”
Tizzy frowned. “I had planned to be out of it by then; I guess I could nap now, then open the link, you do your hijacking thing and then I continue my siesta.”
“That works.” Tom was a bit surprised that Tizzy did not want to go back to Astlan and torment Gastropé and Jenn.
Finding a private room for lunch in Murgatroy proved extremely vexing. It would have been quite nice to rent out a small back room of a tavern for lunch so that everyone could talk privately. However, that had not proven possible, so they had gathered food and drink at the market and one of the taverns and gone on a picnic. They had debated going into the woods, but Teragdor had suggested heading to a small copse on the plain, out past the wargtown. The forest on the other side of town was too likely to contain hidden listeners.
They were a rather odd lot that certainly would have attracted eavesdroppers: Stevos, herself and her aging grandfather, all of whom were well dressed by local standards, along with a half-orc priest of Tiernon and an ambulatory sword. Interestingly enough, the people of Murgatroy seemed less bothered by a walking, talking sword than those in Freehold. Either that or they were simply used to minding their own business.
Ruiden had insisted on coming along. When they had returned to the hotel and told Ruiden and Danyel that the two of them were going to Murgatroy, Ruiden wanted to know why. Explaining their reasons led the sword to the conclusion that Murgatroy was the last place the demon that had captured Talarius had been; thus, he needed to investigate.
It was, surprisingly, a decent picnic. The weather was nice, they had brought a good-sized blanket to sit on, and Hilda had managed to locate a few bottles of passable wine. The only slightly awkward thing was the way Teragdor kept looking at Beragamos. The awestruck look was amusing at first, but after a while, it started to seem a bit gauche. Although, to be fair to the young lad, he was a lowly itinerant priest stuck in the middle of a place worse than nowhere, and he had probably had to fight his way through incredible amounts of prejudice, as well as actual judgement, to get ordained. Yet, here he was, having lunch with two saints, a sword golem and a legendary figure who actually spoke directly with their god, Tiernon, on a daily basis. Not even the Thaddeus Barolos, the High Pontificate of Tiernon in Astlan, sitting on his holy throne Justicia could make such a claim. It was doubtful the man had even met a saint in the flesh, let alone a Supreme Archon.
Hilda shook her head. When had she become so jaded?
Gastropé pushed the plate towards the center of the table. The local tavern meal had been decent enough by his old standards; unfortunately, he had been completely spoiled on the food on the Nimbus, at the Grove and the alvaren food. He glanced at the candle clock on the left wall of the tavern. He would need to leave soon in order to get to the secure spot he had staked out after Tizzy had contacted him.
The request, while objectively rather odd, was subjectively quite reasonable in the world he currently found himself in. Tom had some people in the Abyss who needed to get back to Astlan and they needed a gateway. Only a few months ago, this would have terrified him on so many levels, but today it seemed like a completely reasonable request.